6.2: Outline

6.1: Introduction to Culture Shock

1. Culture Shock

A. When a person moves from a cultural environment that is different than their own, they often experience personal disorientation called culture shock.

B. Culture shock refers to the anxiety and discomfort we feel when moving from a familiar environment to an unfamiliar one.

1. In our own culture, through time, we have learned the million and one ways how to communicate appropriately with friends, family members, colleagues, and others.

2. When we enter a new culture, many of those familiar signs and signals are gone, leading us to feel helplessly lost in many circumstances.

2. The ABC's of Culture Shock.

A. The ABC's of culture shock refer to the affective, behavioral, and cognitive changes brought on by culture shock.

1. The affective dimension of culture shock refers to the anxiety, bewilderment, and disorientation of experiencing a new culture.

2. The behavioral dimension refers to confusion over the behaviors of people in the host culture.

3. The cognitive dimension refers to our inability to interpret our new environment or understand these "bizarre" social experiences.

B. Underlying Factors.

1. Research suggests that nearly everybody who enters a new culture will experience some form of culture shock, but not everybody experiences culture shock the same way.

2. One of the most important factors is motivational orientation; some people travel willingly and are excited to enter a new culture.

3. Personal expectations: people with high expectations for their cultural experiences tend to struggle more with culture shock. Those who travel with an open mind and heart, who take the experiences as they come in a more spontaneous way tend to adapt better.

4. When we travel to a new culture, the cultural distance between our home culture and host culture impacts our level of culture shock.

a. Cultural distance refers to the degree of difference in culture between the known, home environment and the new one.

b. When we travel to destinations where people speak a different language, have different racial features, practice a different religion, and have significantly different customs and traditions, we typically feel a greater degree of culture shock.

5. Another factor that influences the degree of culture shock is sociocultural adjustment, which refers to the ability of the traveler to fit in and interact with members of the host culture. The level of sociocultural adjustment largely rests on the hosts' attitudes toward visitors to their culture.

a. One attitude of hosts towards tourists is retreatism. Retreatism basically means that hosts actively avoid contact with tourists by looking for ways to hide their everyday lives.

b. Another attitude of hosts towards tourists is resistance. This attitude can be passive or aggressive. Passive resistance may include grumbling, gossiping about, or making fun of tourists behind their backs.

c. Other communities actively invest money to draw tourists to create economic well-being. This attitude is called revitalization.

6. Of course, individual personality attributes play a factor in how well one copes with culture shock.

C. Travelers and Tourists

1. Travelers are intellectually curious.

a. They desire to explore new places, taste new foods, meet new people, and immerse themselves in cultures that are different from their own.

2. Tourists are more interested in cultural exploitation rather than cultural exploration.

a. A tourist would rather spend all day on a tourist beach than exploring a local, hidden beach.

b. The characterizations of "traveler" and "tourist" are not mutually exclusive categories. There are many overlapping and gray areas. But in general, the distinction between traveler and tourist is a matter of orientation.

D. Study Abroad

1. Culture shock has been studied extensively in connection with study abroad programs.

2. In addition to study abroad, there are other avenues for university-age students to have meaningful longer-term encounters with a foreign culture.

6.2: Managing Culture Shock

1. Many studies have been conducted and a few models have emerged that help explain the stages of culture shock.

A. One of the best known models is The W-curve model, proposed by Gullahorn and Gullahorn (1963).

B. The W shape represents the fluctuation of travelers' emotions when adapting to a new culture, and then when re-adapting to their home culture.

1. The first stage, often called the honeymoon stage, happens right at the beginning of the journey.

2. Stage two, the culture shock stage, is characterized by frustration and fatigue of not understanding the norms of the new culture.

3. Navigating the new culture becomes easier, friendships and communities of support are established, and the language and customs become more familiar; this adaptation to the new culture is the third stage, called the adjustment stage.

4. This fourth stage is referred to as reverse culture shock, or re-entry shock.

C. Young Yun Kim (2005) sees adjustments happening in a cyclical pattern of stress – adaptation – growth.

1. She sees stress as useful for an individual's growth and prefers "cultural adjustment" over "culture shock".

2. It's also the case that acculturation is not just within the power of the individual.

2. Tips for Managing Culture Shock:

A. One of the best remedies for managing culture shock starts with simply understanding that culture shock exists.

1. When we realize that culture shock exists, we have an explanation for the emotional turmoil caused by culture shock.

2. if we learn more about the host country, we may begin to have an understanding of the different norms and customs in our new environment.

3. When we enter an unfamiliar culture, we confront situations that we just don't understand.

4. To better manage culture shock, we need to learn to tolerate ambiguity.

5. The best advice for managing culture shock is to be mindful of ethnocentrism and suspend ethnocentric evaluations.

B. To manage that stress, we need to cultivate a positive attitude.

C. It's important to have faith in yourself, in the essential goodwill of your hosts, and the positive outcome of the experience.