Interpersonal Communication- A Mindful Approach to Relationships, 2020a

cultural group(s). In the case of cultural stereotypes, cultural members share a belief (or set of beliefs)
about another cultural group. For example, maybe you belong to the Yellow culture and perceive all
members of the Purple culture as lazy. Often these stereotypes that we have of those other groups (e.g.,
Purple People) occur because we are taught them since we are very young. On the other hand, maybe
you had a bad experience with a Purple Person being lazy at work and in your mind decide all Purple
People must behave like that. In either case, we have a negative stereotype about a cultural group, but
how we learn these stereotypes is very different.
Now, even though some stereotypes are accurate and others are inaccurate, it does not mitigate the
problem that stereotypes cause. Stereotypes cause problems because people use them to categorize
people in snap judgments based on only group membership. Going back to our previous example, if you
run across a Purple person in your next job, you’ll immediately see that person as lazy without having any
other information about that person. When we use blanket stereotypes to make a priori (before the fact)
judgments about someone, we distance ourselves from making accurate, informed decisions about that
person (and their cultural group). Stereotypes prejudice us to look at all members of a group as similar
and to ignore the unique differences among individuals. Additionally, many stereotypes are based on
ignorance about another person’s culture.
Try this exercise: picture someone named Mel. OK, now picture someone named Hillary. What did
the people you pictured look like? The immediate impressions we get in our minds occur because of
stereotypes we associate with these words. One of our authors has a cousin named Melanie, who is often
called Mel by the family, and our coauthor had a close friend in college, who was a male, named Hillary.
This simple exercise demonstrates how often and easy it is for stereotypes to enter into our heads.
Another function of culture is that it helps us establish norms. Essentially, one’s culture is normative, 16
or we assume that our culture’s rules, regulations, and norms are correct and those of other cultures are
deviant, which is highly ethnocentric. The term can be defined as the degree to which an
individual views the world from their own culture’s perspective while evaluating other cultures according
their own culture’s preconceptions, often accompanied by feelings of dislike, mistrust, or hate for cultures
deemed inferior. All of us live in a world where we are raised in a dominant culture. As a result of being
raised in a specific dominant culture, we tend to judge other cultures based on what we’ve been taught
within our own cultures. We also tend to think our own culture is generally right, moral, ethical, legal, etc.
When a culture appears to waiver from what our culture has taught is right, moral, ethical, legal, etc., we
tend to judge those cultures as inferior.
One of our coauthor’s favorite examples of the problem of ethnocentrism comes from the MTV
television show Road Rules: The Quest. In one episode, one of the contestants, Ellen, is walking around in
Marrakech, Morocco, wearing very short shorts. In an Islamic country where a woman wearing revealing
clothing is a violation of Islamic law, Ellen was violating the culture’s dress code. To this end, some of
the villagers in Marrakech took it upon themselves to correct Ellen’s nonverbal behavior by throwing
rocks at her. Of course, Ellen just couldn’t understand why these male villagers were throwing rocks at
her. Although throwing rocks at another person should be viewed as universally inappropriate, Ellen’s
ethnocentric behavior and complete lack of understanding of Muslim countries were also inappropriate.
Ellen was walking around in a foreign country and was completely unaware that she presented herself in
public was seen as an insult to Allah and society. Admittedly, this episode aired in July 2001, so we were
just a few short months before 9-11 and the public awakening to a whole range of issues occurring in the
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Interpersonal Communication