Cultural Awareness

As you go through cycles of adjustment within a new cultural setting, your awareness of the culture increases. While your development may fluctuate, plateau, and possibly even regress at points, cultural awareness tends to progress through a series of four levels.

  1. Unconscious Incompetence
    At this level, you are likely ignorant of what is going on around you. You may be unaware of cultural differences; it may not occur to you that you may be making cultural mistakes or that you may be misinterpreting the verbal and nonverbal cues and sensory stimuli that surround you. You are caught up in your own world view and have no reason to do anything differently than you ‘normally’ would.
  2. Conscious Incompetence
    You now realize that differences exist between the way you and the local people behave, though you understand very little about the differences. Things are unfamiliar, or uncomfortable, and you now know that you can’t rely on your former worldview to understand a situation. You have concerns because you can’t seem to figure things out.
  3. Conscious Competence
    You know cultural differences exist and what some of these differences are, and you are able to adjust to the differences (to a point). You still must make a conscious effort to behave appropriately, but you are much more aware of your environment and how you are viewed by those in the host culture. You are beginning to understand and adapt your values. You know now that you can figure things out if you can be more objective and curious.
  4. Unconscious Competence
    You can now behave the right way (as ascribed by the host culture) without having to think about it. Culturally appropriate behavior is ‘normal’ to you. You can trust your behavior, your thoughts, and the values that you now hold. It takes little to no effort to be part of this culture.

Adapted from: W.C. Howell and E.A. Fleishman (eds.), Human Performance and Productivity. Vol 2: Information Processing and Decision Making. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum; 1982.

End of Module Assignment: writing activity and partner interview

Writing Activity

  • Write a personal (chronological) account of a significant amount of time spent living in another cultural setting, either within your own country or abroad.
  • Include as much context as possible:
    • Who was an important part of your experience?
    • Why were you there?
    • When did this occur?
    • What two or three events, interactions, situations, etc., had an impact on you?
    • How did this time away affect you when you returned to your home culture?
  • Submit your account to your assignment partner for review.

Partner Interview

  • Acting as intercultural researchers, you and your partner will conduct interviews with each other (based on each other’s assignments).
  • Use the following questions to guide your discussion:
    • What barriers did you face in your host culture? (Explore Module 6 topics)
    • What were a few noticeable periods of intercultural development? (Explore Culture Shock stages, and the DMIS)
    • Can you describe a time when you interpreted a situation incorrectly? What happened as a result?

End of Module Summary

  • Culture shock can be a difficult/uncomfortable process to go through, but when we recognize we are having culture shock, it tells us something is different, which then allows us to learn and develop. 
  • Culture shock includes the honeymoon stage, negotiation stage, adjustment stage, adaptation stage, and re-entry shock.
  • The Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS) presents six ways in which people experience, interpret, evaluate, and interact across cultural differences. It allows reflection and a deeper understanding on how to negotiate differences across cultures.
  • The three ethnocentric stages are: denial, defense, and minimization
  • The three ethnorelativistic stages are: acceptance, adaptation, and integration
  • Description, interpretation, verification, and evaluation are the key components of the DIVE model. Its objective is to help people view unfamiliar or ambiguous situations from multiple perspectives and to suspend judgment.
  • The development of cultural awareness progresses through four levels: unconscious competence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, and unconscious competence.

References and further reading on concepts in this module:

Check out the following links and references.

www.now-health.com
- Culture shock

Bennett, M. J. (2017). Development model of intercultural sensitivity. In Kim, Y. (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Intercultural Communication. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

organizingengagement.org
- Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity

Tools_to_Suspend_Judgment_for_AFS_and_Friends.pdf
- DIVE model

Exercise

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