Differences in Relationships Between Western and Non-Western Cultures

Love, sex and relationships. These three aspects of life are in every culture. Although they are present in every culture, the characteristics of these three are portrayed differently between each and every society. Various cultures are influenced by the media, social norms, and traditions. The media portrays sex as if everyone is “doing it” all the time. This not only includes people who are married, but single people as well. Social norms, however, seem to look down upon people constantly having sex. Having sex constantly with many partners is not respected or accepted. And in tradition, it depends greatly from culture to culture. For the Muslim culture, wives are treated like property, where in America, marriage is the equal joining of two partners. To examine the differences between each culture/country in the world, we must dive into each culture’s beliefs and values amongst sexuality, relationships, marriage and love. The cultures focused on in this paper are Asian, European and American cultures.

A prompt literature review reveals the glaring cultural disparities between Asian and Western societies. The Asian-American community originates from Asia and thus first generation Asian-Americans mostly bear and abide to Asian norms and customs (Geary, 2004). These norms and customs especially apply to the institution of marriage and processes that entail it such as mate selection and preferences. Nevertheless, parental influence feature prominently in mate selection practices across a majority of Asian-American communities. This is through homogamy tendencies in parents or long held familial traditions. Within families, the role of female members is especially pivotal in determining the dating and marriage lives of family members. Falcon

Love is thus expressed in a cultural context and those who are not in the frame can feel pressures from their respective cultures to not reveal their love (affairs, homosexual relationships). Looking at cohabitation, using statistical researches, it has been showed that the frequency of cohabitation is higher in young couples than old ones, demonstrating a change over time in the cultural way of seeing it.

In this article, Ethnic, Gender, and Acculturation Influences on Sexual Behaviors, the researchers hypothesize that “...general differences in normative sexual practices in healthy Euro-Americans, Asians, and Hispanic populations, using measures of acculturation to analyze the relative effects of heritage and mainstream cultures within each group.” (Meston and Ahrold, 2008) The study shows “A total of 1,419 undergraduates (67% Euro-American, 17% Hispanic, 16% Asian; 33% men, 67% women).” (Meston and Ahrold, 2008) The subjects in this study completed questionnaires that evaluated sexual experience and casual sexual behaviors. In this study, Ethnic, Gender, and Acculturation Influences on Sexual Behaviors, the researchers find that Asian women

Discussion: The role of culture in human relationships with considerations of the implications for attachment theory.

Dating is the initial step process to achieving intimate union. For centuries, people tended to date and marry others who looked just like them, but the twenty-first century dating scene is culturally diverse. And because people become the most neurotic versions of themselves on their quest for “true love,” some individuals seeking affection begin to fetishize a particular race, and often times that race is Asian. Asian women are statistically the most fantasized about and sought after, yet their other half, Asian men, lack in comparison. The statistically proven gap in desirability for Asian men and women is linked to the physical and mental myths

The reason I am writing this paper is to share the information I attained about human sexuality by learning about sexuality in a college setting and by exploring my sexuality through personal experiences. I do not consider myself to have experienced much exposure to sexual behavior but I do have a cultural bias to what I consider a heavy amount of exposure because the North American culture is considered more promiscuous and sexually active than other cultures.

Social constructionism not only plays a role in physical attraction, but is key in emotional

Love between man and woman is the precious one of human that people must spend a lot of time and effort to seek. However, there is a perceptive difference of love between Western culture and Eastern culture. Westerners find out freedom and satisfaction in love and marriage is a great importance of their life, therefore they often cohabitate to learn about their partners carefully to get a

even though sexuality can be considered universal, the sexual behaviors affiliated with it offer different attitudes in various communities. Sexuality is aligned to sexual attraction where individuals can identify themselves with a broad range of sexuality that is bisexual, gay or being lesbian. Sexuality can change over time in a person depending on the circumstances surrounding him or her. It may be affected by the social circle and emotional imbalances that may occur in an individual. Interestingly there exists sexual inequality among many societies in the world. As observed, many societies encourage men to have multiple sex partners but forbid it in women. Moreover, pre-marital sex is promoted in men, but women are flaunted if they participate in pre-marital sex. Across the globe, Western Europe has embraced certain norms in sexuality such as homosexuality whereas African society embraces a negative attitude towards the same.

