Marshall Jones

Elizabeth Franklin
Ellen Semeniuk
EDL 647-Kenny Richardson
1/20/2017

Cultural Identity, Cultural Biases, and

Intercultural Contact

How do we see ourselves? Asian,African,Mexican,Native American or

maybe just American
How do others view us?In a positive/negative way or something between?
How can we overcome our own prejudices and misconceptions when it
comes to others when often we perceive other cultures as different or strange?
Cant we all just get along? (Rodney King)

We live in a time when Social distinctions,ethnic,racial,class,gender,and lifestyle are

critical in how people identify and experience the world around ourselves.
The misconceptions and prejudices then play a major role in how we
communicate,interact,and perceive each other.

The challenge is to continue the discussion,celebrate our differences, and collectively

examine and heal the harmful effects that cultural
bias,stereotypes,prejudice,discrimination and racism play on each other.

Characteristics of cultural Identity:

Framework for understanding and interpreting individual experiences.
Central component of a persons self concept.
Can become more pronounced when faced with living in another's culture,
or when living in a different region.
Your individual experiences become filtered through your own cultural
composite.
 Culture identity is fluid and can change based on changing social and life
experiences and can become different over time.
Cultural identities contain many components and roles: i.e.-student,
employee, friend, mother, etc.
People may see themselves as belonging to many cultural groups or
categories.
In the U.S., cultural identity is very important.

Cultural Biases:
Interacting within ones own culture provides predictability and stability.
When someone foreign enters the culture, cultural patterns and beliefs
guide people to have an automatic cultural response.
Cultural differences can bring about a heightened sense of insecurity.

Social Categorizing: People organize information about others using 3 features:

1). We organize stimuli into categories that are easy for our brains to understand.
2). People believe that others think the same way they do.
3). Past experiences tend to guide future reactions-stereotyping

Ethnocentrism:
Is the belief that the customs and practices of ones own culture are
superior to those of other cultures.
As we observe people from other cultures, we judge them based on our
own customs.
The way we were taught to behave is what we believe as right or
correct
Often, ethnocentrism produces emotional reactions to cultural differences
that can reduce peoples willingness to come to a place of understanding.

Examples of Ethnocentrism:
Some cultures work hard to remove body odor and cover it up with other
smells while other cultures do not remove or cover up body odor.
In the US, people use tissues to blow noses while in other cultures, that is
seen as disgusting and it is prefered to blow nose onto ground or street.
People from cultures in which marriage is not arranged can view this
practice as a sever limitation of freedom.
In order to prevent ethnocentrism to cloud our visions and actions as administrators, we
need to be cognizant of how we use the learned categories of our own culture to judge
and interpret the behaviors of those who are culturally different from you.

Stereotyping:
A selection process that is used to organize and simplify perceptions of
others.
When stereotyping, people take a category of people and make assertions
about the characteristics of all people who belong to that category.
People will stereotype those who differ from their own social ingroup.
One people are identified as being different, the perceived dissimilarities
between groups is enlarged and accentuated creating clearer more distinct
groups.
Stereotyping people from being treated as unique individuals but rather as
a typical member of a category.

Stereotyping Categories: Regions, Countries, Cultures, Race, Religion, Age,

Occupation, Relational Roles (mother, father, sister, brother) Physical Characteristics
(short, tall, fat, skinny), Social Class.

Stereotypes can be inaccurate:

Outgroup homogeneity effect: Stereotypes are often assumed to apply to
all or most of the members of a particular group or category resulting in the
tendency to ignore differences among the individual members of the group.
Stereotypes can incorrectly assign or inappropriately exaggerate
characteristics to a group.