Cross-Cultural Training

Lesson 1: What is Culture?

How Culture Affects Behavior, Part 2

A person's behavior is often rooted in his values and beliefs. Therefore, to understand why people do what they do, it is important to understand their values and beliefs.

This may seem obvious to you now, but have you ever thought about the times people in your own country have done things that made no sense to you, but seemed perfectly normal to them? These people are probably operating under a different value/belief system. In their world it is normal, in your's it not.

The same is true when you travel abroad. Consider the following example.

One morning Sue,who teaches in English in West Africa, was told that the father of one of her students had died. The next day, one of her classes asked to be excused because of the death of the student's father. These students weren't even in the student's actual class, but this seemed to be the norm. The next day, Sue was asked if she saw the funeral procession which included a large number of students wearing uniforms from her school. Sue thought this was interesting and noted it in her journal because when her father had died while she was in high school, her best friend was the only classmate who had attended his funeral.

Two countries, two different values regarding the importance of family.

To see more examples, I've included an exercise developed by the Peace Corps. After completing it, the link between values and behavior will be even clearer.

Match the behaviors below with the appropriate value/belief.

Value/Belief

Directness, Centrality of family, External Control, Saving Face, Respect for Age, Informality, Deference to Authority, Indirectness, Self-reliance, Egalitarianism

Behavior

1. Use of understatement.
2. Asking people to call you by your first name.
3. Taking off from work to attend the funeral of an aunt.
4. Not helping the person next to you on an exam.
5. Disagreeing openly with someone at a meeting.
6. Not laying off an older worker whose performance is weak.
7. At a meeting, agreeing with a suggestion you think is wrong.
8. Inviting the teaboy to eat lunch with you in your office.
9. Asking the headmaster's opinion of something you're an expert on.
10. Accepting, without question that something cannot be changed.

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