Cross cultural understanding: a handbook to understand others’ cultures

A.
 
Cause of shock culture 
Besides language barrier, frustration, anxiety and stress 
also occur whenever people can‘t do all the things they are 
accustomed to doing in their everyday lives. These can 
include work, home and leisure related activities that they 
are either no longer able to do at all or no longer able to do 
like they are accustomed to. For example, sometimes 
because of differences in transportation services people 
cannot move around as freely or as widely as they are 
accustomed 
to. 
Additional 
issues 
such 
as 
telecommunication system, things like grocery shopping, 
gas-station system, getting to work, and other things can lead 
to frustration also. 
Another source of considerable distress for some people is 
not being able to eat the foods they are accustomed to.
Anyone who wants to live and work overseas should be 
prepared to make considerable changes in their diet and get 
accustomed to the local foods and the sometimes limited 
selection of familiar foods in the stores and restaurants. They 
may not have the nice variety of very large and well-stocked 

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Cross Cultural Understanding | 105 
grocery stores they had back home or the many choices of 
restaurants and fast-food places.
And lastly is the issue of values. A person can experience 
considerable stress and anxiety when they are living in a 
different culture with different values from their own. A 
person may find that some of their own cherished and deeply 
held values and assumptions about life may not be equally 
important to members of their new host culture. The areas of 
religion, moral behavior, justice and fair play, racial equality, 
work ethic and privacy are areas where there may a great deal 
of cultural relativism, and people living and working overseas 
need to learn to deal with these differences in a relaxed and 
nonjudgmental way.