Intercultural
Communication
Chapter 6
Cultural Identity
and Cultural Biases
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Cultural Identity
• As part of the socialization process,
children learn to view themselves as
members of particular groups.
– People have the tendency to categorize
themselves and others into ingroups and
outgroups.
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The Nature of Identity
• Identity or self-concept, is built on an
individual’s cultural, social, and personal
identities.
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Your Cultural Identity
• Formed in a process that results from
membership in a particular culture.
• Involves learning about and accepting the:
– traditions, heritage, language, religions,
ancestry, aesthetics, thinking patterns, and
social structures of society.
• People internalize the beliefs, values,
norms, and social practices of their culture
and identify with that culture as part of
their self-concept.
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Your Social Identity
• Develops as a consequence of membership
in particular groups within one’s culture.
• Common characteristics/concerns shape the
way individuals view these characteristics.
• Types of groups people identify with can
vary widely and might include perceived
similarities due to:
– age, gender, work, religion, ideology, social
class, place (neighborhood, region, and nation),
and common interests.
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Your Personal Identity
• Refers to people’s unique characteristics,
which may differ from those of others in
their cultural or social groups.
• (Remember, there is a great deal of
interdependence among these three
aspects of identity.)
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Formation of Cultural Identity
• Unexamined cultural identity stage.
– Lack of interest in cultural issues.
– Taking one’s own cultural characteristics for
granted.
– Lacks an awareness of cultural differences
and the distinguishing characteristics of one
culture to another.
– Unquestioningly accept the prevailing
stereotypes held by others.
– May internalize common stereotypes of their
own culture and themselves.
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Formation of Cultural Identity
• Cultural identity search
– Involves exploration and questioning about
one’s culture in order to learn more about it.
– By exploring their culture, individuals can
learn about its strengths and may come to a
point of acceptance both of their culture and
of themselves.
– For some individuals, a turning point or
crucial event precipitates this stage.
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Formation of Cultural Identity
• Cultural identity search
– Common to this stage is an increased social
and political awareness along with an
increased desire to learn more about one’s
culture.
– There may be an emotional component in this
stage which can involve tension, anger, and
even outrage directed toward other groups.
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Formation of Cultural Identity
• Cultural identity achievement
– The acceptance of oneself and an
internalization of one’s cultural identity.
– People have developed ways of dealing with
stereotypes and discrimination so that they do
not internalize others’ negative perceptions
and are clear about the personal meanings of
their culture.
– This outcome contributes to increased selfconfidence and positive psychological
adjustment.
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Characteristics of
Cultural Identity
• Provide a framework for organizing and
interpreting one’s experiences of others.
• Cultural identities are central to one’s
sense of self.
– Like gender and race, your culture is more
“basic” because it is broadly influential and is
linked to a great number of other aspects of
your self-concept.
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Characteristics of
Cultural Identity
• Living in another culture or interacting
with a person from a different culture can
trigger an awareness of your own identity.
• Most of your experiences are interpreted by
your cultural membership.
• Cultural identities are dynamic and change
with one’s ongoing life experiences.
• Cultural identities are multifaceted.
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Cultural BiasesSocial Categorizing
• We impose patterns by organizing stimuli
into conceptual categories.
– We are constantly bombarded with hundreds
of perceptual stimuli.
– It becomes necessary to organize the stimuli
into categories, groupings, and patterns.
– Culture helps people to organize perceptual
cues to impose meaning.
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Cultural BiasesSocial Categorizing
• Most people think that other people
perceive, evaluate, and reason about the
world in the same way that they do.
– Humans assume that other people are like
themselves.
– The human tendency to draw upon their own
experiences to understand and evaluate
others is an aspect of ethnocentrism.
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Cultural BiasesSocial Categorizing
• Humans simplify the processing and
organizing of information by identifying
certain characteristics as belonging to
certain categories of persons and events.
– The characteristics of particular events,
persons, or objects, once experienced, are
often assumed to be typical of similar events,
persons, or objects.
– Though these assumptions are sometimes
accurate, often they are not.
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Cultural BiasesEthnocentrism
• The beliefs, values, and practices of one
culture are viewed as superior others.
– People have the tendency to evaluate other
cultures using their own cultural categories.
– People from other cultures who do things
differently are viewed as “wrong.”
– It produces emotional reactions to cultural
differences that reduce people’s willingness to
understand disparate cultural messages.
– It tends to highlight and exaggerate cultural
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differences.
Cultural BiasesEthnocentrism
• All cultures can be ethnocentric.
• To be a competent intercultural
communicator, you need to:
– Recognize how your own culture influences
your judgments of others,
– be aware of your emotional reactions to such
judgments, and
– acknowledge the existence of your judgments
to minimize their effect on your
communication.
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Cultural BiasesStereotyping
• A generalization about a group of people.
– Making assertions about the characteristics of
all people who belong to that category.
– It is a selection process that simplifies
perceptions of others and leads to
generalizations about a group of people.
• Groups can be stereotyped based on their:
– Religion, age, occupation, social class,
geographical location, and other
characteristics.
