Personal Essay On Cultural Norms

Before taking this class, I often thought that our advanced society was the standard in which to measure all other societies from, but after reviewing the material in this course, it is impossible to make such a comparison. Many of the people in a culture similar to the U.S. would probably find most of the cultures we have studied to be “slow”, strange, or undesirable. In fact, it seems that many of the societies actually prefer to live the way they do and accept it as normal. “Normal” is a relative term, and it is difficult to establish evidence to label a culture or its characteristics abnormal. What may seem to work here often would be disastrous to other cultures.

Have you ever wondered how people from different countries view your lifestyle? Have you ever thought that people from different cultures have a unusual way of doing things? Culture is defined by dictionary.com as “the quality in a person or society that arises from a concern for what is regarded as excellent in arts, letters, manners, scholarly pursuits, etc” (Dictionary.com). Culture is something that defines what our beliefs are and how we handle certain situations. People all around the world have their own culture that they considered to be normal. As humans, it’s one of the things that actually make us human. However culture can skew our perception of other cultures. Because of our perception is causes us to shun anything that is not

Culture is a string indicator of the how the self relates to others. This strongly affects communal values,

Everybody in the world is born into a culture. We, as humans, adapt to this culture, and change it into our own. Even though we refine our culture to match our personalities, we still hold the values that we’ve learned originally from our culture and heritage. These values that we hold affects us in ways that some people don’t even realize. A person’s culture affects the way a person views the world and others to a great extent because culture shapes perspective. Perspective gained from culture affects the viewpoint of a person’s world and the people in it.

We live in a society that compels us to behave and appear a certain way. From a young age, our parents instruct us on how to socialize, who to socialize with, and how to dress and act. It is all in the name of normalcy, a life where we abide by the norms that have been socially constructed for us. One of the most harmful and widespread social norms is that of heterosexuality. Throughout a child’s developmental period, parents, teachers, and society as a whole press the gender binary and heterosexual relations upon them in a practice known as heteronormativity. Heteronormativity is present in our society and plays a key role in suppressing the sexuality and gender identities of LGBTQIA+ youths, causing them emotional distress.

All cultures have a visible aspect and one invisible. Within the visible we can find: our physical appearance that includes how we dress, hair cut, the traditions, the symbols used on t-shirts, books we read, the music we hear. Within what is not so visible include the values ​​, beliefs and perspectives on life and the world. Generally, people seek relationships with people of the same cultures that share these codes. The problem is created when we meet people from different cultures, we find it hard to understand them and belittle them because we do not think or act like us. Cultural intelligence gives us the breadth, flexibility and ability to deal with these challenges effectively. Furthermore, it requires from us that we understand that no culture is superior to another culture. Differences notwithstanding, all cultures are valuable and can contribute in a positive way. Therefore, it is

There have been countless debates as to whether a person’s actions are molded by nature or nurture. Nature is simply looking at the person’s DNA. While nurture primarily focuses on the environment and experience a specific person encounters. In addition, nurture can be seen as the social norms and traditional values that most people follow in order to fit in. Gender also plays a big role on how a person is molded. Women tend to have it harder when it comes to following social rules because more is expected of them. A man, however, can do just about anything. Around the late 1870’s women did not have the social freedoms they do now. For instance, a woman could not take out a loan without the permission of a man. In addition, women did not have careers because the men in their lives would take care of them. Instead of worrying about financial troubles, women spend the majority of their time raising their children. Since social norms and traditional values play a big role on how women act, many writers have written plays, short stories, and books that focus on these issues. A writer named Henrik Ibsen wrote a play called A Doll House that exemplifies how the main character, Nora, deals with having to keep a secret from her family and friends; in the end, she reveals her secret to her husband and he concludes that she is unfit to raise their children, which causes Nora to decide to leave her family in hopes of trying to find out what life would be like if she lived on her own.

