Introduction
“You have two eyes, two ears and one mouth, use them accordingly.”
- What do you think this expression means?
- Do you think the extent to which people subscribe to this belief is affected by cultural differences?
- Do you know of any cultures where people listen more and talk less or vice versa?
“The goldfish is the last to discover water”
- What do you think this expression means?
- How might this relate to culture?
- Why might this be a problem in understanding how culture affects behaviour?
- How was Bo Chen’s (‘Silent Bo’s’) behaviour affected by cultural norms? (p. 1-6)
- How was Erin’s (the storyteller’s) behaviour affected by her cultural norms? (P 1-6)
- Explain how cultural differences affected Sabine Dulac’s (‘Deaf Dulac”s) performance review. (p.6 onWards)
- Explain how a better understanding of cultural differences between French and American culture could have helped. (p. 9-10)
- Outline why it can be helpful to spend time immersed in a culture in order to avoid to avoid cross-cultural misunderstandings – (link to the Indian head-shake p. 11)
- Why is it ‘not enough’ to try and understand human behaviour by focusing on the individual. Why is an understanding of cultural differences also necessary? (p.12-13). You might find it helpful to think about ‘fundamental attribution error’ and the fact that this is more common in Western societies.
- List the 8 scales that Meyer uses to compare cultures. p.16.
- Looking at the diagram, List two scales on which the Russian and Israelis are similar and two where they are very different . p.17
- Draw a sketch to remind you about the normal distribution of attitudes, the normative response and a comparison of normative responses from different countries. (see fig 1.2- 1.4 p 19-21).
- Explain why an awareness of ‘cultural relativity’ is important. Use the example on p. 22 to help ( German, UK, French and Indian business people).
- Make a note about bi-cultural or indeed multi-cultural individuals.
- One criticism of cross-cultural studies in psychology is that they often lack an appreciation of regional differences within a nation; what can we learn about his criticism from the story of John Cleary (p.25).
Chapter 1
- Outline the story about the SWAGAT restaurant
- Outline the difference in what is deemed to be successful communication in the US as opposed to the East and some African and Latin American cultures.
- Kenji Takaki explains that people learn about their cultures as they grow up (enculturation); what does Kenji say is meant by ‘kuuki yomenai’ (KY); how does being a ‘KY guy’ or a ‘non-KY guy’ affect the way that people communicate?
- Explain the main difference between low context and high context cultures. Draw up a list of cultures/nations ranked from lowest to highest context.
- Give examples of explicit teaching about how to communicate successfully in low context cultures.
- Outline the ‘Mariam’ example of communication in a high context culture.
- Give examples of single words with multiple meanings in high context cultures. How does number of words in a language relate to high and low context?
- Explain what is meant by ‘sous-entendu’ and how this relates to high context culture. How does this relate to first and second degree messages?
- How does high/low context relate to a countries history and diversity?
- Outline Edward Hall’s analogy about marriage and how this relates to high/low context cultures.
- Give examples of the problems that can arise when low meet high and high meets low context communicators. (p 42).
- How is high/low context communication affected by level of education? (p44) Why do you think this might be?
- Make a note about sarcasm/irony in US and UK culture
psychologyrocks 