Films and popular culture further feed it, as well as politicians, actors and other public figures. Large swathes of the population moved to Paris, usually for work, from Provence.
However, once in Paris for a few years we can notice subtle changes in behaviour in the following areas. Photo credit, public domain pictures, Unsplash. The property market in Paris is saturated with small expensive apartments, and it is not unusual for professionals to live in flatshares or single room studios well into their thirties.
This same phenomenon also puts pressure on relationships as recent couples are understandably sometimes pressured by financial factors rather than emotional readiness to move in together too quickly.
There is space for people to live in more than one room, if desired, even enjoy some outdoor space. There are other large French cities where rent is becoming comparatively share, when laid out alongside local salaries. But I think most would agree that Paris is a pretty special case here. That is why a lot of life happens outside. Paris habits are the polar opposite. Photo credit, Rishabh Varshney from Unsplash. In Provence restaurants are still enjoyed, but often the more purse friendly ones, as salaries do not compare with those of Parisians.
Families may prefer to economise, driving directly home from work to eat pre-planned meals from the big Auchan shop at the weekend.
There is an unspoken war, or at the very least considerable tensions between Paris and the rest of France. In rural France people are exceptionally friendly by Parisian standards. This does not happen in Paris. The owner may appear generally interested in what you have to say, asking questions and taking the time.
The Tourist Office had to publish a brochure telling Parisians how to be nicer to tourists, thus acknowledging an existing problem. Paris is the capital of culture. But the sheer concentration in Paris is overwhelming. Paris has recently undergone a sporty revolution. They have to get in their cars to go to a class and to teach. La France Profonde is overwhelmingly rural, and inhabitants still work the land today.
Their healthy active lifestyle is often rewarded by quite heavy and rich cooking in the evenings in some regions, notably the South West. In Paris working culture is pretty sedentary and office based, yet with many pedestrian commuters and bikes, there are plenty of possibilities to keep your pedometer happy — not to mention changing lines at Chatelet-les-Halles.
However, they use their cars, whilst the Parisians pace the pavements and the treadmill. As a child I spent summers living near Nice. With this decidedly Mediterranean attitude towards siesta, family and work life balance the Provinciaux are certainly winning hands down on this front. Thus is somewhat unfair that Parisians are tarred with the same brush, when the internationally community imagines the French as a little work shy.
I have never known employees at la Defense leave their offices much before 7ish. Photo credit, Discover Walks. It is no longer unlikely for top professionals to take work home with them or come into the office at the weekend. Parisians go on holiday to French Provence, something that the year-round inhabitants find somewhat amusing. The thing is, the French outside the capital often love their region and the quality of life there. This bon mot does rather accurately sum up Parisian voting habits.
Past French presidents from the left and the right. Photo credit, Wiki Commons. That said, Parisians are overall resoundingly more liberal than their compatriots elsewhere in France. You might remember the anti gay marriage protests a few years back in Paris Manif pour tous, they have now turned their attention to protesting gay families adopting.
The second precaution consisted of systematic testing of various phrasings of the translated questions. We made several phone calls to native speakers and tried various forms, identifying possible misunderstandings or biases. One additional factor was multilingualism: one of the principal investigators was very fluent in the languages surveyed and so were several research associates. The questionnaires were anonymous and approved by the Internal Review Board to protect human subjects at the University of Pennsylvania.
In order to make the questionnaire brief and user-friendly we divided it into three different versions. The briefness was dictated by the fact that the questionnaires were distributed to people waiting in train stations.
Each questionnaire occupied two sides of one-page. All versions included the same demographic items as well as items concerning frequency of dieting, and the importance of variety in different domains. The specific items relevant to the issues raised in this paper are discussed along with the presentation of the results on these items. The two items that were included on all three versions of the questionnaire are described below.
The set of items that measured desire for variety directly, included eight-items each directed at a particular domain. The same question was asked for each domain, as follows:. For some items you may like to have a lot of choices to pick from and for other items the number of choices may not be as important to you.
Assign a number, from the options below, to each item based on how much choice you like to have. In version one, participants were asked to write about their day yesterday and their dinner last night.
We do not report these results here, but we do include the results from these participants on the common items on frequency of dieting and on variety. Version two included some free associations not presented in this paper, and a set of items contrasting desire for quantity versus quality in a number of domains.
The items read as follows:. There are some domains in your life where quality is more important, and others where quantity how many you have is more important, for you. Rate each of the domains or situations below as to the relative importance of quality and quantity for you.
The money and stove options were included just to help calibrate responses. They are not included in the data analysis, and were inadvertently not included in the French translation. Version three consisted of all multiple-choice items and included principally items having to do with comforts and joys.
There is a subset of three of these questions written in parallel forms that address a specific subset of joy—comfort concerns. The items in this section include: 1 When I go to my favorite restaurant, I choose to order… A.
These three items pit an almost certain positive experience and positive anticipation, with minimal creation of new memories, against a less certain positive experience and anticipation, but a greater likelihood of creating a distinct new positive memory.
