TOPIC 5 - CULTURAL ADAPTATION

Question 1

What is cultural adaptation?

Answer 1

• Long-term process of adjusting to a new environment

6 stages of adaptation:

- Preliminary stage: Learning about the culture, trying to prepare for the trip
- Tourist/honeymoon stage: excitement from the culture feeling good about being in the new culture. Usually lasts a short period of time
- Participant: Taking part of things and events within the culture
- Culture shock: a feeling of disorientation and discomfort due to the lack of familiar environmental causes. 
- Adjustment: Any effort to cope with stress  - Adaptation: Individual feels bicultural

Question 2

Discuss the role of uncertainty management in managing intercultural encounters. Why is uncertainty a problem? What is the difference between predictive and explanatory uncertainty? How do we work to reduce this uncertainty?

Answer 2

• Uncertainty Management is the transition to a new context or society where they feel anxious or uncertainty. It is a problem because when these emotions arise, we want to alleviate the symptoms as much as we can, so we avoid them. We don’t grow from them.
  
  • Predictive uncertainty is the inability to predict what someone will say or do
• Explanatory uncertainty is the inability to explain why people behave as they do

Question 3

Describe the transition model (fight/flight) of cultural adaptation.

Answer 3

• The flight or fight model is the initial reaction of the body to stress during the alarm stage
  
  • The fight response is not engaging in the event or culture
    The flight response is going home and avoiding event or engaging in observation

Question 4

Describe the stages of adaptation according to the U-Curve model of adaptation.

Answer 4

○ Honeymoon
○ Culture shock
○ Adjustment
○ Mastery

Question 5

What is culture shock?  
When and why does it occur?  
What are the causes? 
What are the symptoms?  
What makes some people experience culture shock more severely than other people?

Answer 5

• Culture shock: a feeling of disorientation and discomfort due to the lack of familiar environmental causes.
  
  • The causes can be loss of familiarity, loss of control, challenges in normal functions (communicating, eating, transportation, etc.)
    Symptoms include: irritability, withdrawal, depression, sadness, homesick, physically ill.

Question 6

Describe W-Curve model.

Answer 6

Moving into a different culture, coming back to home culture

Question 7

What is acculturation?

What forms may it take according to Berry? (assimilation, integration, separation, marginalization)

Answer 7

• Acculturation is adopting the cultural traits or social patterns of another group.
  
  • The forms are:
    ○ Assimilation: doesn’t matter to you to maintain your own cultural identity and characteristics, maintain relationships with other groups
    ○ Integration: maintain cultural identity & characteristics & maintain relationships with other groups
    ○ Separation: Maintain cultural identity & characteristics; doesn’t want to maintain relationships with other groups
    Marginalization: Doesn’t want to maintain relationships with other groups & doesn’t want to maintain cultural identity & characteristics

Question 8

According to Berry, what are the four ways that the host culture may respond to migrants?

Answer 8

• Multiculturism: Values diverse racial, ethnic, national, and linguistic back grounds and so encourages the retention of cultural differences with society.
  
  • Melting pot: Cultural blending in which groups accept many new behaviors and values one another. This exchange can produces a new cultural system, which is a blend of the previously shared systems.
  • Segregation: Separation of people based on racial, ethnic, or other differences
• Exclusion: Imposes marginalization

Question 9

How does the adaptation process influence one’s cultural identity?

Answer 9

Adapting to another culture can change someone’s worldview and perspectives on things because they have opened themselves up to a different culture

Question 10

How does the host culture influence the adaptation process?

Answer 10

• Depending on how inviting the host culture is to the person “intruding”

Question 11

What does it mean to become “Americanized?” How do we know when someone is Americanized? How does this relate to cultural adaptation?

Answer 11

• To be materialistic, individualistic, fast-paced, future oriented, and to value time
  Immigrants often have to become less group-oriented and more selfish & adapting to the sense of time and seeing time as a commodity.

Question 12

What was the “Madrid myth?” How does it relate to acculturation and adaptation?

Answer 12

If you can speak perfect English without an accent, people will assume that you are American. However, no matter how much they adapt, they are still going to be marked as “other”.

Question 13

Describe the strategies that individuals in intercultural relationships may use to manage cultural differences.

Answer 13

• Submission: Letting go of your belief to assimilate to the other culture
  
  • Compromise: Both parties change their goals to make them compatible
  • Obliteration: Getting rid of both orientations and doing something new
    Consensus: Similar to compromise; coming up with a way to incorporate both beliefs