You are going to be studying abroad for the next semester. The accompanying professor knows you are currently taking this cross cultural psychology class and has asked you to prepare a brief exercise or lesson on cross-cultural differences, to help prepare your fellow study abroad travelers with some tips to help ease the transition. You can think of your own travel experiences, or even with friends from different cultures. Did you have moments when you learned, oh this is different, this would have been helpful to know before? Take these types of moments and create a lesson or exercise to teach someone else about how this type of situation can be avoided or handled differently. Answer the following questions to help you create your exercise or lesson.
1. What kind of culture are you going to be studying abroad in. Is it an individualistic culture, masculine, high context, or a tight culture? Describe the culture you will be going too, (this will also help you to shape what type of exercise or lesson you will create)
2. We have learned about many cross cultural differences and some ways we can be more aware of these differences. Pick one theory, concept, theme, or case (from our book and powerpoint slides) and describe how your culture would behave on these. (ex. individualistic culture would be low context, so what people say is what people mean). Here are some ideas of constructs you could use: ethnocentrism, language, individualism/collectivism, status, power, control, gender roles, nonverbal behaviors, attention, perception) Is your culture individualistic, masculine, high context, low context, high power distance, or tight versus loose?
What theories, concepts, or ideas do you want to focus your presentation on? (pick 1) Do you want to look at cognitive differences (East Asians are holistic), educational differences (formal education systems and math), gender stereotypes (women must act a certain way), culture and nonverbal behavior (physical distance between people or gestures) ,values (what we value may not be what they value), emotions (how we express them or facial expressions), stereotypes (how they are often more about what we think than what others think about themselves)
3. Design an exercise, presentation, game, video, to help your fellow study abroad travelers ease into the transition of the new culture. The exercise should present both cultures in comparison to each other. You can create a video or music video to teach someone about the differences. We saw a few videos like that and there are a few more below. How cultures see things like gestures differently. You can create a game, where the game puts certain values first, like you have to work together versus working it alone. Or you can do a simulation, where you act a certain way and then have someone mirror the same behavior but in a different cultural context. So, our culture (you can pick US or Hawaii or the culture you identify with: just make sure you tell me what this is) in comparison to the culture you specified in question 1. The exercise should be based upon your responses to 1 and 2.
4. Debrief, how did your game, exercise, or video teach someone about the cultural differences.
* If you do make a presentation or video please answer questions 1 and 2, and then post a link to the video. If you are unable to host the video to an online server you can attach it here.