AmericanScience is pleased to present the first of our Reviews in Popular Science, written by Catherine Mas. Catherine will review Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld's book The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America.
Catherine Mas, originally from Miami, Florida, is a second-year Ph.D. student in the History of Science and Medicine at Yale University. She is broadly interested in changing perceptions of illness and the varying meanings and uses of science in American history. In her free time, she enjoys swimming, drawing, and listening to music.
Last February, Amy Chua and Jed
Rubenfeld published The Triple Package:How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America, a controversial book about culture and success. From book reviews to
talk shows in mainstream media, audiences have grappled with the book’s bold
premise: that three traits common among certain minority cultural groups lead
to their higher-than-average material wealth, occupational status, and academic
achievement. These three traits include: 1) a superiority complex, 2)
insecurity, and 3) impulse control. When combined, these so-called cultural
forces make up what Chua and Rubenfeld call the “Triple Package,” a formula
that generates the drive to succeed in America. Mormons, Cubans, Asians, Jews, and
Nigerians are all included in the authors’ list of high-achieving cultural
groups. By the end of the book, the authors extend their theory to the scale of
nation, describing how America had once been a Triple Package nation but has
recently entered an era of decline.
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| Pepe Billete, a radio, TV, and social media personality whose YouTube videos have amassed millions of views and who also writes a column in the Miami New Times, is featured in The Triple Package as an example of the way Cuban-Americans express the “Superiority” element of their Triple Package. The puppet, always with a cigar in hand, dons aviators and shirts ranging from partially unbuttoned guayaberas to Miami Heat jerseys. He is a caricature of Cubans in Miami—a stereotype that many have embraced given his popularity. Anecdotal evidence such as the Pepe Billete’s controversial words touting the superior status of Cubans over other Hispanic groups are accompanied by social psychological studies on “stereotype boost.” |
This book, classified under ethnic studies, uses social statistics, studies in psychology, and selective historical examples to show why people of equal capabilities and facing similar obstacles achieve different levels of success. The authors insist that even though certain groups carry the Triple Package, it is available to anyone, regardless of race, ethnicity, or cultural upbringing. Chua and Rubenfeld, husband and wife and law professors at Yale, lack formal training in sociology and social science research methodology. Some critics have dismissed the book’s original research as unsound and pseudo-scientific, questioning the quality of the research and its selective use of statistical data. In this review, rather than critique their methodology, I want to focus on how Chua and Rubenfeld deployed scientific knowledge about human behavior in their quest to offer a formula for success.
First, some background on the
authors may help to contextualize their agenda. Chua’s previous book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (2011), was similarly provocative,
causing a nationwide debate
about the benefits and dangers of “extreme” parenting. The link between parenting
style and future success that Chua describes in her memoir is generalized and
made into a science in The Triple Package.
Both authors have experience with the phenomenon they describe in this book as
the first generation children of Chinese and Jewish immigrants. Moreover, as a
self-professed “tiger mother,” one might guess that Chua—with Rubenfeld’s
consent—is working to reproduce this cultural experience for her own children. Knowing
this about the authors, the reader wonders how much of this book is about
finding a scientific explanation for the authors’ own career achievements and responding
to anxieties about the fate of their own children, members of a generation seen
in popular culture as entitled
and complacent.
Nevertheless,
the empirical evidence that illustrates their argument has convinced a large
number of readers and positive
reviewers (or perhaps confirmed preexisting beliefs). These readers are
convinced by (a) the authors’ theorization of cultural traits as embodied by
the “Triple Package” (b) the citation of psychological studies to support their
argument, two strategies which I will now discuss further.
The book’s main premise is that the
perfect combination of three cultural traits produces success. Without one of
the three, the system fails. To give one example, Chua and Rubenfeld claim that
Jewish Americans possess insecurity from a history of persecution, a superiority
complex from the belief they are God’s chosen people, and they practice a
lifestyle of impulse control. The authors write that ethnic groups do not
inherently possess the cultural package that leads to success in America,
evidenced by what they call “group decline.” Usually, by the third generation
of immigrant groups, the “drive” generated by the cultural package
disintegrates because of the difficulty in sustaining all three elements of the
formula.
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Mitt Romney is the authors’ leading example of a successful Mormon. They argue that he obtained wealth and status because Mormons are members of a cultural group that faces insecurity, possesses a superiority complex, and practices impulse control.
|
The authors use empirical findings
in social psychology to support their notion of the Triple Package and to show
why we might benefit from taking stereotypes seriously. “Stereotype boost”
fuels a success loop. Social psychologists have shown that individuals who are
told they will be inherently superior at a certain task due to their race,
ethnicity, or gender will then proceed to perform better at that task than they
would have otherwise. To illustrate the advantage of impulse control, the
authors cite Walter Mischel’s “marshmallow test” experiment of the 1960s, which
demonstrated that the children who resisted temptation were more likely to
perform better in school. Overall, the authors’ understanding of childhood is very
important to their argument, and sometimes taken as a given. They see the child’s
mind as a moldable entity and the main tool for breeding success.
The pathologies of the Triple
Package are often psychological or emotional. Children of Triple Package
cultures experience high levels of anxiety, low self-esteem, and feel reduced
to mere investments or a source of bragging rights for their group. Neuroses
are the psychological costs of extreme insecurity and impulse control, and here
Chua and Rubenfeld spend substantial time discussing the high levels of
depression and anxiety among Asian Americans and Jewish Americans. Ambition, greed,
and arrogance are additional symptoms of what the authors label the “Triple
Package disease.”
Ultimately, the Triple Package, a
set of values and practices, is a source of empowerment available to anyone. But
this optimistic conclusion seems naïve without a mechanism for how someone could cultivate his or her
own Triple Package. Chua and Rubenfeld make it seem that individuals of
non-Triple Package groups just need to learn how to practice self-discipline to
replace the group discipline characteristic of Triple Package parenting. As
many critics have already pointed out, they ignore the deeply entrenched
structural inequalities in American society and the complex histories of
immigration. In fact, from a historical perspective, this work resembles the success
ideology of Gilded Age America, when upward mobility was understood in
evolutionary terms of competition and natural selection rather than these psychological
terms of insecurity and superiority complexes.
As a student of the history of
science, I wonder what style of reasoning led the authors to understand
“culture” as a set of traits that can be isolated and replicated, and to then
approach the nation like a human being, whose success relies on its personality
traits? How is the average American—or America personified—manufactured in today’s
world, and how does that idea interact with the desire of many to be above
average? I am concerned that by neglecting the impact of systemic racism and sexism,
this book may appeal to those who seek an alternative explanation for the reality
of poverty or the lack of upward mobility in America. After all, as the authors
suggest, since Nigerian immigrants and Cuban exiles have managed to achieve
wealth and status, race doesn’t necessarily interfere with African Americans’
and Latinos’ chance at success. This study, with its historically insensitive
generalizations, is revealing of the stories people tell themselves today about
culture and the types of behaviors and psyches that the present economy
rewards. In bringing culture and psychology to the forefront, Chua and
Rubenfeld attempt to offer scientific and seemingly neutral explanations for
success to avoid the messy reality of inequality.
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