cross cultural understandingsayfun.me/.../04/cross-cultural-understanding-1.pdf · Cross-Cultural...
Transcript of cross cultural understandingsayfun.me/.../04/cross-cultural-understanding-1.pdf · Cross-Cultural...
Cross Cultural Understanding
Stenden Rangsit UniversitySascha Funk
Communication?
Every communication has a message sender and a message receiver. The sent message is never identical to the received message.
Why?
Cross Cultural Understanding
• What is culture?• Stereotypes?• Cross-cultural misperception,
Cross-cultural misinterpretation & cross-cultural misevaluation?
• How to understand messages beyond words?
Sascha Funk | [email protected] | @sayfun | facebook.com/SaschaFunk | google.com/+SaschaFunk
“Eight” = prosperity $5 million for car registration number 8 in HK
Sascha Funk | [email protected] | @sayfun | facebook.com/SaschaFunk | google.com/+SaschaFunk
Culture?
• Traits from basic human needs
• Love
• Shelter
• Food
• Protection
• Understanding
• …
Sascha Funk | [email protected] | @sayfun | facebook.com/SaschaFunk | google.com/+SaschaFunk
Origins?
• Invention of language and story telling
• Tool-making and farming
• Cities & writing
• …
Sascha Funk | [email protected] | @sayfun | facebook.com/SaschaFunk | google.com/+SaschaFunk
Culture?
• Understanding the world & our place in it.
• Guide for action
• in groups
• with strangers
• while facing danger
• …
Sascha Funk | [email protected] | @sayfun | facebook.com/SaschaFunk | google.com/+SaschaFunk
– Sir Edward Burnett Tylor, Primitive Culture
“Culture, or civilization, taken in its broad, ethnographic sense, is that complex whole
which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and
habits acquired by man as a member of society.”
Sascha Funk | [email protected] | @sayfun | facebook.com/SaschaFunk | google.com/+SaschaFunk
Culture Today
Sascha Funk | [email protected] | @sayfun | facebook.com/SaschaFunk | google.com/+SaschaFunk
Stereotypes
Simplified concepts of groups based on assumptions. !Dynamic:
• ingroups• outgroups
Sascha Funk | [email protected] | @sayfun | facebook.com/SaschaFunk | google.com/+SaschaFunk
Ingroup vs. Outgroup
Blonde or brunetteAverage weight
No tattoos
Don’t like sports
redhead
tattoos
sporty
How long does it take to create an ingroup among strangers?
Sascha Funk | [email protected] | @sayfun | facebook.com/SaschaFunk | google.com/+SaschaFunk
Ingroup / Outgroup Phenomena• Ingroup Favoritism
• ingroup > outgroup
• Outgroup derogation
• blocking ingroup
• Social influence
• influence by ingroup members
• Group polarization
• Extreme decisions
• Group homogeneity
• same same in difference
Sascha Funk | [email protected] | @sayfun | facebook.com/SaschaFunk | google.com/+SaschaFunk
- Charles E. Hurst, Sociologist
"One reason for stereotypes is the lack of personal, concrete familiarity that individuals have with persons in other racial or ethnic groups. Lack of familiarity encourages the lumping together of unknown individuals"
Sascha Funk | [email protected] | @sayfun | facebook.com/SaschaFunk | google.com/+SaschaFunk
(Mis)Communication
Intention
Intention
%^&!
Sascha Funk | [email protected] | @sayfun | facebook.com/SaschaFunk | google.com/+SaschaFunk
Communication ≠ Understanding
assume difference until similarity is proven
Sascha Funk | [email protected] | @sayfun | facebook.com/SaschaFunk | google.com/+SaschaFunk
Cross Cultural Misperception
No two national groups see the world in exactly the same way.
Sascha Funk | [email protected] | @sayfun | facebook.com/SaschaFunk | google.com/+SaschaFunk
Perception
• Perception is selective
• only selected information reaches our mind
• Patterns are learned
• Experience influences perception
• Perception is culturally determined
• Cultural backgrounds influence perception
• Perception tends to remain constant
Sascha Funk | [email protected] | @sayfun | facebook.com/SaschaFunk | google.com/+SaschaFunk
We see things that do not exist, and do not see things
that exist.
Interpretation
Interpretation occurs when an individual gives meaning to observations and their relationships.
Consistent patterns of interpretation help us to act appropriately
Sascha Funk | [email protected] | @sayfun | facebook.com/SaschaFunk | google.com/+SaschaFunk
Categories
• We are constantly seeing more stimuli than we can process.
• We only perceive meaningful images.
• We group perceived images into familiar categories to simplify.
• These become basis for interpretation.
