Potential Barriers to Intercultural Communication

Stereotypes are a form of prejudice everyone will once experience in their lifetime. Stereotypes are centered around an individual's race, gender, social class, religion, and age. They have been known to be elements people use to make judgments and subjectify people to one key feature. As Gordon Allport states, “ To state the matter technically, a noun abstracts from a concrete reality some one features and assembles different concrete realities only with respect to this one feature”(364). Mr.Allport’s words can be summed up to say stereotypes have been used as key fundamentals to associate one feature or aspect of a person with a group that represents it, typically in an unfavorable way.

According to the textbook, Social Psychology by Aronson, Wilson and Ekert, stereotyping is, "a generalization about a group in which identical characteristics are assigned to virtually all members of the group, regardless of actual variation among the members" (Aronson et al, 597). In other words, stereotyping occurs when assumptions are made about a group and its members, regardless of whether all the members possess the attributions of the assumptions. Some stereotypes are formed to make us feel better about ourselves and about the group to which we belong, while other stereotypes are formed to help us better understand and categorize the world around us. Stereotyping and other theories closely

The intercultural challenges I am currently facing is my CQ knowledge. I am having challenges because I cannot find common ground when working with a variety of cultures. For example, I work as a customer service representative in a call center and I’m around a variety of cultures. I find it very hard to understand everyone’s triggers, their dislikes, and likes, and why they behave or act a certain way with different situations. I try to ask questions to grasp an understanding of their behaviors, and still find it quite challenging to reach common ground. I try to be very open-minded, however, it always causes me to become frustrated.

Stereotypes are generalizations about a group of people whereby we attribute a defined set of characteristics to this group. These classifications can be positive or negative, such as when various nationalities are stereotyped as friendly or unfriendly.

Stereotyping is when a judgement is made on a group of people because of the actions of a few. Stereotyping happens because of misinformation and other people’s opinions.

A "stereotype" is a social perception of an individual in terms of group membership or physical attributes. Stereotypes are generalizations made about a group and then attributed to all members of that group.

A stereotype is “...a fixed, over generalised belief about a particular group or class of people.” (Cardwell, 1996).

Stereotyping, an unfairly belief that all people or things with a particular characteristic are the same. (Merrriam-Webster dictionary) In this paper I will explore stereotyping, give examples including personal ones, how it affects individuals and their families, and how it affects the care they receive by the health care system.

Stereotypes can be defined as sweeping generalizations about members of a certain race, religion, gender, nationality, or other group. They are made everyday in almost every society. We develop stereotypes when we are unable or unwilling to obtain all the information we would need to make fair judgments about people or situations. By stereotyping, we assume that a person or group has certain characteristics. Quite often, we develop these ideas about people who are members of groups with which we have not had firsthand contact. Stereotyping usually leads to unfair results, such as discrimination, racial profiling, and unnecessary violence, all behaviors which need to be stopped.

This text is a good reference point. This text is used to understanding communication within culture. This source also gave a better understanding

Today, we live in a culturally diverse society due to globalization. As our world grows, expands and become increasingly more interconnected, the need for effective interpersonal communication among differing cultures has become apparent. When people from different cultures interact with one another there is intercultural communication because different cultures create different interpretation and expectations about what is seen as competent behaviors that will enable the construction of shared meanings.

These generalizations create negative or positive attitudes towards these stereotype groups. Stereotyping is defined as the "making of generalizations about groups of people on the basis of limited information" (Straubhaar and LaRose: 379, 2004). Stereotype is not the way people behave in certain environments but in fact, the way one has views about them either negative or positive through the way media portrays them.

Although prejudice and stereotype seem similar, they actually have two different meanings. While stereotyping involves the generalization of a group of people, prejudice involves negative feelings when “they” are in the presence of or even think about members of the group. “Prejudice comes from direct intergroup conflict, social learning, social categorization and other cognitive sources” (Ferguson). Not all stereotypes are negative; there are also positive and neutral stereotypes. Some stereotypes do not slander a race, culture, gender, or religion, but nonetheless generalize a group of people that may or may not be true. For example, some people say that all Asians are smart or good at math. Though people of Asian descent may often be more studious, not all Asians do equally well in school (Floyd, 62). Another common example of a positive stereotype is that all black people are good athletes, dancers, and singers. Though these are positive stereotypes, when people believe them, they don’t take into account that every person is an individual and different. A neutral stereotype

Previous researchers have found that for a person to achieve better and more effective communication competence, it is necessary to develop skills that allow an appropriate participation in specific situations. The ability to listen, ask questions, and express concepts or ideas effectively is an important part of communication competence. Intercultural communication presents an unexplored and challenging field that needs to be understood for a better development in communication. (Dillon and McKenzie, 1998). The variables of listening depend on the different perceptions that a person obtains through their cultural background. Furthermore, culture often affects the structure of consciousness in the act of listening. When a person seeks to

Intercultural communication competence refers to the ability of an individual to adapt and communicate appropriately and effectively across a wide array of cultural contexts. That is to say, for an individual to be considered an intercultural communicator they must understand other’s cultures as well as they understand their own, and apply this understanding to communication (Chen 1-2). With the increasing diversity at the workplace, school and other social settings, it has become increasingly important to learn how to communicate with people from a diverse array of cultures. More importantly, adapting to a more effective intercultural communication competence model provides us with learning opportunities occasioned by the interaction with people from other backgrounds. The intercultural communication competence model comes with some key components including tolerance for uncertainty, self-knowledge, and motivation. The greatest and most important of these aspects is motivation. An individual must be willing to foster relationships with people from a different cultural background. If an individual lacks the willingness to promote intercultural relationships, then other aspects of the intercultural communication model become moot.