The Psychology of the Thai, Values ​​and Behavioral Patterns

A Thai man stands proudly in the middle of a society in which he wants to treat others as an equal and in freedom. He cares about the fate of the nation, but his thoughts often turn to his own status and success in life from which he derives his self-esteem. He looks out more. He must therefore be controlled, forgiving and creative, but sometimes also obedient.

A Thai woman is most involved with her family, especially from which she derives her self-esteem and sense of accomplishment. That, and friendship, determine her happiness and inner peace. She likes beautiful things. She sees more the inner side of life. She finds caring, responsibility, love and understanding necessary for this, in addition to education.

Preface

Between 1978 and 1981, Sunaree Komin conducted a large-scale study of the values ​​and behavior patterns of Thais. She presented questionnaires to 2469 Thais from all parts of society. The subjects had to rank twenty final values ​​(that is, the values ​​we strive for in our lives, but can never achieve in their perfection) in order of importance to themselves.

In addition, they were asked whether they wanted to do the same with twenty instrumental values ​​(these are values ​​that we use to realize the final values). Terminal Values ​​are, for example, Wisdom-Knowledge, True Friendship and Beauty. Instrumental values ​​include: Gratitude, Competence and Bravery.

She found in a number of ways that the results were very stable for the same person and that there was little influence from the social desirability of the answer. Values ​​are never completely stable over the course of a person's life or over the course of time in a given culture, values ​​are adapted to some extent to changing circumstances, but there is sufficient coherence over time to allow general conclusions to be drawn.

Unfortunately I have not been able to find more recent research on this scale and with this quality.

We are talking about averages, the spread across the Thai population is large. The average Thai, 'the' Thai does not exist. When we stand in front of a Thai it is nonsense to attribute values ​​or behavior patterns to him or her that are described here as averages, he/she can differ from them as the crow flies. In other words: very many Thais are very similar to many Dutch people and vice versa in terms of their values ​​and behavioral patterns, and only a smaller part differs very much from each other. After all, we are all human.

Results of the study

The final values ​​for Thai men and women.

The number indicates the ranking and the plus sign indicates that there is a clear statistical difference.

	men	Vrouwen
National security	1	4+
Equality	2	9+
Self respect	3	2+
Success in life	4	3+
Pleasant life	5	5
Family happiness security	6	1+
Freedom-Independence	7	8+
Brotherhood	8	10+
Religious life	9	11+
Happiness-Inner harmony	10	7
True friendship	11	6+
world peace	12	13
Wisdom-Knowledge	13	12
Social relations	14	16
Social recognition	15	17+
Mature love	16	15
Beauty	17	14+
Exciting life	18	18
Status Wealth	19	20
Pleasure-enjoyment	20	19

(National security is so high because the investigation took place at a time of serious domestic and foreign conflict).

	men	Vrouwen
Independent	1	1+
Honest-sincere	2	3
Responsible	3	2+
Grateful	4	4
Receptive in situations	5	5+
Caring-Attentive	6	6+
Controlled-Tolerant	7	11+
Polite-Humble	8	10
Nice-Helpful	9	8
Skilled	10	9
Dapper	11	12
Educated	12	7+
Satisfied	13	13
Forgiving	14	16+
Calm-Careful	15	14
Open-minded	16	17
Interdependent-Helpful	17	22+
Obedient-Respectful	18	20+
Loving-Tender	19	19
Imaginative-creative	20	21+
Clean-neat	21	18+
Funny-Humorous	22	15+
Ambitious-Hardworking	23	23

Brief summary

Final values ​​more important for Thai women: Family happiness; self respect; Success in life; True friendship; Beauty.

Terminal values ​​more important for Thai men: National security; Equality, Freedom-Independence; religious life; Social Recognition; Status Wealth.

Instrumental values ​​more important to Thai women: Independence; Responsibility; Receptive in situations and occasions; Caring-Attentive; Educated; Funny-Humorous; Clean-Tidy.

Instrumental values ​​more important for Thai men: Controlled-Tolerant; forgiving; Interdependent- Helpful; Obedient-Respectful; Imaginative-creative.

Suntaree also tries to discover where all those Thai values ​​now originate. Not so much Buddhism, but the agricultural character of Thai society, with its emphasis on interpersonal relationships, is most responsible for this, she says.

