Hide A Dagger Behind A Smile

 From the Oxford Handbook of the Psychology of Competition Hide a Dagger Behind a Smile. 

 ...the bulk of the evidence suggests that collectivistic cultures compete more, and more intensely, than individualistic cultures. Collectivists are more likely to see competition as zero-sum, engage in social comparison, and base their self-worth on common standards rather than self-defined goals.

I attended a training about working together, and the presenters brought out comparative evidence from a paper-and-pencil test administered to people from many nations.  They very smugly announced that Americans had scored very poorly on the test, but those from communist nations had scored much higher. I raised my hand and said "Having been in Romania and having sons from there, I would question whether this test got at the right answer." She patiently explained to me that the communist countries did well because they had a culture of everyone working together for the good of the group, and lifted up those that weren't doing as well."  I told her with a bit of an edge that this was the opposite of what I observed, my native Romanian hosts who had often been to America believed, and my children had experienced. She thought it only looked that way because the Romanians didn't trust visiting Americans.  My supervisor's expression told me to stop this line of discussion NOW. 

I went up to the presenters after and told them that under communism, you learned to tell authorities what they want to hear, and recommended they get to know some people from Eastern Europe.