【答案解析】[听力原文]
How Americans See Themselves
Americans do not usually see themselves, when they are in the United States, as representatives of their country. They see themselves as individuals who are different from all other individuals, whether those others are Americans or foreigners. Americans may say they have no culture, since they often think of culture as an overlay of customs to be found only in other countries. Individual Americans may think they choose their own values, rather than having had their value forced on them by the society in which they were born. If you ask them to tell you something about "American culture", they may be unable to answer and they may even deny that there is an "American culture".
Because they think they are responsible as individuals for having chosen their basic values and their way of life, many Americans don't like generalizations others make about them. Generalizations disturb Americans. They may be unhappy with the thought that they hold certain ideas and act in certain way simply because they were born and raised in the U.S, and not because they had consciously thought about those ideas and ways of doing things and chosen the ones they preferred.
At the same time, Americans will readily generalize about various subgroups within their own country. Northerners have fixed views about Southerners, and vice versa. There are fixed views of people from the country and people from the city; people from the coasts and people from inland; people from the Midwest; minority ethnic groups; Texans; New Yorkers; Californians and so on.
Therefore, Americans see few generalizations that can safely be made about them in part because they are "so individualistic" and in part because they think regional and other kinds of differences clearly distinguish Americans of various groups from each other.