Prioritising social grace in Singapore

AS SINGAPORE celebrates its 58th National Day, it is perhaps timely to take stock of what the uniquely constrained city-state has achieved thus far – notably and undoubtedly, significant economic development and growth. Its affluence and educational achievements have surpassed most nations beyond expectations. There is, however one aspect that has remained challenging to overcome, and that is the perceived lack of social grace in Singapore, relative to countries such as Japan, Canada, and even Thailand. Is there any truth to this oft-heard allegation or is it instead a false perception?

Fifteen years ago, I was fortunate enough to ask our late former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew at a public dialogue session for his opinion on this. Lee’s response was that it would take more than a few generations for a positive societal change to happen and that he would not be around to see it.

To know whether this generation of Singaporeans has embodied social grace, we must first understand the concept of social grace – how it is construed, what it entails, the factors that determine it, and the linkages between the factors.

Existing studies

There are mixed findings about the state of social grace in Singapore. According to the latest Graciousness Survey conducted by the Singapore Kindness Movement in 2022, the perceptions of Singaporeans regarding the state of social graciousness are mostly positive despite the constraints of there having been fewer opportunities to exhibit graciousness due to reduced social interaction during the pandemic.

This is consistent with the Time Out Index of 2022, which assesses the liveability of various cities, which revealed that most respondents from around the world do not perceive Singaporeans to be rude.

However, according to Edelman’s 2023 Trust Barometer, almost half of Singapore residents believe that the level of civility and mutual respect today is at an all-time low in the city-state.

A collectivist culture emphasises cooperation, reciprocity, adherence to social norms and social responsibility. A vertical individualist-centred social structure accepts inequality with more diverse moral identities. According to Hofstede Insights, a firm that measures the impact of culture in multinational corporations, it appears that Singapore is somewhere in-between – ie with a vertical collectivistic culture, which does not say much about our state of social graciousness.

Definition of social grace

In the wider literature, the term “social graciousness” is often synonymous with “pro-social behaviour”, whereby there may be the expectation of some kind of extrinsic or intrinsic reward to voluntarily create benefit for others in need. However, it could also mean to avoid inconveniencing or causing grievances to others.

Altruism is not synonymous with social grace; rather, altruism enhances the quality of social grace. It does not necessarily mean that those who prioritise their own needs over others are not socially gracious. It is common for many people to focus more on the social appropriateness of a behaviour – that is, as long as the behaviour is valued by society – rather than to explicitly generate additional welfare for others.

Incomes, education, and stress levels

A 2022 wellness survey conducted by Osim International found that most Singaporeans, especially working adults, experienced moderate to high levels of stress. A small amount of short-term stress is beneficial in stimulating empathic emotions that can lead to more pro-social behaviour. However, high prolonged stress exposure may make it too cognitively burdensome for people to remind themselves to maintain their gracious behaviour. Interestingly, pro-social behaviour may be an effective coping mechanism against stress – fairly common advice found often in psychology and religion.

Using stress levels alone to explain the effect of income or education on social grace may also be questionable. Higher-paying jobs may not necessarily imply more challenging workloads but can also be due to higher demand for better qualifications. Lower-income earners, despite feeling stressed about their living conditions, may be more empathetic towards the plight of the less well-off such as cleaners or the disabled.

Being more educated may imply that one is trained to analyse social issues critically. However, higher education does not imply or equate to holistic education and may not necessarily translate to our personal beliefs and how we incorporate social grace in our everyday lives.

Thus, high incomes and being highly educated are insufficient in themselves to explain the level of social grace of a society.

Social norms and culture

The concept of social norms revolves around not just what people personally believe to be socially appropriate behaviours but also their beliefs of what others consider those behaviours to be.

If a social norm of civic mindedness as a culture has yet to be established, some degree of state intervention may be warranted. However, corrective policies such as fines are not easily enforceable without committing to long-term economically inefficient strategies of either deploying community officers or using technology to capture violations. This also raises the controversial question of whether our often labelled “army of cleaners” suppresses intrinsic incentives for society to be pro-social in cleaning activities.

The Caring Commuter award, which aims to promote awareness of pro-social behaviour via nomination of upstanding commuters, may not be impactful enough to generate cultural shifts in socially gracious behaviour. Our view is that people are more inclined to report bad behaviours than good ones as the former may be deemed as more sensationally news-catchy than the latter.

For countries like Singapore and Japan with a high social network density, socially undesirable behaviours are more easily monitored and condemned especially in today’s age of social media. However, a physically dense environment also means that it is easier to disturb and inconvenience others, such as through noise and litter, meaning that we may be more sensitive to socially undesirable behaviours.

If most traditional waste bins were to be removed from public places in Singapore, just like in Japan to promote disciplined waste disposal, would there be more littering among those who would usually not litter otherwise? If so, then such a comparison between countries with significant cultural differences may also overestimate the state of social graciousness in Singapore. There is another side to this argument. By having plenty of trash bins around, this would reduce the cost of searching for waste bins and thus indirectly encourages society to use these bins.

It is a common sight to see people lingering at the cafeteria to study or work after finishing their meals. Are people more tolerant of this kind of behaviour during non-peak hours when there are more unoccupied seats available? Thus, social grace also depends on the context of the situation.

Intergenerational differences in culture also matter. For example, the habit of spitting in public may persist among elderly people from the past generation. There is an economic argument here suggesting that this demographic may seem lacking in social grace, but this is primarily due to their prevailing living conditions during the time when public sanitation standards were not as high as they are today.

We tend to focus on the supply, but what about the demand for social grace and its relationship with trustworthiness? To what extent would the culture of staff engagement with local and foreign customers affect our service industries’ value-added GDP?

Unlike the Japanese who are more likely to abide to the social rule of having a time and place for everything, Singaporeans tend to multi-task a lot, such as walking and eating. This type of behaviour is not only seen as being ungraceful but it also creates temptations for ungracious behaviour such as littering for convenience.

An emotionally suppressed culture could also be an obstacle to being pro-social. For instance, the 2019 Graciousness Survey revealed that a quarter of young Singaporeans are too shy to demonstrate public acts of kindness even if or when deemed appropriate in a particular situation.

Bottom line

Relying mostly on a damage control and penalty-based approach to nudge socially gracious behaviour is inadequate. Social graciousness may yield potential economic benefits and strengthen the fabric of society especially in a cosmopolitan country such as Singapore. For there to be less ambiguity in assessing the state of social graciousness in Singapore and to encourage a truly gracious society, it is important to study:

• What constitutes social grace and how to broaden the scope of coverage for policy intervention

• Singaporeans’ attitudes to different types of socially desirable or undesirable behaviours and their willingness to accept variations of the same type of behaviour in different contextual situations

• The underlying mechanisms and considerations to explore the effect of the various determinants on social grace

• How other countries’ experiences with social grace can be adapted to the Singapore context

Singapore has achieved much in economic progress, and perhaps it is now timely to give more attention to attaining a high quality of life beyond what income and education can do, which would include environmental concerns and the non-material aspects of life. Having a high level of social grace infuses society with all the commendable attributes of trust, kindness, empathy, altruism, caring, sharing and more. This should be and must be Singapore’s increased priority as the country celebrates all its achievements on its national day.

Euston Quah is Albert Winsemius chair professor of economics and director of the Economic Growth Centre at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Tan Jun Rui is a researcher at NTU.