3 ms·

Is getting ahead about fate or free will?

• tgflynn 11y ago
  Interesting because there is so much variation in the results and so much of that variation seems counterintuitive. I have a major doubt though that this study may have been severely biased by the manner in which the questions were translated. A study like this should really publish the translated questions in all languages used (even though no single person could evaluate all of them), and I didn't see that in the full report. A result I find especially strange is the large difference between France and the US/English speaking countries on the importance of hard-work and education. I've worked in both countries and I find it very hard to believe that so many French people would think that "working hard" was not important. The potential problem I see here is that "working hard" is such a common cultural idiom in the US that accepting that term would be almost automatic for many people. Depending on how this was translated though it could have been seen in French as being something like "doing hard labour". I have the same problem with the results for the importance of education. Education is probably more important to success in France than in just about any other western country and I think that is widely believed there. However if the question was poorly translated it might have been understood as something like having "a good upbringing" rather than education in the English sense.