Cross Cultural Understanding

1. CHAPTER 1
Terms and principle used in CCU
1. Culture / a shared background which come from a language
beliefs, attitude, and values held in common.
2. Cultural communication / verbal and nonverbal communication
between people from different cultures
3. Cultural generalization / general insight into a culture.
4. Culture does not explain all behaviour.
5. Intercultural / an interaction between culture groups.
6. Intercultural / an interaction among people from the same
culture.
7. Cross cultural / describing or comparing cultures which may
not interact directly.
Analogy in culture
1. Onion / culture are like an onion with several layers.
2. Fish / culture have sometimes been compared to a fish
living in water.
3. Blueprint / culture provide a blue print that determined
the way we think, feel, and behave in society.
CHAPTER 2
Broad definition of culture
Culture is created by human being. It includes /
1. Artefacts /the physical objects that people make to
exchange their lives. O
2. Socio facts / the purposeful behaviours that people follow
in their lives. B
3. Mental facts / the mental, emotional, ideas and feelings
that influence our thinking. C

2. Culture is shared among persons living at the same time and
place and who communicate with each other through a common
language. Culture is two aspects / objective and subjective
cultures respectively.
Narrow definition of culture
Culture is a model for perceiving, interpreting, and relating to
the world. Culture is a rule for constructing, interpreting and
adapting to the world.
CHAPTER 3
Characteristic of culture
1. Pervasiveness / it mean we can find it everywhere.
2. Learned behaviour / the way we behave in our culture are
learned from adults who are important to us.
3. Shared behaviour / identifiable group and enable us to live
harmoniously together.
4. Adaptable behaviour / our culture ha adapted to certain
environment condition, natural and technology resources.
5. Explicit and implicit behaviour / explicit or open. Someone
took the effort to teach us. Implicit or hidden, no one
teaches us.
6. Ethnocentric behaviour / its can prevent us from
understanding other cultures, by overcoming our
ethnocentric view of the world; we can begin to other
cultures.
7. Changeability / the changes used to be slow and gradual.
Cultural borrowing, disaster and environmental conditions
all promote change.
Cultural borrowing

3. Cultures borrow heavily from other cultures, there is no
probably no such thing as pure culture.
 Disaster and crises /floods earthquake volcanic
eruptions war
 Environment reason /
CHAPTER 4
Cultural universal
Culture to culture.in the 1940 George Murdock prepare list of 73
common features of culture.
1. Law
2. Games
3. Cooking
4. Mealtime
5. Education
6. Calendar
7. Greetings
8. Hairstyle
9. Music
10. Joking
CHAPTER 5
Cultural influences o perception
Our cultural expectations provide meaning for what we sense and
help us to interpret what we sense.
The perception process

4. 1. Selection / first we select what aspects of the environment
to perceive.
2. Organization / we tend to form meaningful patterns out what
we select by figure and background grouping and closure.
3. Interpretation / when we interpret we evaluate what we
sense based on our past experience needs values and beliefs
about their way things should be.
Perceptual differences sometimes take place in that two
observers may respond quite differently to the same perceptual
events. The effect of culture on perception id those differences
in cultural background cause groups of people to perceive
stimuli differently.
CHAPTER 6
Worldview
Each culture has its own view of the world. We take for granted
however that everyone sees the same way. Worldview affects the
way people live behave and communicate.
Religious and philosophical implication of worldview
Most of us take our worldview for granted and believe that
people from other cultures see === the world as we do. We behave
and treat others as see the world.
Comparing western and eastern worldview or perspectives of the
world
Western
1. Humans have
characteristic that
distinguish from culture
them from the culture
2. .. consist of mind body
and spirit

5. 3. .. are overshadowed by
the existence of a
personal God
4. .. must think rationally
and fanatically
5. .. have to manipulate and
control nature to survive
6. The good life and hope
for its continuation is
found in science and
7. technology Humans should
reward actions and
competitive spirit
Eastern
1. Humans are one with
natures
2. .. perceive the spiritual
and the physical as one
3. .. should accepts their
basic oneness with nature
4. .. should be comfortable
with everyone
5. .. perceive the mind and
body as one
6. Science and technology
create an illusion of
progress at best
7. Enlightenment
CHAPTER 7
Cultural attitudes
Attitudes are judgement about object events and people and they
influences the way we behave.Three forms of attitude cause
misunderstanding in intercultural communication /
sterotyping.ethnocentrism.prejudice.
Attitude formation
Attitudes begin to form soon after we are old enough to
comprehend the world around us. Three factors influence these
important behavioural tendencies. They are / socialisation
experience personality.
Characteristic of attitudes
1. Direction
2. Degree
3. Endurance
Cultural relativism

6. This means we try to accept the behaviour of people from other
cultures that we cannot accept in our culture.
Stereotyping
It’s a fixed impression of a group of people through which we
then perceive specific individual. Sterotype can therefore lead
top incorrect judgements.
Errors in stereotyping
1. Overestimate
2. Underestimate
3. Expectation
Gender stereotypes
Genders roles continue to be stereotyped even though changes are
taking place throughout the world.
Ethnocentrism
When we are ethnocentric we believe that our own group is the
centre of the world and that everything else can be measured an
evaluated by our own cultural.
Functions of ethnocentrism
The good things about ethnocentrism are that it maintains the
integrity of the in group. Highly ethnocentric gropes are more
likely to survive threats of external forces
Ethnocentrism can be dangerous when in group members think their
lifestyle is superior they may decide that it is their duty to
change the lifestyle of others.
Xenophobia
When ethnocentrism becomes too strong it creates xenophobia a
strong dislike or district of foreigners.
Self-awareness
Our cultural upbringing determines how we see the world. We tend
to see our own culture as morally superior to others.