The birth of the Culture Types idea.

In March of 2002 applied for a Japanese Government graduate research scholarship. I needed a topic for the research proposal for the scholarship application. Well, I had a passion for personality type and read all the books I could get my hands on about it. I also had a passion for other cultures after living in Japan for three years (from ‘94 - ‘97) and traveling around Asia. After living abroad and experiencing culture shock, I learned there was different behaviors rewarded by different cultures. I felt there had to be some way to figure out how a person’s personality type matched different cultures or countries, or even how they fit their own country’s culture.

As I developed the idea for my research proposal, I dug into the MBTI bibliography at CAPT.org, but I found little research on culture. There was a little research on corporate cultures but that wasn’t interesting to me, until I stumbled on Ray Moody’s Psychological Type and Culture conference proceedings. I was particularly impressed with Ray’s research on the ethnic groups in Hawaii. I wanted to do something similar to that with countries, except instead of determining culture from dominant distributions, I wanted to use existing culture research (such as the Culture Shock! series of books) and match or relate it to type.

For the Japan scholarship, I wrote a research proposal for “A cross-cultural comparative study of Asian cultures using psychological type and temperament theories. Using current cultural research on these countries to gather information on traits, traditions, social values and preferences exhibited by these cultures that can be classified under personality type and temperament. Finally, draw conclusions on what type or temperament the culture most closely resembles.”

In 2003, to my surprise, I won the scholarship. It was the equivalent of a Fulbright fellowship, except instead of only one year (like the Fulbright) it was renewable for six years. After months of deliberation, and even to my surprise, I declined the scholarship. Which is a completely different story in itself. In short, my wife was pregnant, and I realized I wanted to become an author more than become an academic.

In 2004, we moved to Hawaii because we felt the ethnic mix fit our multicultural family. The subsequent misadventure, adjustment, and reflections on that choice were the impetus for writing my first book Culture Shock! Hawaii. I queried the British publisher of the Culture Shock! series at their Singapore branch with a proposal for a Culture Shock! Hawaii edition. For months I waited for a reply from the slow machine of traditional publishing.

In 2005, I applied for a National Endowment for the Humanities scholarship. This time I expanded the my culture types research proposal into a book proposal. It was a scholarship for a full year of funding to write the book, but…I didn’t win the scholarship. During this time I received the long anticipated book contract from my Singapore publisher and finished my first book Culture Shock! Hawaii. The fact that I had completed half the book before I had the signed contract was a gamble most writers advise against. The fact that my first and only query returned a book contract is miracle or the equivalent of a sign from God in the business of book publishing.