c2.ppt

Chapter 2 : Cultural Influences on Perception and Belief Systems He Shuxun Outline 1. Culture and Perception 2. World View 3. Cultural Values 4. Perceptual Differences in Interpersonal Relationships 5. Patterns of Friendship Relationships with Strangers 6. Friend, Good Friends---and Such Good Friends 1. Culture and Perception our perceptions of the world are representations we learn to make from the nerve impulses that reach our brains and from our unique set of experiences in the culture in which we have been raised. While perception takes place inside each individual, it is culture that primarily determines the meanings we apply to the stimuli that reach us 2. World View Worldview is the set of systematized beliefs and values by which a cultural group evaluates and attaches meaning to the surrounding reality ( Gudykunst 1984). Worldview is the most important perception because it is a culture ’ s orientation toward the fundamental issues about relationships among super-nature, nature and man, the meaning of life and existence. World view is the core of a culture because “ in selecting its customs for day-to-day living, even the little things, the society chooses those ways that accord with its thinking and predilections---ways that fit its basic postulates as to the nature of things and what is desirable and what is not ” ( Hobel , qtd Samovar & Porter 1995). Different worldviews will generate different solutions to human problems. 3. Cultural Values The system of criteria for conduct and evaluation is the value system of a culture, which contains a set of anized and interrelated values that function as the desired objectives or goals of that culture. A cultural value may manifest itself in the mode of behavior or in the end-state of life of its people. The Dutch scholar Geert Hofstede identified four value dimensions in the 1980s. His discovery has been widely used as an analytical tool in cultural studies. The four