Anthropology is a mindkiller.
I suspect that what many people say about other cultures reflects their own political opinions. Someone should do a research on that -- ask people about their political opinions, and then ask them about whether they consider some descriptions of foreign cultures likely or unlikely.
Seems to me that these are the attractors of describing foreigners:
1) They are exactly like us. All differences are just superficial details, analogies of what we do or think. When the difference is undeniable, it is only because they are forced or brainwashed to be different, but deep inside they would really prefer to be like us. Their different state is so unstable that any change (like sending them missionaires, or overthrowing their government) will start the inevitable process of them becoming exactly like us.
2) They are worse than us. Every difference without exception shows their intellectual or moral deficiency. Any negative description of them is credible; even if it does not make much sense (it's because they are idiots). They would do best by trying to copy us as much as possible, but it is a goal they can never achieve alone. Our mastery over them would be a blessing for them.
3) They are noble savages, infinitely morally and spiritually superior to us. If something about them seems imperfect, it is just our blindness to the higher truth. They live in perfect harmony with nature and other people, and if you have an evidence against that, you are just brainwashed by our evil culture. (Maybe they sometimes murder and torture people horribly, but... well, you simply don't understand it in the proper context. Also, did I tell you that you are brainwashed by our evil culture?) We are probably not worthy enough to copy them, but the least we can do is admire them and use some of their words, proverbs, or traditional clothing.
4) They are as different as different species or someone from a different planet would be. There is no hope of ever understanding each other. Protect our borders. Trade with them, if convenient, but don't care about anything else they do. (If their part of the trade with you involves slave labor, torture or murder of their people, well, it's their people and maybe in their morality it is okay, and you are not responsible for any of that. Just treat it as a black box and focus on your business.)
These descriptions can probably be mapped onto our political or other opinions. Each description suggests that we should do something, so probably each of them will sound credible to people who already think that we should do that.
Meta: Do other cultures also have similar attractors? Seems to me that I should include at least two to the list:
5) They are evil spirits who cause us harm. (Of course we, the good people, must kill them!)
6) They are strong but stupid. (We, the clever people, are allowed by our gods to steal from them and otherwise exploit them, but we must be careful to never confront them openly.)
Note: The common assumption in all descriptions is that all people from the foreign country are the same. (Maybe except the first one, which assumes an evil powerful minority preventing the rest of the population from becoming like us.)
I suspect that what many people say about other cultures reflects their own political opinions.
Is that different in some way from what people say about their own culture? Shouldn't all statement about psychology suffer from the same issue?
WEIRD may be weirder than you think. We Aren't The World writes of psychological experiments on non-Westerners that give vastly disparate results from results that have been assumed to be hardwired, and the implications of this:
Henrich used a “game”—along the lines of the famous prisoner’s dilemma—to see whether isolated cultures shared with the West the same basic instinct for fairness. In doing so, Henrich expected to confirm one of the foundational assumptions underlying such experiments, and indeed underpinning the entire fields of economics and psychology: that humans all share the same cognitive machinery—the same evolved rational and psychological hardwiring. The test that Henrich introduced to the Machiguenga was called the ultimatum game.
...
To begin with, the offers from the first player were much lower. In addition, when on the receiving end of the game, the Machiguenga rarely refused even the lowest possible amount. “It just seemed ridiculous to the Machiguenga that you would reject an offer of free money,” says Henrich. “They just didn’t understand why anyone would sacrifice money to punish someone who had the good luck of getting to play the other role in the game.”
...
At the heart of most of that research was the implicit assumption that the results revealed evolved psychological traits common to all humans, never mind that the test subjects were nearly always from the industrialized West.
Edit: The actual papers this article writes about are covered in this post by Ciphergoth from a few years ago.