Playing to lose and In-Group Collectivism

Whatever the reason, eight Chinese, South Korean and Indonesian badminton Olympians played so badly – intentionally – that they were disqualified on Wednesday.

CNN online reports explained the strategy as "playing to lose in order to face easier opponents in future matches," without really explaining how the strategy would lead to facing "easier" opponents.

According to a different CNN report, disqualified athlete Yu Yang wrote in her on-line blog that she and her teammates were trying to save their best efforts for an upcoming – and more important –match.

The playing-injured defense
An excerpt: "We were injured before the match... We were using the rule to give up the match to be better prepared for the knockout round. Do you know how much pain we suffer when we athletes get injured and still have to compete?" Yu Yang also announced that she is quitting the sport.

To U.S. audiences, this sort of strategy is quite acceptable among "Survivor" contestents, but we as a culture expect more from Olympic athletes.

And apparently, so do Olympic officials.

In a recent post, I wrote about a cross-cultural variable called "societal cynicism" and how it helps us understand why some societies believe that the world is so ruthless and evil, that it's OK to be manipulative and deceitful in order to get ahead. China and and South Korea rank quite high in societal cynicism among societies studied, while the U.S., the U.K.and Indonesia rank quite low.

To better understand the above-mentioned match-throwing strategy, we need to look at a different variable – "In-Group Collectivism (IGC)" – which comes from the mega-cross-cultural research initiative Project GLOBE. Essentially, IGC refers to loyalty to one's in-group, which could be one's family, work-group or national Olympic team.

It "does go on"
Former British badminton Olympian competitor and manager Andy Goode was quoted by CNN as criticizing the disqualified players' strategy and commenting that it "does go on... especially in countries where the team ethic is very important."

He is describing In-Group Collectivism, and this is what it looks like when you graph the U.S., England, China, South Korea and Indonesia, using Project GLOBE societies.

What's also interesting about IGC is that those of us in the U.S. desire more of it, while China and South Korea want less. It's difficult to interpret that, but my spin on it is that Chinese and South Korean respondents wanted to be less constrained by conformity to the norms of their in-groups. Regarding the U.S., one explanation may lie in work-family balance. Perhaps U.S. and U.K Project GLOBE manager-respondents wanted to be able to devote more time and energy to their families and in-groups – but felt that they could not, due to excessive and conflicting work demands.

An opportunity awaits

A related point is that the Chinese, South Koreans and Indonesians – clearly – did not understand the ramifications of their decision to lose matches on purpose. This is a good example of why cross-cultural psychology should be a valued competency for any organization or business that interacts internationally.

Just because a particular decision makes sense within the context of our own societal norms, values and beliefs, we cannot assume that it will be perceived the same way by individuals and groups from other countries.

So far, neither U.S businesses nor our government seem to be acknowledging this, but in time maybe they will grasp the importance of the application of cross-cultural research. To quote cross-cultural researcher Mansour Javidan, Ph.D:

"... we do not think it is hyperbole to suggest that the future of our planet depends on better understanding and acceptance among peoples of different cultures."