CROSS CULTURAL COMMUNICATION: INTRODUCTION
1. What is culture?
Culture
- Refers to habits (↔ one time phenomena)
- A characteristic of a social group (↔ individuals)
- Refers to learned aspects of social life (↔ biological or inherited traits)
→ culture is the software of the mind (and of the heart)
Culture is everywhere and nowhere
- Everywhere
● It affects people’s feelings, thoughts and actions on many levels and
occasions
● People give meaning to what they do, to their experiences
● Culture has to do with everything that is developed by people to organize their
lives and experiences
- Nowhere
● It does not exist in any specific or ‘real’ sense, it is something abstract
● Cultures are no actual ‘thing’ with clear borders that exclusively separate
groups of people and determine their behavior
Culture and groups
- Often culture is referring to groups based on nationality or ethnicity
- Nationality and ethnicity cn overlap but are not the same
- Culture is a characteristic of any human group
Culture and individuals
- People are automatically members of several cultural groups at the same time
- Multicollectivity
- Approaching people solely based on their national, ethnic or religious background
provides a very narrow basis for understanding
Culture as repertoire
- Culture provides their members with a repertoire of ideas, behaviors and symbols
● Knowledge
● Values
● Norms
● Language
● Heroes, traditions and rituals
1
,CROSS CULTURAL COMMUNICATION: DIVERSITY AND COMPETENCE
1. Implicit association test
Cognitive bias
- Having an idea about someone or something
- Ex: When you think of a firefighter, you think of a man
- Create ideal circumstances to diminish/eliminate bias
Implicit preference
- An (unconscious) preference for something that you think is best
- Ex: to hire a new employee, you take someone who went to the same university as
you
- They can predict behavior
- Are related to discrimination in hiring and promotion, medical treatment and decisions
related to criminal justice
2. Self reference criterion & attribution
Self reference criterion
- An unconscious reference to one’s own cultural values, experiences and knowledge
as. bias for decisions
- The frame of reference of the other person may be different, not taking this difference
into account may lead to costly business decisions
Attribution
- Attributing a meaning, ascribing an interpretation to what people around you say and
do
- Misinterpreting the correct meaning/intention = attribution mistake
- The danger of those mistakes are higher between individuals who are more different
from each other
- Relying on your SRC can lead to painful attribution errors
3. The culture shock
Commonly experienced by travelers, expats and exchange students. It describes the impact
of moving from a familiar culture to an unfamiliar one.
4 fases: culture shock
- Honeymoon
- Culture shock
- Adjustment
- Integration
Culture shock differs according to different kinds of people (different adaptation profiles)
- Experienced travelers
- People who are very able to learn culture
- People who are not very able to learn culture
2
, 4. Diversity competence
Thinking about our definition of culture and multicollectivity:
- Any activity could be considered intercultural
- Differences and misunderstandings can be caused by personal, psychological,
economic or technological (rather than cultural) reasons
- Intercultural misunderstandings = the difference that lead to an experience of
strangeness
Diversity competence
- The ability to transform an experience of strangeness as a consequence of an
unfamiliar difference into normality (familiarity), which allows people to pursue their
interaction goals
Building intercultural or diversity competence
- Very individual
- No magic skill which is a guarantee to success
- An extension of general social, personal and professional skills
- Built upon an open attitude and upon an interest on learning to know more about the
other (culture)
→ attitude + skills + knowledge
Curious attitude or conservative attitude
- Curious
● Try new things
● Accept that things don’t go as planned
● Improvise
- Conservative
● Prefer routine
● Stay within comfort zone
● Strangeness is seen as a threat
4 phases of learning competency
- Awareness
- Knowledge and understanding
- Skills application
- Mastery
3
1. What is culture?
Culture
- Refers to habits (↔ one time phenomena)
- A characteristic of a social group (↔ individuals)
- Refers to learned aspects of social life (↔ biological or inherited traits)
→ culture is the software of the mind (and of the heart)
Culture is everywhere and nowhere
- Everywhere
● It affects people’s feelings, thoughts and actions on many levels and
occasions
● People give meaning to what they do, to their experiences
● Culture has to do with everything that is developed by people to organize their
lives and experiences
- Nowhere
● It does not exist in any specific or ‘real’ sense, it is something abstract
● Cultures are no actual ‘thing’ with clear borders that exclusively separate
groups of people and determine their behavior
Culture and groups
- Often culture is referring to groups based on nationality or ethnicity
- Nationality and ethnicity cn overlap but are not the same
- Culture is a characteristic of any human group
Culture and individuals
- People are automatically members of several cultural groups at the same time
- Multicollectivity
- Approaching people solely based on their national, ethnic or religious background
provides a very narrow basis for understanding
Culture as repertoire
- Culture provides their members with a repertoire of ideas, behaviors and symbols
● Knowledge
● Values
● Norms
● Language
● Heroes, traditions and rituals
1
,CROSS CULTURAL COMMUNICATION: DIVERSITY AND COMPETENCE
1. Implicit association test
Cognitive bias
- Having an idea about someone or something
- Ex: When you think of a firefighter, you think of a man
- Create ideal circumstances to diminish/eliminate bias
Implicit preference
- An (unconscious) preference for something that you think is best
- Ex: to hire a new employee, you take someone who went to the same university as
you
- They can predict behavior
- Are related to discrimination in hiring and promotion, medical treatment and decisions
related to criminal justice
2. Self reference criterion & attribution
Self reference criterion
- An unconscious reference to one’s own cultural values, experiences and knowledge
as. bias for decisions
- The frame of reference of the other person may be different, not taking this difference
into account may lead to costly business decisions
Attribution
- Attributing a meaning, ascribing an interpretation to what people around you say and
do
- Misinterpreting the correct meaning/intention = attribution mistake
- The danger of those mistakes are higher between individuals who are more different
from each other
- Relying on your SRC can lead to painful attribution errors
3. The culture shock
Commonly experienced by travelers, expats and exchange students. It describes the impact
of moving from a familiar culture to an unfamiliar one.
4 fases: culture shock
- Honeymoon
- Culture shock
- Adjustment
- Integration
Culture shock differs according to different kinds of people (different adaptation profiles)
- Experienced travelers
- People who are very able to learn culture
- People who are not very able to learn culture
2
, 4. Diversity competence
Thinking about our definition of culture and multicollectivity:
- Any activity could be considered intercultural
- Differences and misunderstandings can be caused by personal, psychological,
economic or technological (rather than cultural) reasons
- Intercultural misunderstandings = the difference that lead to an experience of
strangeness
Diversity competence
- The ability to transform an experience of strangeness as a consequence of an
unfamiliar difference into normality (familiarity), which allows people to pursue their
interaction goals
Building intercultural or diversity competence
- Very individual
- No magic skill which is a guarantee to success
- An extension of general social, personal and professional skills
- Built upon an open attitude and upon an interest on learning to know more about the
other (culture)
→ attitude + skills + knowledge
Curious attitude or conservative attitude
- Curious
● Try new things
● Accept that things don’t go as planned
● Improvise
- Conservative
● Prefer routine
● Stay within comfort zone
● Strangeness is seen as a threat
4 phases of learning competency
- Awareness
- Knowledge and understanding
- Skills application
- Mastery
3