Alternatively, this can be seen to be about experiencing something familiar and positive more like a comfort or creating a new, hence perhaps more interesting and surely more memorable experience more like a joy. Version 3 contained an additional 13 items that we believed were reasonable measures of the comfort—joy distinction. Therefore, altogether the questionnaire contained 16 items that were designed to tap into the comfort—joy distinction. The remaining 13 items were all adjusted so that a maximum score of one indicated joy and a minimal score of zero indicated comfort.
The exact questionnaire items used are presented in the text, tables, or table legends in the appropriate sections. However, in the tables we mark 0. Combined variables are named for the theme they represent abbreviated as VAR for collective values, Q for qualitative—quantitative, and CJ for comfort and joy followed by a descriptive term of the subset of scores they represent e.
Before considering the results from the three major themes that are the focus of this paper, we present the results on a single item, dieting frequency, to confirm a previously established difference Rozin et al.
Dieting is substantially and significantly less frequent in the French and in males and there is no culture by gender interaction Tables 2 and 3. Table 2. One set of items measured desire for variety directly, with eight-items each directed at a particular domain see Table 4. For all eight-items, the Americans scored higher on variety preference.
Corresponding results from Analyses of Variance with Country and Gender as factors are presented in Table 3. Table 4. French and American scores on all items bearing on variety [mean SD ].
Given that the small item variety and large item variety scores correlate 0. Liking for variety is weakly correlated with religiosity 0. This weak relation seems to primarily result from the fact that Americans are more religious and prefer variety more. In parallel to the measures on variety, the basic measure of the relative importance of quality versus quantity is a set of questions that directly address this contrast across eight domains see Table 5.
Table 5. French and American scores on quality versus quantity [mean SD ]. In seven of eight cases, the French score lower on quantity hence higher on quality than the Americans Table 5.
The one exception had to do with houses, where the French preferred non-significantly quantity more than Americans. Since these two scores correlated 0. None of the three combined quantity scores showed any significant effects of gender or gender by country interactions Table 3. Since the French score higher on one item house , it is unlikely that the French—American difference on quantity is simply a result of different biases in use of the scale.
None of the three combined scores correlated significantly with religiosity. The overall eight-item quantity score correlated 0. The third version of the questionnaire contained the questions that focused on the comfort—joy distinction. There is a subset of three of these questions written in parallel forms that address a specific subset of joy—comfort concerns see Methods. We predict, in accord with the hypothesis that the French are less comfort and more joy oriented, that they will opt more frequently for the new positive, but less certain experience.
Our prediction holds, to different degrees for the three items Table 6 , with only one, for music, significant. There are no significant effects of gender or gender by country interaction Table 3. Table 6. French and American scores on 13 items bearing on comforts versus joys 1. We also analyzed the 10 additional items that measured the comfort—joy distinction.
Of all 13 items, 10 yielded a higher joy score for French than Americans Table 6. We are puzzled by the three that did not Americans preferred more than the French a tropical hotel with a view as opposed to air-conditioning, a fulfilled as opposed to contented life, and a hotel plus theater tickets as opposed to a more luxurious hotel.
The 13 items see Methods; Table 6 were subjected to a factor analysis. The factors were not particularly easy to differentiate conceptually, but they showed strikingly different relations to country. Factor 1, which we will call Stimulation 1, included four items that focused on adding stimulation to a hotel stay or in more abstract terms, see Table 6.
Two of the three items that scored higher on joy for Americans are in this factor, as are two others which showed almost identical scores. Factor 2, which we call Stimulation 2, has four items that are very similar, conceptually, to factor 1, again involving choices with more or less stimulation. All are about specific domains, two about food, one about music, and one about travel vacations. Factor 3 includes three items, none domain specific, and all of which explicitly address the idea of comfort as one of the alternatives.
For this reason, we call it the comfort—joy factor. One item has to do with choice of metaphors for the ideal life details in footnote 3 of Table 6 , and two are dichotomous items. One presents a choice of the ideal life as comfortable or interesting, and a second with a choice of happiness as either comfort or excitement. This factor shows the largest French—American difference, strongly favoring joy for the French Tables 2 and 6. The fourth factor, which includes two items about hotel preferences, contrasting luxury, or stimulation, shows no difference between French and Americans Tables 2 , 3 , and 6.
On the basis of our knowledge of French and American culture and life, some historical writing about the two cultures, and our previous research, we proposed three potential general themes representing differences between French and American culture: Communal versus personal values, focus on quality as opposed to quantity, and greater emphasis on joys than comforts. We also linked a fourth theme, moderation versus abundance, in part, to the quality—quantity theme.
We had gathered some evidence for higher French valuation of moderation, quality, and collective values in some of our prior work on food attitudes Rozin et al. The purpose of this paper was to confirm these relationships within the food domain, extend the idea of joys versus comforts to the food domain, and then examine whether the three themes under investigation also appeared in other domains of life.
We report evidence for a higher incidence of all three predicted differences from the French perspective, communal values, quality, and joys in food and in a number of other life domains. The three themes that we have identified are not precisely defined, but rather are suggestions about clusters of beliefs or values.
