Mini-Tutorial: What Did You Say? Intercultural Expectations, Misunderstandings, and Communications

The ability to put things into conceptual categories or stereotypes is fundamental to perception. Stereotypes have advantages with respect to one's interactions with someone from another culture: They facilitate prediction of cultural behaviors, illuminate intent, and help one to avoid giving offense. However stereotypes also have serious disadvantages. For example, it is not hard to imagine the difficulties and embarrassments that may result when the intent predicted by a stereotype disguises real intent or when the behavior anticipated by it does not match real behavior. The film Lost in Translation provides excellent, comedic examples of such embarrassments and difficulties. Cultures have been analyzed by several researchers using combinations of sociological surveys and personal experience. These cultural dimensions and simple behavioral tools for accommodating cultural differences are briefly described here (more fully described in the workshop).