Saturday, October 20, 2012
Chapter Concept - Week 8
The concept in intercultural communication that caught my attention the most was "cognitive biases used to maintain prejudices" on pg. 339. Being prejudice is a negative attitude towards a different group of people by one group. The attribution bias defines as classifying a person of a group to be rude, because they are that way naturally, not because of a stressful day or event. I have come across this situation numerous of times, being an outside onlooker of people judging others for their act of rudeness. Yes, a person should not act rude to another in venting after a day, but it does happen. We are all human and we have emotions that reveal themselves time to time. Labeling a person of a group as rude because "they" as a whole are all rude, it prejudice. In customer service, an individual must be patient and not assume because a person is a certain race, gender, culture, religion, or even hair color, they are going to come off rude by nature. I have had experience with others assuming I was rude, even based on my culture, hair color, and skin tone, when in reality, the others never gave me a chance to speak, or interact to provide my kindness. It is heart-breaking that these biases constrict the intercultural communication from furthering and benefiting the community as a whole.
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I think that this is a common issue, and we see it everywhere around us. Sadly most of the people that label others are too self centered and they often don't want to hear the opinions of others.
ReplyDeleteI chose to write about the same concept, and you are definitely right. It is so easy to judge others, but we have to keep more of an open mind and understand that people aren't at all what they may seem. It is easy to get sucked in by how we may percieve someone, but truth is people come off certain ways that may not be how they truly are at all. Keeping an opening mind, and remembering we don't want others to judge us is important.
ReplyDeleteHello Hazel,
ReplyDeleteI think that prejudice is something that we have learned to live with in our society, rather than something that we have tried to fight. Yes we have fought so that black people can vote and we have fought against slavery. But we don’t fight our own assumptions of a person that we base on their race or gender. Everyone has their own personal prejudices and the only way to break them is through experience. I love eating Sushi but often times my servers are rude and mostly they are of Japanese descent. I know that not all Japanese people are rude but every time I go to eat sushi I tend to be treated poorly. I decided that I like going to sushi restraunts where more of the servers are Caucasian and with this I have formed a prejudice. I have on occasion been surprised by my Japanese servers and I usually comment on how great they were. We form our own prejudices even on simple things that we do every day. The best thing that we can do, is keep trying the same thing over with someone new and hope that they will breakthrough your assumptions.