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Cultural BiasesStereotyping
• Stereotypes can be inaccurate in 3 ways.
1-Inaccuracies occur when stereotypes are
assumed to apply to all members of a group or
category, resulting in a tendency to ignore
differences among the individual members of
the group.
– This type of stereotyping effect is called the
outgroup homogeneity effect.
– When this happens, all members of a
particular group are perceived as much more
similar to one another than they actually are. 19
Cultural BiasesStereotyping
2-Inaccuracies occur when the group average,
as suggested by a stereotype, is simply wrong
or inappropriately exaggerated.
3-Inaccuracies occur when the degree of error
and exaggeration differs for positive and
negative attributes.
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Cultural BiasesStereotyping
– A positive valence inaccuracy occurs when
overestimating the prevalence and importance
of a culture’s positive characteristics.
– A negative valence inaccuracy occurs when
exaggerating a culture’s negative attributes
while ignoring or devaluating its positive
ones (this is often called prejudice).
– Stereotype inaccuracy can lead to errors in
interpretations and expectations about the
behaviors of others.
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Cultural BiasesStereotyping
• Stereotypes provide the basis for
estimating, often inaccurately, what
members of the group are likely to do.
• Stereotypes lead to expectations about
people’s behaviors and may persist even
when the expectations are violated.
• While stereotyping is essential to all
humans, intercultural competence
requires an ability to move beyond
stereotypes.
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Cultural BiasesPrejudice
• Attitudes toward other people that are based
on faulty and inflexible stereotypes.
– Prejudiced attitudes include irrational feelings of
dislike and even hatred for certain groups.
– Biased perceptions and beliefs about group
members not based on experience or knowledge.
– Leads to a readiness to behave in negative and
unjust ways toward members of the group.
– Universal psychological process; all people can
be prejudice toward others not like themselves.
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Cultural BiasesPrejudice
• Functions of prejudice
– Helps organize and simplify the world.
– It satisfies a utilitarian or adjustment function.
• Certain people may like us more.
– The ego-defensive function protects self-esteem.
• Make ourselves feel better by putting down others.
– It serves a value-expressive function.
• Differentiates our own values.
– It serves a knowledge function.
• Provide security and sense of predictability.
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Cultural BiasesDiscrimination
• Refers to behavioral manifestations of
prejudice; it is prejudice in action.
• Occurs in many forms from:
– segregation and apartheid to
– biases in housing, employment, education,
economic resources, personal safety and legal
protections.
• It is the unequal treatment of certain
individuals because of their membership
to a particular group.
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Cultural BiasesRacism
• Blauner describes racism as a tendency to
categorize people who are culturally
different in terms of their physical traits
such as skin color, hair color and texture,
facial structure, and eye shape.
• Taylor focuses on the behavioral aspects of
racism by defining it as the cumulative
effects of individuals, institutions, and
cultures that result in the oppression of
ethnic minorities.
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Cultural BiasesRacism
• At the individual level, racism is
conceptually very similar to prejudice.
– It involves beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of
a given person toward people of a different
racial group.
– Positive contact and interaction between
members of two different cultural groups can
sometimes change discriminatory attitudes.
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Cultural BiasesRacism
• At the institutional level, racism is the
exclusion of certain people from equal
participation in the society’s institutions
solely because of their race.
– Built into social structures like government,
schools, the media, and industry practices.
– It leads to certain patterns of behaviors and
responses to specific racial or cultural groups
that allow those groups to be systematically
exploited or oppressed.
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Cultural BiasesRacism
• At the cultural level, racism denies the
existence of the culture of a particular
group and involves the rejection of the
culture’s beliefs and values.
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Cultural BiasesRacism
• Racism is about:
– Oppression-the systematic, institutionalized
mistreatment of one group of people by
another.
– Power-the tendency by groups in control of
institutional and cultural power to use it to
keep members of groups who do not have
access to the same kinds of power at a
disadvantage.
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Cultural BiasesRacism
• Types of racism
– Old-fashioned racism
• Openly display bigoted views.
– Symbolic racism (also called modern racism)
• “Undeserving outgroups move too fast towards
social change and will achieve economic/social
success at my expense and I fear for my core
values.”
– Tokenism
• Reverse discrimination.
• “I’m not a racist, I have a Black friend.”
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Cultural BiasesRacism
– Aversive racism
• Individuals who value fairness and equality
nevertheless have negative beliefs and feelings
about members of a particular race.
– Genuine likes and dislikes
• Cultural practices a group displays are not liked
by members of another group.
– Degree of unfamiliarity
• Lack of experience can lead to negative attitudes.
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Identity, Biases, Contact, and
Cultural Competence
• Improve your cultural competence
– Describe your own cultural identity; be sure
to include both the positive and negative
aspects.
– Take an honest inventory of the various ways
in which you categorize other people and they
categorize you.
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Identity, Biases, Contact, and
Cultural Competence
• We all face intercultural challenges.
• The ability to adapt to intercultural
settings – to maintain positive, healthy
relationships with people of cultures other
than your own – is the hallmark of the
interculturally competent individual.
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