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Chapter 8 . In and out groups and intercultural differences. Potential problems in intercultural communication. Seeking similarities Uncertainty reduction Withdrawal Stereotyping. Seeking similarities. Your friends and acquaintances are similar to you and have similar interests
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Chapter 8 In and out groups and intercultural differences
Potential problems in intercultural communication • Seeking similarities • Uncertainty reduction • Withdrawal • Stereotyping
Seeking similarities • Your friends and acquaintances are similar to you and have similar interests • People tend to exclude and even eliminate those who are different. • Culture often separates us from people with a history different from your own.
Uncertainty reduction • This relates to the first problem discussed. • Uncertainty is greater when you meet people from cultures different than your own. • If amount of uncertainty between people is not reduced, the communication mostly likely will not take place.
Withdrawal • This is extension of the two previous problems. • Withdrawal can occur on interpersonal, intercultural and international level. • Withdrawal has been more a rule than exception.
Stereotypes • Stereotypes are exaggerated pictures we make about a group of people on the basis of our inflexible beliefs and expectations about the characteristics or behaviors of the group (Tinh-Toomey & Chung, 2005).
Stereotyping • Stereotyping is a complex form of categorization that mentally organizes your experiences and guides your behavior toward a particular group. • Stereotyping found in nearly every intercultural situation. • Humans have a psychological need to categorized and classify.
Developing stereotypes • Like cultures stereotypes are learned. We learn them from parents, relatives and friends. • Stereotypes develop through a limited personal contact. • Stereotypes are provided through mass media. • Stereotypes may evolve out of fear of persons from groups that different from our own.
Variations in stereotypes • One person or a large collection of individuals may hold stereotypes. • Stereotypes can be positive or negative. • Stereotypes have different levels of intensity.
Problems in stereotyping • Stereotyping is not act that creates intercultural conflict; it is assuming that all culture specific information apply to all individuals from the culture group. • Stereotypes also keep us from being successful as communicator because they are oversimplified, overgeneralized, and/or exaggerated. • Stereotypes tend to impede intercultural communication in that they repeat and reinforce beliefs until they have been taken as truth. • Stereotypes can serve as self fulfilling prophecies.
Prejudice • Prejudice describes person’s feelings and predispositions towards outgroup members in a negative direction.
Prejudice • Prejudice is rigid and irrational generalization and hostility toward a group as a whole or toward an individual because she or he is a member of that group.
Functions of prejudice • Ego-defensive function-holding prejudice without having to admit one posse's the beliefs about the member of the group. • Utilitarian function-allows people to believe they are receiving rewards by holding a prejudice. • Value-expressive function- one believes their attitudes are expressing the highest and most moral values of the culture. • Knowledge function-person is able to categorize, organize and construct their perception of other people in a way that makes sense to them.
Expressions of prejudice • Prejudices like stereotypes are learned. • Prejudice offer rewards ranging from feelings of superiority to feeling of power. • Can be expressed in many ways from subtle to overt.
Prejudiced person : • Can express prejudice by talking about person negatively. • Can avoid/ and/or withdraw from contact with the disliked group or individual that belongs to that group; • Can undertake to exclude all members of the group in question from certain types of employment, political rights etc. • Can perform physical attacks.
Racism • In many ways extension of prejudice in that holds a belief that one racial category is innately superior than the other.
Racism • Racism is direct effect of discrimination and has three following principles: • Feelings of superiority based on biological or racial differences or both • Strong ingroup preference and solidarity; rejection of any outgroup that diverges from the customs and beliefs of the ingroup, and • A doctrine that conveys a special advantage to those in power (Jones, 1997, p. 373).