Handouts 5+6

Review – Chapter 5
HALL’S HIGH-CONTEXT AND LOW-CONTEXT TAXONOMY
High-Context Cultures Low-context cultures
Covert and implicit Overt and explicit
Messages
Internalized Plainly coded
Coding Much nonverbal coding Details verbalized
Reactions Reserved On the surface
Ingroups and Outgroups Distinct Flexible
Interpersonal bonds Strong Fragile
Commitment High Low
Time Orientation Open and flexible Highly organized

Review – Chapter 6
CULTURAL IDENTITY
What is our identity?
- Cultural identity: refers to one’s sense of belonging to a particular culture or ethnic group.
- Social identity: develops as a consequence of memberships in particular groups within one’s culture.
- Personal identity: is based on people’s unique characteristics, which may differ from those of others in
their cultural and social groups.
Characteristics of cultural identities?
Cultural identities provide an essential framework, organize and interprete our experiences of others.
- Central to a person’s sense of self.
+ Broadly influential.
+ Linked to many other aspects of one’s self-concept.
- Not static, fixed, and enduring; rather, it is dynamic, and changes with your ongoing life experiences.
+ Intercultural contacts.
+ Recent communication technologies.
+ Living in foreign culture.
- Multifaceted: At any given moment, you have many “components” that make up your identity.
CULTURAL BIASES
SOCIAL CATEGORIZING
- Natural cognitive process by which we place individuals into social groups.
- Just as we categorize objects into different types, so we categorize people according to their social group
memberships.
Example:
a man an old person a Black person
(vs a woman) (vs a young one) (vs an Asian or White)
- Benefits:
+ Provide with information about the characteristics of people who belong to certain social groups.
+ Save time and energy.
- Negative outcomes:
+ Perceptions of others: distorted (differences between people from different social groups:
exaggerated) → people think about and treat all members of a group the same way.
+ Easily apply stereotypes to the members of the groups without much considering.

ETHNOCENTRISM
What is ethnocentrism?
- The notion that the beliefs, values, norms, and practices of one’s own culture are superior to those of others.
→ One’s own cultural values: natural, correct.
- Tends to highlight & exaggerate cultural differences.
Examples
Body Arranged Blowing Personal Terrorism Imperialism In In In In
odor marriage your nose hygiene and Hate movies business school daily
Crimes life

What should we do to control ethnocentrism to be a competent intercultural communicator?

- Must realize that you typically use the categories of your own culture to judge and interpret the behaviors
of culturally different people.
- Must be aware of your own emotional reactions.
- Do not necessarily suppress negative feelings, but acknowledges their existence and seeks to minimize their
effect on his or her communication.
 STEREOTYPING
What is stereotyping?
A selection process that is used to organize and simplify perceptions of others. Stereotypes are a form of
generalization about some group of people.
- Take a category of people → characteristics of all people who belong to this category.
- Associate the group’s characteristics with a specific individual.
- Attribute group’s characteristics to all people → differences of individuals: not taken into account.
Categories used to form stereotypes
- Regions of the world (Asians, Arabs, South Americans, Africans).
- Countries (Kenya, Japan, China, France, Great Britain).
- Regions within countries (Northern Indians, Southern Indians, U.S. Midwesterners, U.S. Southerners).
- Cities (New Yorkers, Parisians, Londoners).
- Cultures (English, French, Latino, Russian, Serbian, Yoruba, Mestizo, Thai, Navajo).
- Race (African, Caucasian).
- Religion (Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian).
- Age (young, old, middle-aged, children, adults).
- Occupations (teacher, farmer, doctor, housekeeper, mechanic, architect, musician).
- Relational roles (mother. friend, father. sister, brother).
- Physical characteristics (short, tall, fat, skinny).
- Social class (wealthy, poor, middle class).
Three ways of inaccurate stereotypes:
- Apply to all/most of the members of a particular group or category → ignore differences among the
individual members (outgroup homogeneity effect) - eg. Arab Americans.
- When the group average is simply wrong or inappropriately exaggerated.
- When the degree of error and exaggeration differs for positive and negative attributes.
+ Positive valence inaccuracy.
+ Negative valence inaccuracy.

Consequence of using inaccurate stereotypes:

- If not accurate → distort or hide the individual.
- Errors in our interpretations and expectations about the behaviors of others.
- Promote prejudice and discrimination.
 PREJUDICE AND DISCRIMINATION
What is prejudice?
Refers to negative attitudes toward other people that are based on faulty and inflexible stereotypes.
- Irrational feelings of dislike and hatred.
- Biased perceptions and beliefs.
- Readiness to behave in negative and unjust ways.
Give some examples of prejudice and discrimination
Sexism: prejudice or discrimination based on a person's sex or gender.
- Assuming that all women are good at cooking or that all men are bad at expressing their emotions.
- Paying a woman less than a man for doing the same job, or refusing to hire someone because they
are transgender.
Racism: a tendency to respond negatively to people who are culturally different in terms of their physical
traits such as skin color, hair color and texture, facial structure, and eye shape, which results in the oppression
of cultural minorities.
- Laws, regulations, or practices that unfairly disadvantage a particular racial group.
- Making assumptions about someone's character or abilities based solely on their race.
Tokenism: a form of racism in which people make small concessions to, while holding basically negative
attitudes toward, members of the other group.
- A film casts a single actor of Asian descent in a supporting role, but the lead roles are all played by
white actor.
- A university showcases its diversity by highlighting a few students of color in its admissions
materials.
Aversive Racism: a form of racism in which individuals who value fairness and equality among all racial
and cultural groups nevertheless have negative beliefs and feelings about members of a particular race, so
they avoid those others and subtly express their negative views.
- Avoidance of social interaction with people of color.
- Feigning support for racial equality while privately holding negative views.