As discussed in Chapter 2, your cultural values—like all important aspects of
culture—are acquired through a variety of sources (family, history, proverbs, media,
school, church, state, etc.) and, therefore, tend to be broad-based, enduring, and rela-
tively stable. A culture’s value system establishes the expected, normative modes of
behavior for members of that culture and institutes the criteria to judge people’s con-
duct. Unfortunately, during intercultural interactions we have a tendency to apply our
own criteria to members of other cultures who usually hold different values. This fre-
quently results in misunderstandings, confusion, and even conflict. Clashes arising
from variant cultural values can be related to something as seemingly inconsequential
as the appropriateness of eating certain foods (e.g., American and Hindu attitudes
toward beef or Japan and Australia over whale meat) or more weighty matters, such
as human rights or societal ethics. To help mitigate the potential for value-based
clashes, we feel that a good rule of thumb for any intercultural encounter is this:
If you consider the other person strange, they probably consider you strange.Behaviors
Behaviors are the outward manifestations of our internalized beliefs and values. To
illustrate, if you believe that a college degree is the pathway to a better life, you will
probably place considerable value on education and diligently apply yourself to your
studies. As with almost all things in life, culture also has a regulatory influence on
behaviors. Culture tells us the accepted deportment for different social contexts and
what is age appropriate, and specifies gender-specific conduct. You know that certain
behaviors that are acceptable during a spring-break trip would be considered obnox-
ious at a family reunion, that senior citizens are not expected to wear hip-hop or
Gothic-style clothes, and that assertive actions are more tolerated when done by a
man than a woman. To further illustrate, while on a business trip, a Japanese
businessman will usually purchase gifts for his office coworkers. This is because the
Japanese believe it is important to maintain good interpersonal relations, and they
value social harmony, both of which are demonstrated through extensive gift-giving
rituals among family, friends, and coworkers. For the study of intercultural communi-
cation, it is also important to know that beliefs and values exert an influence on our
communicative behaviors. For instance, traditional Arabs believe that God controls
everything about a person’s life. This has resulted in a strong sense of fatalism, as
exhibited in the often-used phrase
Inshallah (God willing).^10 In the
United States, the use of personal
titles and honorifics when addressing
others is usually restricted to formal
settings. This preference for informal-
ity is a product of the importance
placed on individual equality.Understanding Cultural Patterns
Culture is a multifaceted social construct. In seeking to reduce this complexity and
provide a greater understanding of how culture guides and shapes people’s lives,
researchers have discerned that the dominant group within a culture often exhibitsCONSIDER THIS
Your behaviors are a reflection of your values, which are based
on your beliefs.Behaviors 203Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).