There has been extensive research done on the differences between cultures and how they react to conformity. It can be seen that overall there are major differences between Eastern and WEIRD (western, educated, industrial, rich, and democratic) cultures in the values associated with conformity. These values associated with conformity are not isolated in different age groups within a culture. The three papers being discussed in this paper, Kim & Markus (1999), Clegg et al. (2017), and Zhang and Thomas (1994) all discuss these differences between Eastern and Western cultures. Through these papers, it can be seen that there is a clear distinction between cultures and their views on conformity whether it be positive or negative. The

There are many factors that go into a person’s selection on finding a suitable life partner such as, what the opposite sex offers in terms of personal traits. Everyone has their own idea of who they would like to marry, and they often establish certain images in their head of who would make a worthy mate. Some characteristics of a suitable mate may be, physical looks, financial stability, love, or sexual chemistry. To find a suitable partner, people go through a series of dating, such as online dating, speed dating, or dating someone with mutual friends, before finding “the one”. Dating has changed significantly compared to before industrialization. Industrialization brought changes to dating by the invention of the automobile, which made traveling easier. Prior to industrialization, parents were involved in mate selection, and interaction between opposite sex was limited (Seccombe 2012, p.188). In most of today’s culture, dating is a free choice among people, except for arranged marriages. Although who you date is considered a person’s own choice, people often are bound by socially constructed cultural norms that determine what is acceptable sexual behavior, also known as sexual scripts. Sexual scripts that provide the norms regarding sexual behavior, varies between race/ethnicity, social class, and gender.

On June 30, 2017, I interviewed my grandmother Nancy Fabrizi to talk about some cultural differences she faced when coming over from Abrizzi, Italy in 1949. I chose to interview my grandmother because she came to North America when she was only 14 years old and she came during a time where there were many cultural differences between Italy and North America. Nancy and her uncle decided to start fresh and travel to Canada from Italy on a ship to hopefully have a better way of living. Little did Nancy know that it would be one of the hardest transitions she would ever have to go through. In my interview, I asked her some questions about things she experienced, such as culture shock, reentry shock, stumbling blocks, and differences in cultural values and styles.

My upbringing is atypical compared to most white, middle-class females, I would also assume different than my classmates. What once caused me a sense a dread now gives me a sense of pride because I have lived a life others have not. I feel I have a better understanding of the diversity of the community than people I know. I frankly did not need an assessment to point out my knowledge of cultural differences as I have lived with many diverse cultures. I explain to my children that they are at a disadvantage growing up here as there are not the cultural differences like we had in Georgia, especially where I lived. My hometown is also the home for one of the largest nuclear submarine bases. I was fortunate to grow up with many diverse cultures as the Navy brings diverse backgrounds into an area. I have explained to my children that I believe prejudices form from ignorance. Our school assimilated the diverse cultures and brought their histories into our education. There is a bias against the South being racist, and there is truth in that. I would argue, though that here in the Northeast I have seen more prejudices from people that I did down south. While growing up I lived with many different races, cultures, religions, and people of different sexual orientation than mine. What I quickly learned was that we are all the same, and the differences are just in our mind. As I have explained to my children, prejudices are useless as people show you what they want you to

Culture has a profound influence on psychological processes (Kitayama & Park, 2000). Cognitive and perceptual differences in Eastern and Western individuals are a result of the variations in cultural values and belief systems. These cognitive inconsistencies are associated with cultural disparities in biological processes and emotional development (Kitayama & Park, 2000). For this report, culture will be defined as: “the beliefs, customs, arts, etc., of a particular society, group, place, or time (Merriam Webster).” This paper will focus on the biological and emotional differences in cognitive processing between cultures. First, I will review the cultural differences in cognitive processing. Then, I will discuss the biological variants in cognitive processing between cultures. Finally, I will review the relationships between emotions and culture, and examine cultural differences in cognitive representations of emotions.