Australians generally appear fairly reserved and although good with superficial public banalities take a while before they open up to a person. We don't like people getting in our face and acting as though they're our best buddies at a first meeting and prefer a more gentle approach.
Americans of course aren't all the same, but they often come across as overly effusive and trusting which can put those from other nations on the defensive.
Australians' international reputation for ''throwing another shrimp on the barbie'' has been undermined by research that shows we are not as hospitable as we think we are.
At least compared with Americans, Australians are less likely to invite friends and neighbours home for a meal or to meet the family, the research reveals.
The results emerged from a study that asked: if Americans lived like us, would they be happier? The answer, to the surprise of Roger Patulny, a research fellow at the Social Policy Research Centre at the University of NSW, was ''no''. And the main reason was that Americans entertain at home more, and derive pleasure from it.
Transplanted into our lifestyle and schedules they would have fewer dinner parties but spend more time on unpleasant activities - such as housework - that would not make them happy. ''Australians are not as social as we think we are,'' said Dr Patulny.
He said Australians were friendly on the surface and liked to have a good time with friends and neighbours in public spaces. ''But we don't invite people into our homes the same way Americans do. At home we like to be with our nuclear family.''
The research will be presented today at a forum on emotions in social life to be held at UNSW. It uses time-use data to compare how many minutes a day Americans and Australians spend on activities that include showering, commuting, work, childcare, eating out and entertaining at home.
Information was also available on how happy people felt doing each activity. If Americans spent the same amount of time as Australians on various activities, they would experience more unpleasant - and less pleasant - time and be worse off by a net 45 minutes a day, Dr Patulny found.
Transplanted Americans would gain in spending fewer hours in unpleasant paid work. ''Most Americans don't like their jobs,'' Dr Patulny said. But this would not compensate for the loss of pleasurable time spent entertaining friends at home.
The research found women spent less time than men in pleasurable activities, whether in the US or Australia, but this was explained mainly by the great enjoyment men derived from watching TV. For women, this did not rate as a pleasurable activity, Dr Patulny said, perhaps because they often did other work at the same time.
An American in Sydney, Luke Palmerlee, an investment banker, said the preponderance of small towns in the US might explain the difference in home entertainment. ''I grew up in a small town in Wyoming and if someone came to visit, you would invite them home because the options were sub par,'' he said.
''In Sydney if you wanted to show visitors the best bits, why invite them home when you could take them to Tetsuya's?'' But he had spent as much time at backyard barbecues in Sydney as he had in US cities.
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