Various groups within Thai society

The survey results are also broken down into defined groups in terms of age, income, education, and urban-rural disparity (Suntaree also broke down into conservative-liberal, religious and non-religious, Buddhist and Muslim, and occupations, as I will not go into further). Although I am a number fetishist, I will only briefly describe the differences, sometimes small but often quite large.

Age. Very predictable: 15-19 year olds score high: Self-respect, Independence, True friendship.
At 22-29 years: Success in life, Mature love, Ambitious-Hardworking, Open-minded and Brave but National security, Obedience and Religious life, on the other hand, are low.
In 30-39 year olds we see that Equality, Control and Calmness are important, at a later age Obedience, National security, World peace, Religious life and Wisdom-Knowledge are in the foreground.

Income.  Here are perhaps the biggest differences. While the wealthy group strives for Success, Wisdom-Knowledge, Responsibility, Honesty and Ability, the poor, especially the poorest, choose Religious Life, Forgiveness, Helpfulness, Caring-Considerate, Loving-Tender and Obedient-Respectful.

Training. Here too there are big differences. The least educated opt for Religious Life, Brotherhood and World Peace, while the higher educated see more in Success in life, Self-respect, Equality and Wisdom-Knowledge. The instrumental values ​​of the low-educated are like those of the poor: Caring, Kind-Helpful, Forgiving, Interdependent, and the highly-educated pursue their final values ​​through Education, Ability, Bravery, and Open-Mindedness.

Urban-rural. This has a lot to do with income and education. The townspeople strive for Family Happiness and Security, Success, Self-Respect, Pleasant Life, Equality, Beauty, Mature Love and Exciting Life but the Rurals take it easy and feel more for National Security, Religious Life, Brotherhood and Family Security.

Instrumentally, the city dwellers, say Bangkok, do so through Independence, Responsibility, Competence, Bravery, Open-Mindedness, Creativity and Hard Work.
The rural people do more with interpersonal values ​​such as Gratitude, Obedience and Forgiveness.
However, in which the city dwellers did not differ from the country dwellers were the values ​​of Freedom and Equality. In addition, these two groups were similar in social 'lubricant' behavior patterns: Situational Receptive, Nice-Helpful, Caring, Calm-Cautious, and Satisfied.

Pleasure, 'sanouk' is in last place in all groups. Perhaps 'sanouk' is the same as our 'coziness', pleasant and necessary but not a value to be particularly sought after.

You can also check from all this information which Thais you should contact if you are looking for a certain value. If you want True Friendship, you will find it best with a young female medical student (or nurse). If you are religiously interested, hang out with an older poor, low-educated farmer. An ambitious, hard-working man should logically seek refuge with a highly educated, wealthier city dweller. But if you are a person with good social and interpersonal qualities, you can go anywhere.

A comparison of Thai with American values

The final values ​​that are highest for the Americans are: World Peace, Freedom, Equality, Wisdom-Knowledge, and all these values ​​are in the middle for the Thais. The Thais have National security, Religious life and Brotherhood as important final values, the last two do not even occur in the Americans unless we should call 'Salvation', 'Redemption, Salvation', which is somewhere in the middle.

As far as instrumental values ​​are concerned: Americans value Ambitious, Open-Minded and Brave, while the Thais value more such as Independent, Grateful, Caring, Kind, Controlled and Receptive in situations. With the Americans, Grateful and Controlled does not occur at all in the first twenty. The other values ​​are about the same. Independence ranks high among all Thai population groups and ranks rather low among Americans.

Conclusion

1 Thai values ​​and behavior patterns seem quite fragmented and fragmented between different population groups (poor-rich, urban-rural, etc.), especially in terms of final values. The instrumental and interpersonal values, such as Grateful, Caring, Kind, Helpful and Controlled, are clearly reflected in all groups and are perhaps the core of Thai culture. Thailand does not have a homogeneous society, while I speculate that Western cultures are much more even with fewer differences between different groups. Maybe that's why Thailand has less togetherness and more conflict.

2 Thailand is growing towards Western society. The profile of urban, highly educated and wealthy in Thailand is closer to the average of Western countries.

3 Precisely because there are so many clear differences, in addition to similarities, in values ​​and behavioral patterns between various population groups in Thailand, the question is whether you can speak of a 'Thai culture', you should at least be very careful with that concept. I think there are different 'Thai cultures'. Besides, no culture is uniform, but can be better compared to a multi-coloured, brilliant diamond.

Source: Suntaree Komin, Ph.D., Psychology of the Thai People, Values ​​and Behavioral Patterns, Bangkok, 1990.

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