Posted on December 04th, 2003 01:18 PM by admin

“Culture regulates our lives at every turn. From the time we are born until we die there is, whether we are conscious of it or not, constant pressure upon us to follow certain types of behavior that others have created for us.” -- Clyde Kluckholn

Every person has a culture that has been acquired from his or her own cultural group. People tend to regard their own culture as correct and often use the standards of their own culture to judge others. Each society tries to pass its culture on to his children. When someone travels to another country and encounters people from the new culture, there is an immediate need to make adjustments if he is to function well in that society; there are a number of stages a person passes through as he tries to adjust.

Problems of personal adjustment to a foreign environment are referred to as “culture shock”, a common experience for a person learning a second language in a new culture. It is usually brought on by sudden loss of familiar surroundings. The effect that culture shock has on an individual ranges from mild irritability to deep psychological panic and crisis. Culture shock is associated with feelings of estrangement, anger, hostility, indecision, frustration, unhappiness, sadness, loneliness, homesickness, and even physical illness. The person undergoing culture shock views his new world out of resentment, and alternates between being angry at others for not understanding him and being filled with self-pity.

Anthropologists agree that individuals adjusting to a new culture pass through several stages:

Stage 1 (also known as the honeymoon stage) is the stage of happiness or euphoria over the newness of the surroundings;

Stage 2, culture shock emerges as the individual begins to feel more and more cultural differences. In this stage the individual is deeply disenchanted and in a

Stage 3 the person begins, slowly but surely, to accept and adjust to the differences in thinking and feeling that surround him. He then begins to become emphatic with the persons in the new culture.

Stage 4 represents recovery, either adaptation or assimilation. In this stage the person feels a new confidence in the new person he or she has become. This last stage is re-entry.

Pierre Casse (1981) has provided a model of the culture-shock process. He summarizes the entire culture shock process. He says, “It has to be stressed that (a) the process is different from one individual to another, and (b) people's reactions vary broadly. And yet it seems that there is a pattern which can be taken into account when trying to adjust to another culture”. (p.88)

Casse then presents four stages of the Culture Shock process:

Stage 1. First Contact. Preconceived ideas have a tremendous impact on the way one reacts when joining a new cultural environment. They always exist. The higher the expectations, the more chance one has to be disappointed.

“The first reactions have been identified by psychologists as spread on a spectrum which goes from being excited to ill at ease with a sort of “wait and see” position in between. The reactions depend on the individuals, their personalities and cultural backgrounds. Someone can be at the beginning of the joining process and become terribly upset after a while. Another individual can remain cool and just curious during the entire adjustment. The very nature or expression of the excitement and uneasiness will also vary one culture to another.

Stage 2. First attempt to adjust. After the initial reactions, the individual makes his first attempt to adjust to the new cultural setting. He is immediately confronted with the problems:

He receives demands from the environment for which, to his amazement in most cases, he has no ready-made answers. The situation can indeed be embarrassing since he does not know what to say, what to do, or how to say it and do it.

The solution is, of course, to adjust the existing behavioral patterns or create some brand new ways of coping. This leads to the second problem which is characterized by the fact that the individual's behavior does not deliver what it was intended to do. In other words, the reactions from the environment are not quite expected.

The third problem is related to the fact that the newcomer tries to observe and understand what is going on in the new social system he now belongs to, and it seems to him that people do not make any sense.

Stage 3. Confrontations Creating Stress. The confrontation with the new cultural setting can lead to some emotional reactions which are by all means healthy. They signal to the individual the need for further action in order to “survive”. They can sometimes become too extreme and lead to what psychologists call an identity problem. The individual feels (very strongly) that he or she has to prove something not only to the people around but mainly to himself or herself.

Stage 4. Coping with Stress. People who experience some kind of anxiety have three options to recover or control the situation. The positive or negative of each option to recover or control the situation. The positive or negative of each option is a function of the degree to which it is used. Overdone, the healthy, functional reaction become dysfunctional. It has to be pointed out that in each un-adapted reaction there is something positive. The individual can flee or withdraw, be aggressive or assertive, give up or adjust. Let's notice that (a) what is good and functional for one individual cannot be so for another; (b) the three options can be used alternatively; and (c) what is functional in one situation can be dysfunctional in another (pp.82-87) By Irina Timchenko
Russian Women Video Marriage Agency

Courtesy of: Irina Timchenko - Russian Women Video Marriage Agency

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