Pride and Some Prejudice
Research into Mechanisms of Human Communications
Eric Vatikiotis-Bateson
Not long ago an ATR executive asked me why I continue to stay at ATR rather than
return home to the USA. I am often asked this question in one form or another
and can always cite myriad reasons for staying at ATR. Very often the question
is accompanied by the underlying assumption that, if given the opportunity, foreign
residents would prefer to work in their home countries than in Japan. My answer
to this is simple and swift: put ATR in North America or the south of France and
I would be on the next plane. I am not Japanese and have no reason to pretend
that living in cramped conditions among so many people speaking a language that
is difficult even for native speakers to use comfortably is either fun or conducive
to one's peace of mind.
However, my experience at ATR has generally been so positive that I have hardly
noticed the more difficult-to-accept aspects of life in Japan. For most of the
past eleven years, ATR has provided a unique work environment that combines aspects
of Japanese and western institutions into something better than either type alone.
I could use the rest of this article to enumerate various bits and pieces that
have contributed to this remarkable situation. An important example is ATR's dangerous
commitment to and success in hiring relatively large numbers of foreign researchers
and students (about one-quarter of the staff). In the end, however, the reader
would agree with me that ATR's success owes much to luck, especially in the early
days when ATR's progress was so rapid and unexpected that no one considered analyzing
the process in order to discover and preserve the formula for success. What I
would rather do in this short article is identify a human characteristic that
is both a cause and a consequence of ATR's success.
The characteristic in question is pride. For cultural and linguistic reasons,
this may not be readily perceptible to my Japanese colleagues who have helped
bring it about. Even within the context of American language and culture, pride
is a slippery concept. Any English dictionary defines pride as esteem for oneself
or others with whom one is associated. This is not all that helpful, since the
notion of esteem is itself not very clear and is difficult to distinguish from
other complex notions such as respect. My experience with Japanese culture during
the past 35 years suggests that at least one interpretation of pride has some
meaning in both cultures: namely, the pride of belonging to or participating in
a larger group such as a family or a company. However, there is some truth to
the contrasting stereotypes of American individualism and Japanese concern for
the group; therefore, even the pride of belonging is culturally flavored.
In ATR's culturally mixed environment, the pride of belonging has emerged as a
consequence rather than a cause of the personal pride taken in doing research
that is both enjoyable and often worthwhile. ATR was created essentially overnight
by the infusion of large sums of money, the forging of contractual agreements
with supporting companies within Japan, and the hiring of a few unaffiliated researchers
from within Japan and abroad. I was not as "proud" to join ATR as a young researcher
might be to join a large, well-established and respected company such as NTT.
In 1990, ATR was essentially unknown and the consensus of the few people who had
heard of the place outside Japan was that nothing interesting had happened yet,
as ATR was only four years old at the time.
What was clear to me from my first visit to ATR, but which my academic colleagues
in North America could not fathom without firsthand experience, was that an environment
had been created in which almost anything was possible. I finally decided to leave
my comfortable research laboratory at Yale University to join ATR because, when
I asked my future boss what his job was at ATR, he said, "My job is to make your
job easy." And what was my job? To do interesting research. Of course, such an
open-ended mandate puts a huge responsibility on individual researchers and those
managing them, because such freedom has no apparent safety net. Indeed, there
have been many casualties among researchers who have not been able to cope with
the freedom, often retreating into isolation. On the other hand, a substantial
number of researchers have seized the opportunity to pursue their interests without
ever looking back, even when they make mistakes, building research groups and
generating exciting results that are respected and envied around the world.
From my limited perspective, this has been particularly true of, but by no means
limited to, the succession of laboratories with which I have been associated:
the Auditory and Visual Speech Perception Research Laboratories (1986-1993), the
Human Information Processing Research Laboratories (1992-2001), and currently
ATR Human Information Science Laboratories. Compared with the other laboratories
within the ATR group, these labs have deviated the most from the existing models
of industrial research, using experimental results and models to test and develop
theories. I believe the researchers that have contributed the most to ATR's success
are proud of the work they have done and thankful for the lucky confluence of
conditions at ATR that has made their work possible. Their long tenure at ATR,
in some cases dating to its very beginning, has generated an emotional attachment
to the institution. This has been amply demonstrated by their patient efforts
during the past several years of financial and bureaucratic uncertainty. But are
they proud to belong to ATR? Insofar as ATR remains conducive to the kind of research
that nourishes and interests them, yes. Is such egocentric pride healthy? I think
so.
