Analyze the Dynamics of Intercultural Interactions. Lesson 2. In this lesson, we will identify the barriers in intercultural interactions. One of the first barriers at the most basic level is when we're not being mindful about an interaction that is occurring. We should all strive to be mindful about our present moment and learn according to a set framework. For example, frameworks for sharing in these lessons about intercultural communication and conflict. To optimise the moment, and avoid breakdowns in relationships, a simple barrier is our humanity. Our biology itself makes us anxious about anything new and different. That in itself can be a barrier to full understanding comprehension and the ability to ask questions rather than jump to conclusions. We also have the tendency to wanna simplify living. Our brain works fast, absorbing many pieces of data through what how feel and what we see, and in that summarization can sometimes be lost interpretation, and we make assumptions. As a simple illustration of this concept, imagine yourself happily walking through a foreign land, safely and easily. You walk along with comfort, and you're smiling and you're looking straight at someone coming towards you. Let us say that this person makes contact with your eyes, but then looks down and grimaces. You continue to smile, and you wonder, how should you interpret the interaction with this individual? Should you be happy that they looked away so you could not be uncomfortable? Should you be disappointed, because you would like to have eye contact and a smile and possibly even a conversation? Because we're moving quickly, we sometimes can create a judgement. And that judgement can sometimes be wrong. Our perception is the key. We are informed, in our perception, through cognitive and affective inputs. A cognitive input includes particular facts that we're able to ascertain. And our emotions are certainly things that we can learn to understand and categorize. How we process all this information, is informed by our history and the influences of our surrounding. Everyone sees their country, typically, as the center of the universe. As human beings, we see ourselves as important and that leads to certain beliefs. We've already discussed that we learned those beliefs through a cultural process, being a human being in the societies we grow up in. It's how we are taught to survive. Stereotypes are an example of a generalization, and over generalizations can be hurtful. When we accumulate information about others, it's important that we maybe have an understanding of another culture's tendency, but not to overtly apply that definition to the other person in our interaction. Instead of negatively portraying that other party, we should simply seek to understand the interaction we have. And if we're at our best, we can ask the other party how and why they are interacting with us the way they are. That would be far better than stereotyping the other party. And all of this would be for the intention of achieving the full interaction of ourselves and our other party in our interaction. Prejudice is a negative, antagonistic sense towards a group that is not familiar to us or an out group. Prejudice is a biased mindset. Discrimination are actions that are carried out by a prejudiced mind. Although not strong prejudices, necessarily, how we see another group as in or out of our own circle, has a bias to how we perceive them. For example, if a positive event exists, has occurred, for an ingroup, we attribute the skill to them. If a negative event occurs within an ingroup, we often point to the situation that has caused the bad outcome. It is commonly true also, if a positive event occurs for an outgroup, we typically see the environment or the situation as causing the good outcome. If a negative outcome has occurred with an outgroup, we criticize the outgroup. That is our natural tendency. We have to not give in and fight that natural tendency. Take a look at this slide. Based on our different cultures, we would interpret these different hand gestures, eye movement or eye direction, assertiveness, facial expression, all very differently. Look for example on the far left at the bottom, the gentleman with what one could consider a confident pose in some cultures, may be considered a rude pose in another culture. And the young lady at the bottom with the curly hair, with the black shirt and her hands clasped, one could interpret that as a friendly gesture or a far too informal gesture in the workplace based on your culture. And the gentleman in the top middle image with his finger on his face, how would you interpret that in your culture? And finally, the female on the far right. In your culture, how would this stance, pose, and eye contact be taken? All of these are open to cultural interpretation.
