Hospitality to Strangers

Being from Arkansas, I’m used to waving at everyone and hearing “Hey y’all!” every time I go somewhere. However, it isn’t like that everywhere around the world. When I went to Washington D.C. for example, the first thing I noticed walking down the streets is that no one talked to anyone else. I would say “hello” to people and they would just look at me like I was crazy. Everyone keeps to themselves and goes from point A to point B with no stops in between. Another thing I’ve seen is people in the Bahamas will pick up random strangers and give them rides in the back of their pickup trucks. Why does friendliness to strangers differ in different places? It always goes back to where you were socialized and the environment you grew up in. Northerners have always grown up thinking it was normal not to talk to strangers, southerners have always thought it was normal to be polite to strangers, and people in the Bahamas have always thought it was normal to help others no matter how they can. It’s not just these places that vary, either. If you grow up seeing something all of the time, it is what you will know as normal and you will behave that way. People in the north may be busier than other places, or any other factors can play into friendliness to strangers in different locations.