• Complex -> Easy
Ineffective when we place people and things
in wrong groups.
Cross-cultural miscategorization: Use home country categories to make sense
out of foreign situations
Stereotypes
• Form of categorization
• Not individual behavior
• behavioral norm for members of a particular group
• helpful or harmful
• consciously held
• descriptive not evaluative
• accurate
• first best guess
• modified
Sascha Funk | [email protected] | @sayfun | facebook.com/SaschaFunk | google.com/+SaschaFunk
Problem?
• Subconsciously held stereotypes are hard to modify or change.
• We maintain inappropriate pictures of others.
To be effective, one must therefore be aware of cultural stereotypes and learn to set them aside when faced with contradictory evidence.
• Why is stereotyping criticized?
• Missing understanding of how stereotyping works
• stereotype = primitive
Problems with stereotyping
Stereotypes become counterproductive when
• we place people in the wrong groups,
• we incorrectly describe the group norm,
• we inappropriately evaluate the group or category,
• we confuse the stereotype with the description of a particular individual,
• we fail to modify the stereotype based on our actual observations and experience.
Sascha Funk | [email protected] | @sayfun | facebook.com/SaschaFunk | google.com/+SaschaFunk
Misinterpretation sources
• inaccurate perceptions of a person or situation
• culture determines and influences interpretation
• categories and meanings are based on cultural background
• subconscious blinders
• lack of cultural self-awareness
• projected similarity
• parochialism
Sascha Funk | [email protected] | @sayfun | facebook.com/SaschaFunk | google.com/+SaschaFunk
–Edward Hall, Anthropologist
“What is known least well, and is therefore in the poorest position to be studied, is what is
closest to oneself.”
Sascha Funk | [email protected] | @sayfun | facebook.com/SaschaFunk | google.com/+SaschaFunk
Cross-Cultural Misevaluation
• Cultural conditioning strongly affects evaluation.
• Evaluation involves judging whether someone is good or bad.
• We use our own culture as standard of measurement.
• Same same = good, different = bad
• Other cultures = inferior
Evaluation rarely helps in trying to understand or communicate with
people from another culture.
Awareness & Sensitivity
Intercultural Understanding
Awareness:
Identifying differences and similarities
Sensitivity:
Ability to acknowledge, respect, tolerate and accept cultural differences.
Sascha Funk | [email protected] | @sayfun | facebook.com/SaschaFunk | google.com/+SaschaFunk
Communication More than words
Sascha Funk | [email protected] | @sayfun | facebook.com/SaschaFunk | google.com/+SaschaFunk
Understanding
• Know that you don’t know
• Emphasize description
• See it through their eyes
• Treat the explanation that you deliver for a situation as a guess that needs to be checked, not a certainty
• Converge meanings, confirm with others.
Sascha Funk | [email protected] | @sayfun | facebook.com/SaschaFunk | google.com/+SaschaFunk
Converging Meanings• Verbal behavior
• clear, slow speech
• repetition
• simple sentences
• active verbs
• Non verbal behavior
• Visual restatements
• gestures
• demonstration
• pauses
• summaries
Converging Meanings• Attribution
• Silence
• Intelligence
• Differences
• Comprehension
• Understanding
• Checking comprehension
• Design
• Breaks
• Small Modules
• Longer time frame
Converging Meanings
• Motivation
• Encouragement
• Drawing out
• Reinforcement
Sascha Funk | [email protected] | @sayfun | facebook.com/SaschaFunk | google.com/+SaschaFunk
Cross Cultural Understanding
• Understand your own cultural perspective
• Study the cultural background of others
• Get to know the individuals you are working with
• Respect their values and style
• Do not make assumptions
• In communication: strive for maximum clarity (but be sensitive) and verify.
Sascha Funk | [email protected] | @sayfun | facebook.com/SaschaFunk | google.com/+SaschaFunk
Standing Back
Most difficult skill in cross-cultural understanding: Accept you don’t know everything.
!Situations may not make sense, guess might be wrong.
!“scientia potentia est”
!Maintain power over own perceptions and reactions. Control
own behavior and reactions.
Sascha Funk | [email protected] | @sayfun | facebook.com/SaschaFunk | google.com/+SaschaFunk
Business Cards
Use a card case
Give your card by hand (in Asia with both hands)
When you receive a card: read it and ask rapport-building questions
Sascha Funk | [email protected] | @sayfun | facebook.com/SaschaFunk | google.com/+SaschaFunk
your ASEAN examples
Sascha Funk | [email protected] | @sayfun | facebook.com/SaschaFunk | google.com/+SaschaFunk
Cross Cultural Understanding
Stenden Rangsit UniversitySascha Funkwww.sayfun.me