What You Need to Know about Culture

In the English terminology, the word culture can have various different meanings. When you mean culture, perhaps you think of art, ballet, or music. Perhaps you think of conventional costumes and crafts. Actually culture has a much wider meaning. It is the patterns of view and behavior that are collectively established in each society. It includes the way you automatically react to stories, events, other people, or situations that you face. In most cases, you are not aware of these formulas of culture because they are natural to you. When we think about culture in this way, we sometimes call it “deep culture” because it concerns knowledge that is rich in the mind, outside of a person’s consciousness.

Deep culture is learned by you as a child and includes everything you need to know to live, work, make friends, and be part of your cultural group. It consists of the unwritten rules that guide your behavior and the way you look at the world. It is the answer your culture provides for such questions as:

1. When is it acceptable to tell a lie, and to whom?

2. Under what circumstances can you visit another person’s home?

3. What sorts of questions are too personal to ask?

People who have only lived in one culture are usually not aware that people in other cultures have other ways of thinking. Such things as logic and truth have different meanings and values in different cultures.

What is viewed as right in one society may be wrong in another. Each culture has its own ideas about how to care for children, how to make friends, how to start conversations, how to buy and sell goods, or how to reach decisions within a group. In India, strangers often start conversations by asking questions about the other’s family. How many brothers and sisters do you have?  Are you married? How many children do you have? How old are you? For an American, this kind of question arouses suspicion and perhaps anger: My personal life is none of your business!

When you enter an unfamiliar culture, you do not have all this knowledge. To survive, you will need to learn at least some of it; the more you learn of the other culture, the better you will be able to take part in it.

Acquiring another culture’s knowledge is not as simple as learning its history or geography. The knowledge of deep culture is taught to each generation from infancy. Over the years of growing up in your own family and community, you have learned meanings and values that are deeply rooted in your ways of thinking and patterns of behavior. By the time you are 16 or 17 years old, you probably know most of what you need to know to participate in your own society.

However, to participate in a new and different society, you will have to learn new meanings and new ways of behaving. This is more complex than simply learning to use a fork instead of chopsticks. Although you may not immediately recognize the ways in which your deep culture differs from that of your host country, there are techniques you can use to help you see these differences.

Red Flags. Red flags are simply your own reactions to the host culture. The technique is to use these reactions to warn you of deep-culture differences that could lead to misunderstanding. Exchange students frequently react to the host culture by thinking “These people are rude,” or “They are stupid.” It is probably not possible to avoid such reactions. However, instead of letting them stop communication, reactions can be turned into red flags to remind you that a different way of thinking exists in the deep culture of your host country.

Attributions and Stereotypes. We often explain behavior by identifying its causes. When we explain our own behavior, we are likely to attribute it to the particular situation in which we find ourselves. Suppose I am quiet one day during a discussion. I might explain my being quiet by saying that I was tired that day or that I did not have enough information to participate. If others were to explain my behavior, however, they might say that I am a quiet person. They would not be as likely to consider the situation I am facing, but would attribute the behavior to a personality characteristic.

Being alert to your own attributions and stereotyping is one way to make certain that these simplified judgments do not interfere with the relationships you are trying to build. You can begin to recognize the stereotypes you have of the host culture even before you leave home. Think about the images you have of people from your host culture. Do you see them as wealthy? Lazy? Rigid? Warm? Formal? All of these images form the basis of stereotypes. By reminding yourself that these are stereotypes and, therefore, misleading, you may be better able to avoid allowing such images to influence your opinions and feelings about the people you meet.