Culture’s Effects on Communication

People behave differently and this is no less true during communication. It is assumed the culture one grows up in affects their behavior and communication styles. It follows people raised in different cultures will approach communication in different ways allowing the possibility of contrasting and comparing these behaviors across cultures. This may be useful when using the East and West comparison this thesis uses. Previous research in intercultural interaction that focuses between East and West is briefly reviewed followed by an explanation of culture’s effects on communication.

Research reviewed by Kim, Aune, Hunter, Kim (2001) and Kim (1994) show ways people approach communication and how their perceptions of communication vary across cultures. The reasons for this are varied and have been attributed to many factors. For example, one factor is communication anxiety or apprehension, which is the fear associated with the possibility of having to communicate with another person (McCrosky, 1977). A lot of research uses cultural dimensions to explain culture’s impact on communication.

Some studies that use cultural dimensions as a tool to explain communication differences across cultures have found that levels of communication anxiety vary across cultures and are related to individualism-collectivism. Once again findings in this area do not predict behavior of people from those cultures (Gudykunst & Ting- Toomey, 1988). Gudykunst and Ting-Toomey also found extensive research which apparently supports the idea individualism - collectivism directly influences communication behavior. However in a later work Gudykunst, Matsumoto, Ting-Toomey, Nishida, Kim, and Heyman (1996) found that self construals and values were better predictors of communication styles than Hofstede’s individualism - collectivism dimension. In that paper Gudykunst et al. (1996) still felt individualism - collectivism influenced communication but was mediated by self construals and individual values. Other research has also found the influence of culture on communication is partly mediated by self-construals (Kim et al., 2001).

When people from different cultures interact they approach the situation in ways they are familiar with according to experience in their native culture. For instance members of collectivist cultures are concerned with not harming or disturbing others, while members of individualist cultures are concerned with clarity during conversation (Kim, 1994). Accordingly, members of different cultures may have conflicting methods and outlooks during interaction. The individualism - collectivism dimension is often tied to low and high context communication respectively (Gudykunst & Ting-Toomey, 1988). If these assumptions hold then interactions between members of low-context and high context cultures will be conducted using different behaviors and further suggest the likelihood of conflict and misunderstandings.