Through further conceptual analysis and measurements, it is hoped that more precise and empirically predictive formulations of the themes will occur. The theme of communal versus personal values was instantiated in this study by desire for variety across domains. This is, of course, only one manifestation of this idea. What originally stimulated our thought about this theme was our own observations of the higher degree of ritualization of eating in France.
We were impressed with, and documented Rozin et al. We interpret this as an example of the greater role of rules of appropriateness for food combinations and particular sequences in France, as well as greater respect for the chef as an arbiter of what is best to eat.
Of our three themes, we expect that this one might be the most domain limited. Quality versus quantity, as we have said, is related to the moderation versus abundance theme that our prior work on food portion size suggested Rozin et al.
Our results support generality of this theme. The one exception, houses, may be explainable in terms of another French theme, the focus on joys.
The second house is typically a vacation house, and hence can be seen as a way to expand the diversity of life. Joys versus comforts is, conceptually, the least well developed of our themes, and the items that we used to measure it are new, and need further work. There were three of thirteen items in which the predicted American preference for comfort did not appear.
Two involved hotel choices, with the Americans preferring more than the French, a view to air-conditioning and a hotel plus theater tickets as opposed to a more luxurious hotel. The American preference for a hotel plus tickets as opposed to a more luxurious hotel may have tapped into the American inclination for quantity compared to the French value of quality.
A third hotel item, involving a trade-off between better food and more luxurious room, showed almost the same score for French and Americans. This finding conflicts with our previous finding of greater importance of food versus luxuriousness of hotels in our previous research Rozin et al.
The preference for a new versus familiar vacation site was also about the same for French and Americans. Contented or Fulfilled. We cannot easily account for this in terms of connotations of the words used in the translations, and remain puzzled about this finding. It may indicate some important clarification of the meaning of joys and comforts. As we composed items on joys and comforts, we became aware of the difficulty of making this distinction, as well as confirming for ourselves the importance of the distinction.
Are joys necessarily more interesting, more likely to produce memories, more actively engaging, more social? Can a night watching television while sitting on a comfortable sofa be meaningfully classified as a comfort or a joy? It is surely comfortable and somewhat passive, but it also involves a set of distinct experiences, assuming that the television program be it sports, quiz show, news, or drama contains a set of unique experiences and potential memories.
It is our view that the best way to develop and articulate the joy—comfort distinction is through exercises such as we carried out in this study: thinking up examples, and trying them out on people. We believe this is an important component of the comfort—joy distinction, and perhaps the easiest to instantiate with discrete questions.
But the comfort—joy distinction engages much more than memorable, including arousal, anticipation, and sociality.
French—American differences we have reported are confounded with Catholic—Protestant differences. Although it is unlikely that this difference in religion explains all of the French—American differences under consideration, it is also likely that it has some explanatory potential. The Protestant tradition is characterized by a greater emphasis on self-discipline, on control of the body, and on individuality Weber, ; Whorton, ; Stearns, ; Puhl and Brownell, Pleasure is more likely to be confounded with sin and guilt among Protestants Weber, Stearns has invoked Protestantism as a partial explanation of French—American differences in the food and dieting domain.
Puhl and Brownell note that American values of strict discipline, personal responsibility, and strong morality are rooted in the Protestant work ethic that pervades American culture. As a result, Americans place high value on self-control and blame the victim for not succeeding. Following from this, Americans have attached a substantial moral component to health, dieting, and fat.
Whorton writes of the moral component Americans attach to health in general. While almost our entire French sample is Catholic, there are substantial numbers of Catholics and Protestants in the American sample. As a preliminary effort to explore Protestant—Catholic differences, we examined the scores of American Catholics versus Protestants on all of the summary variables listed in Table 2.
This study surely raises more issues than it settles, both for methodological and conceptual reasons. Acknowledging the methodological problems associated with comparing views expressed in different languages, we suggest preliminary, exploratory qualitative work e. Although we did use focus groups in some of our previous studies, we were not able to do so in this particular one. The study began with some hypotheses based on knowledge of the two countries and some prior literature.
We gathered samples of adults from both countries that supported these ideas and helped to clarify and refine them. But this is just a first and preliminary step: some ideas, some evidence for them, and some subsequent refinement of the ideas, as indicated in this discussion.
We feel this is a contribution to cultural psychology in that it raises three types of cultural differences that have received little or no consideration before and provides some evidence for them. The evidence is not strong, and more conceptual work, better scales, and better and larger samples would be necessary to fully develop the three themes we present.
More thinking and more data collection would be necessary to produce useful and coherent scales to represent each of our three themes. In particular, the comfort—joy distinction needs further exploration, at both the conceptual and empirical levels.
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. Bell, R.
Time to eat: the relationship between the number of people eating and meal duration in three lunch settings. Appetite 41, — The amount eaten in a meal is a power function of the number of people present. Fischler, C. Paris: Odile-Jacob. Fiske, A. Gilbert, S. Fiske and G. Frederick, S. Kahneman, E. Diener and N. Kahneman, D. Diener, J.
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