University of Applied Sciences, Fulda

Culture Shock and Its Process

Social behaviour of persons interacting with each other constitutes a mutually organised, skilled performance. Interpersonal friction arises when this performance breaks down or cannot be initiated in the first place. This is more likely to happen when one is not aware of the social codes and communication cues of the host community.
For instance, the face-saving methods in various cultures are different. The Japanese have a very indirect art of expressing themselves, because they do not want to cause the other lose face. Losing face in this culture is a deep disgrace. For the Japanese, then, the direct way of Americans who speak their minds freely is insulting. For Mexicans, like the Japanese, being publicly criticised is regarded as shameful and insulting.
Two cultural dimensions that significantly affect interpersonal communication style and content are individualism-collectivism and power distance (Hofstede, 1980). Most of the Asian countries have a high power distance, whereas Western cultures tend more to have a low power distance. For the Asians, therefore, it is more difficult to criticise someone who is higher in status and rank, such as managers or older people. On the other hand, a western European student in China can be held to be rude, impolite and having no respect for the others.
The more individualistic cultures demand that each individual rely on her/his own resources and act according to her/his individual decisions. Collectivist cultures, on the other hand, encourage the individual to sacrifice her/his rights for the sake of the group. Students coming from Middle-Eastern countries tend to feel uncomfortable when they have to work in a small team, because here they have to decide and cannot hide behind the big group.
Punctuality and simply the concept of time is of great importance in monochronic cultures. Here, 'time is money'. But, in polychronic cultures time does not play an important role. One can come to a meeting with at least two hours delay. This way of dealing with time can cause frustrations and generate negative stereotypes in more monochronic cultures. These examples show a variety of interpretations of the same concept. These differences can cause clashes between the different styles of behaviour: that is creating culture shock.
The term 'culture shock' was introduced for the first time in 1950s to describe the anxiety produced when a person moves to a completely new environment. (Ward, 2001). This term expresses the lack of direction, the feeling of not knowing what to do or how to do things in a new environment, and not knowing what is appropriate or inappropriate. Culture shock generally sets in after the first few weeks of coming to a new place.
Culture shock can be described as the physical and emotional discomfort one suffers when coming to live or study in or even visit another place or country. Often, the way that we lived before is not accepted or is considered to be odd. Everything is different, from the language to the performance of such simple tasks as shopping.
Symptoms of culture shock can appear at different times. Although culture shock is often accompanied by physical and psychological discomforts, it is also an opportunity for realising or redefining one’s values, norms and beliefs. It is an opportunity to learn and acquire new perspectives. Culture shock can be the beginning of the road to enhancing one’s objectives.
Culture shock can have many different stages. While checking various books and Internet websites mentioning the notion of culture shock, the writer came upon almost the same models, presented under different headings. It must be noted that most of the Internet websites checked by the writer dealt with ‘culture shock’ from the perspective of students who go to another country to continue their studies. Two of these models have been chosen as examples, the first from a website and the other from Hofstede (1994).

The First Model

Culture shock has many stages. Each stage can be ongoing or appear only at certain times. The first stage is the incubation stage: the new arrival may feel euphoric and be pleased by all the new things encountered. This time is called the honeymoon stage, as everything encountered is new and exciting(www.edweb.sdsu.edu).
Afterwards, the second stage presents itself. A person may encounter some difficult times and crises in daily life. For example, communication difficulties or miscommunications may occur. In this stage, there may be feelings of discontent, impatience, anger, sadness, and of incompetence. This happens when a person is trying to adapt to a new culture that is very different from the culture of origin. Transition between the old methods and those of the new country is a difficult process and takes time to complete. During the transition, there can be strong feelings of dissatisfaction.
The third stage is characterised by gaining some understanding of the culture. A new feeling of pleasure and sense of humour may be experienced. One may start to feel a certain psychological balance. The new arrival may not feel as lost and starts to have a feeling of direction. The individual is more familiar with the environment and wants to belong. This initiates an evaluation of the old ways versus the new.
In the fourth stage, the person realises that the new culture has good and bad things to offer. This stage can be one of double integration or triple integration, depending on the number of cultures that the person has to process. This integration is accompanied by a more solid feeling of belonging. The person starts to define him/herself and set goals for living.
The fifth stage is the stage that is called the re-entry shock. This occurs upon a return to the country of origin. One may find that things are no longer the same. For example, some of the newly acquired customs are not in use in the old culture.

Hofstede’s Model of Culture Shock

The phenomenon of culture shock, in a simpler language, is also referred to by Hofstede. He believes that culture is a sort of mental software: ” . . . the collective programming of the mind which distinguished the members of one group of people from another . . . culture is learned, not inherited. The source of one’s mental program lies within the social environments in which one grew up and collected one’s life experience. A customary term for such mental software is culture” (1994:4‑5).
Culture is learned or acquired. “Every person carries within him or herself patterns of thinking, feeling, and potential acting which were learned throughout their lifetime” (Hofstede, 1994:4). The stranger, therefore has to start learning the whole new system, not to mention the language, from scratch. Hofstede describes this process as a state of regression: ”. . . the visitor in a foreign culture returns to the mental state of an infant, in which he or she has to learn the simplest things over again” (1994:209).
The results of such a change in one’s life are distress, helplessness, depression, and hostility towards the new environment, to name a few. After the first wave of shock is over, the stranger starts to learn the language and culture of the host group. Being an adult and the fact that one is expected to function as an adult makes it difficult for the stranger to express her or himself in the new language or by using the new tools of the host culture. Frustration and rejection of the values and norms of the host group can be the next reaction. Naturally, as time goes by, one learns more and more and can build some kind of picture of how to live and function in the host group. Here, the process of adaptation and, in the long run, probable integration commences.
Hofstede explains the process of culture shock in four phases, which are shown in Figure 1:
“In this diagram, feelings (positive or negative) are plotted on the vertical axis; time on the horizontal one. Phase 1 is a
(usually short) period of euphoria: the honeymoon, the excitement of travelling and of seeing new lands. Phase 2 is the period of culture shock when real life starts in the new environment. Phase 3, acculturation, sets in when the visitor has slowly learned to function under the new conditions, has adopted some of the local values, finds increased self-confidence and becomes integrated into a new social network. Phase 4 is the stable state of mind eventually reached. It may remain negative compared to home (4a), for example, if the visitor continues feeling alien and discriminated against. It may be just as good as before (4b), in which case the visitor can be considered to be biculturally adapted, or it may even be better (4c). In the last case the visitor has “gone native” - she or he has become more Roman than the Romans. [1994:209-210] Figure 1: Acculturation Curve, (Hofstede, 1991:210)