7.1: Introduction to Culture Shock

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Cultural Connection

Cultural Adventures: At age six, just two months shy of turning seven, my grandmother brought my younger brother and me to the United States to be reunited with our parents and older sister. We left everything we knew for those first years of our lives in Taipei, Taiwan, for a brand new world! It was exciting - until it wasn't... We left a very structured, collectivistic culture where we went to school in uniforms five and a half days a week to an individualistic, laid-back environment where the school was in one huge room with grades and classes separated by flimsy partitions (This was in Honolulu, Hawaii, in the mid-1970s). We could only speak Chinese at the time and understood not a single word anyone at school was saying. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ A month after arriving in Hawaii, we packed up and moved to California! We experienced two major moves within a short period. Imagine our culture shock when we arrived in Hawaii (right, don't feel too bad... it was beautiful!). Imagine our culture shock again when we landed in Los Angeles, California! As with any living organism in the universe, we had to get MAD: Move, Adapt, or Die! Since "MOVING" back to Taiwan was not an option, and "DYING" was even less of an option, we had to learn to "ADAPT."

1970s-Tapei

Figure 7.1.1: Tapei in the 1970s

Kim and her siblings in Honolulu

Figure 7.1.2: Kim and her siblings in Honolulu, Hawaii

Figure 7.1.3: LAX in the 1970s

As we can see from Kim’s story above, stepping into a new cultural environment, whether moving across the globe or starting a new school, can feel like playing a game where the rules are unfamiliar and the expectations suddenly shift. The excitement of everything new often mingles with confusion, discomfort, or even frustration. These emotional ups and downs aren’t unusual; they’re part of a well-documented experience known as culture shock. In this chapter, we’ll explore culture shock, the signs and symptoms, the causes, and how students can prepare themselves to navigate it with resilience and curiosity. Understanding this experience is a key to thriving in diverse communities and building meaningful intercultural connections.

Culture Shock Overview

In your reading of this textbook thus far, we have discussed many theories and principles to help you understand the dynamics of intercultural communication. But understanding intercultural communication is not the same thing as experiencing it. To experience intercultural communication, one needs to get off the couch and set foot into a new and unfamiliar culture. When a person moves to a cultural environment that is different than their own, they often experience personal disorientation called culture shock. Culture shock, a term coined by Canadian Anthropologist Kalervo Oberg in 1954, refers to the anxiety and discomfort we feel when moving from a familiar environment to an unfamiliar one. In our own culture, through time, we have learned the million and one ways to communicate appropriately with friends, family members, colleagues, and others. We know how to great people, when and how to give tips, whether to stand or sit, how much eye contact to make, when to accept and refuse invitations, how to understand directions, whether others are being sarcastic or not, how holidays are and are not celebrated, how to shop for and prepare food, how to find the restroom, and generally how to communicate verbally and nonverbally in any given social situation. When we enter a new culture, many of those familiar signs and signals are gone, leading us to feel helplessly lost in many circumstances. Yet despite these challenges, global mobility continues to rise—making cultural adaptation not just a possibility, but a necessity.

The likelihood of travel in your lifetime is high, whether it be for business, school, pleasure, or to relocate permanently. Consider some of these statistics. A 2025 travel forecast projects a 4.0% growth in business travel spending for the year, reaching $316 billion, with 36% of Americans saying they expect to travel for business this year (U.S. Travel Association, 2025). Based on recent analyses and trends, the top business travel destinations for Americans include a mix of global financial hubs and major US cities, including:

London, UK
Singapore
Tokyo, Japan
New York City, New York
Los Angeles, California
Chicago, Illinois
Paris, France
Mexico City, Mexico
Toronto, Canada
Dubai, UAE 🇦🇪

College and university students are also studying abroad in record numbers. According to the National Association of Foreign Student Advisors (NAFSA, 2025), during the 2022-2023 academic year, the number of U.S. students who studied abroad for credit was 280,716. This represents a 49% increase from the previous year (the shift is largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which restricted travel in 2020 and 2021). Based on current travel trends, the top 10 countries for study abroad by U.S. students include:

United Kingdom
Canada
Australia
Germany
Spain
Italy
France
South Korea
Japan
New Zealand

Travel for recreation has dramatically increased since the COVID-19 pandemic, as travelers are trying to make up for lost time. In fact, we are witnessing an increase in specific types of recreational travel, such as travel for sporting events (like the Olympics), travel for Music events, and fitness travel (such as international hiking excursions). According to Travel Perks (2025), a company devoted to examining travel trends, estimated that 98.46 million Americans took international trips in 2024. The top international travel destinations include (You.Gov(opens in new window) 2025):

Mexico
Canada
United Kingdom
France
Italy
Germany
Spain
Japan
South Korea
Dominican Republic

Whether traveling for business, study, or leisure, millions of Americans are stepping into unfamiliar cultural landscapes each year. But crossing borders isn’t just about booking flights and getting the best pictures; it’s also about navigating the invisible terrain of human experience. That’s where the ABCs of culture shock come in.

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