Everyday life exists of meeting familiar and unfamiliar faces. Unfamiliar faces, habits, beliefs and cultures are what constitutes ‘The Other’. Travelling abroad and working makes us much more aware of ‘The Other’. In the ‘Understanding the Other’ series of blogposts you learn more about the deeper, underlying layers of other cultures. In the process you become more aware of your own culture and life choices, opening the door for personal development and improving your social interactions with other cultures and lifestyle, either at home or abroad. This is part 6: Culture shock. Image by j4p4n.
Culture shock
The experience of crossing cultures is often referred to as a culture shock. “Culture shock is a stress reaction where salient physiological and physical rewards are generally uncertain, difficult to control or predict. Thus, a sojourner remains anxious, confused, and sometimes apathetic or angry until he or she has had time to develop a new set of behavioral assumptions that help him or her to understand and predict the social behavior of the local natives.” (Weissman & Furnham 1987: 314).
Accumulation of stresses
The culture shock initially stems from an awareness that many parts of one’s knowledge about cultural values, roles, etiquette and symbols are not useful in the new environment. It can also include dealing with the stress involved in building a new life (e.g. work-entry, making friends, finding the supermarket, financial management) and dealing with ecological and social differences (e.g. weather conditions or extreme poverty). Although a single stressful event may not place great demands on the coping abilities of most people, the accumulation and persistence of multiple problems can strain an individual’s emotion-focused and problem-focused coping strategies (Hottola 2004).
Culture shock can be a very subjective experience. For example Ruben and Kealey (1979) concluded that people who were most aware of the personal and subjective nature of their perceptions experienced culture shock most intensely.
Culture confusion
Although the term ‘culture shock’ is often used to describe the stressful experience of settling in another country, it is perhaps more accurate in this day and age to use the less extreme-sounding phrase ’culture confusion’ (Hottola 2004). This phrase implies that cultural adaptation is a learning process in which external stresses repeatedly disorient and confuse the traveler who uses these stimuli in order to discover the appropriate cognitive and behavioral schemas. The confusion is brought about by an accumulation of (small) stresses over time and is not necessarily a sudden shock. It seems plausible to assume that, in our more globalized society, culture shocks occur less than in the past – due to people having more experience with travel, available ‘bridging’ tools such as foreign language proficiency, ICT support (mobile phone and internet) and ‘recuperative’ tourist safe havens (resorts, western hotel chains, Starbucks, McDonalds etc).
Go to part 7: The process of cultural adaptation
Related books (which include all references)
