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 | info@sayfun.me | @sayfun | facebook.com/SaschaFunk | google.com/+SaschaFunk

“Eight” = prosperity $5 million for car registration number 8 in HK

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Culture?

• Traits from basic human needs

• Love

• Shelter

• Food

• Protection

• Understanding

• …

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Origins?

• Invention of language and story telling

• Tool-making and farming

• Cities & writing

• …

Sascha Funk | info@sayfun.me | @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 | info@sayfun.me | @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.”

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Culture Today

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Stereotypes

Simplified concepts of groups based on assumptions. !Dynamic:

• ingroups• outgroups

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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?

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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 | info@sayfun.me | @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"

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(Mis)Communication

Intention

Intention

%^&!

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Communication ≠ Understanding

assume difference until similarity is proven

Sascha Funk | info@sayfun.me | @sayfun | facebook.com/SaschaFunk | google.com/+SaschaFunk

Cross Cultural Misperception

No two national groups see the world in exactly the same way.

Sascha Funk | info@sayfun.me | @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

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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

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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 | info@sayfun.me | @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 | info@sayfun.me | @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 | info@sayfun.me | @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 | info@sayfun.me | @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 | info@sayfun.me | @sayfun | facebook.com/SaschaFunk | google.com/+SaschaFunk

Communication More than words

Sascha Funk | info@sayfun.me | @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 | info@sayfun.me | @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 | info@sayfun.me | @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 | info@sayfun.me | @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 | info@sayfun.me | @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 | info@sayfun.me | @sayfun | facebook.com/SaschaFunk | google.com/+SaschaFunk

your ASEAN examples

Sascha Funk | info@sayfun.me | @sayfun | facebook.com/SaschaFunk | google.com/+SaschaFunk

Cross Cultural Understanding

Stenden Rangsit UniversitySascha Funkwww.sayfun.me