We use social interaction to discover more about the people and the world around us. People can influence our behavior in many ways. Our behavior is determined the social situation. Social roles are the different positions a person can become within a group. These roles are important because each role is a different set of behaviors. When individuals grow and mature, their role may change. Some roles change for the better, some change in an undesirable way. Social norms are defined as a set of unwritten rules about how we behave. The behaviors that fulfill a social norm is called conformity. Conformity can be defined as the change in behavior due other people’s influences (Aronson, Wilson, & Akert, 2013).

If one does not understand the differences it can cause issues to arise as “so many variables are unknown to the communicators” (Balsmeier and Heck, 1994). One must be able to understand the values, attitudes and belief of another culture to communicate successfully. Though too often stereotypes and prejudice stand in the way of effective communication. As Balsmeier and Heck (1994) state, “people tend to make judgements about others based on observed behaviour”, preventing people learning about the true aspects of a culture (Balsmeier and Heck, 1994). Individuals should be able to go beyond negative stereotypes and generalisations (Tannen, 1984). Too often these prejudices get in the way of determining the true character of someone (Tannen, 1984). These prejudices can be eliminated through education, as Banciu (2011) states, “cultural learning is essential” (Banciu, 2011).

Culture influences our expectations of what is appropriate or inappropriate and also learned and reflects the values of a society. It frames our experiences and provides us with patterns of behavior, thinking, feeling, and interacting. In summary, culture affects every prospect of daily life - how we think and feel, how we learn and teach, or what we consider to be beautiful or cross-grained. However, most people are unaware of their own culture until they experience another. In fact, we don 't regularly suppose about our culture until somebody violates a culturally-supported expectation or we find ourselves in a situation where we have the feeling that we violated somebody else 's cultural expectations, but are inconsonant how.

Culture influences our expectations of what is appropriate or inappropriate and also learned and reflects the values of a society. It frames our experiences and provides us with patterns of behavior, thinking, feeling, and interacting. In summary, culture affects every prospect of daily life - how we think and feel, how we learn and teach, or what we consider to be beautiful or cross-grained. However, most people are unaware of their own culture until they experience another. In fact, we don 't regularly suppose about our culture until somebody violates a culturally-supported expectation or we find ourselves in a situation where we have the feeling that we violated somebody else 's cultural expectations, but are inconsonant how.

In some cases there are people that don’t really matter with culture to see how a person reacts to but the to get to know for what she/he is. So there might be people that think that just because they are from that culture that they will act what you imagine to be. Either way you maybe right but that you might be wrong so it depends how they act in their own way. One’s culture rarely informs the way one views the world because not everyone decided to to their parents culture they might change, but they might choose to but act in a different way that you have imagine. This idea is supported by memoir, novel excerpt, and personal essay.

All people have a particular idea of themselves. The idea of who they are and who they are not. The way people lead an everyday life within an environment and interactions with other human beings make them feel closer connected to some groups of people and different from others. How feeling similarity and difference in society affects ability to attain a positive sense of self and meaning are an important questions within psychology. Theory of social identity constructed by Tajfel and psychosocial theory of identity created by Erik Erikson are two of theories which give answer to this question.

Culture affects our perception because the perception that we have on things around us is largely based and affected by the judgmental skills, emotions, attitude, and notions and preconceived acquired from culture. Our biases play a great role in our perception on whether a certain thing is bad or good and this is also affected by our way of thinking. Our motivation and attitude plays the great role in our judgment on whether something is simple or complex. These factors are closely connected to our culture and that’s why culture determines our structure of thinking and this in turn influences our perception (Eliot, 30).

In conclusion, I believe our culture shapes the way we perceive our own reality. We learn our culture. Perceived by and about gender, age, and social class is based on some type of culture. Whether it be race, ethnicity, religious, physical appearance and ability, and regional and national characteristics. Communicating across cultures is significantly demanding than communicating within a single culture, because we are all culturally different and have less in