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Office versus the Road
I come from a culture where it is perfectly normal to have public confrontations of anger with someone who annoyed you. The idea is to deal with stress directly at the source rather than bottle it up and explode later on. Americans tend to frown upon public displays of anger. They prefer to wear plastic smiles and pretend everything is hunky dorey. You will notice this in their work environment and when they are out shopping.
Face to face they do their best to maintain a composed, polite and respectable appearance. However this all erodes away when they are in a situation where they can hide behind anonymity. An example of this is when they get in their cars to go on the roads. The same people who are responsible, courteous and intelligent in the office behave the opposite as soon as they leave the company parking lot. For a long time I could not understand why this transformation occurs?
On the road, few people know who you are, so you can be a prick whenever you feel like, without consequence. Their thin veneer of respectability is quickly cast away as they put on the cloak of anoymity. Another example of this is online Internet forums. You would be shocked to read the vile and malicious things people post behind their fictitious names.