The value belief puzzle

The value belief puzzle. Value and belief systems, with their supporting cultural postulates and world views, are complex and difficult to assess.

They form an interlocking system, reflecting and reflective of cultural history and forces of change. They provide the bases for the assignment of cultural meaning and evaluation. Values are desired outcomes as well as norms for behavior they are dreams as well as reality, They are embraced by some and not others in a community they may be the foundations for accepted modes of behavior, but are as frequently overridden as observed. They are also often the hidden force that sparks reactions and fuels denials.

Unexamined assignment of these characteristics to all members of a group is an exercise in stereotyping. ATTRIBUTIONS AND EVALUATIONS Often values attributions and evaluations of the behaviors of strangers are based on the value and belief systems of the observers. Have you heard or made any of the following statements? Guilty or not? Americans are cold. Americans don t like their parents. Just look, they put their mothers and fathers in nursing homes. The Chinese are nosy. They re always asking such personal questions.

Spaniards must hate animals. Look what they do to bulls! Marriages don t last in the United States. Americans are very friendly. 1 met a nice couple on a tour and they asked me to visit them. Americans ask silly questions, they think we all live in tents and drink nothing but camel s milk! They ought to see our airport! Americans just pretend to be friendly they really aren t. They say, Drop by sometime but when I did, they didn t seem very happy to see me. Of course, it was ten o clock at night! How should such statements be received? With anger? With explanation? With understanding and anger? Should one just ignore such patent half-truths stereotypic judgments, and oversimplifications? Before indulging in any of the above actions, consider what can be learned from such statements.

First, what do these statements reveal? The speakers appear to be concerned about families, disturbed by statistics, apt to form opinions on limited data friendliness, given to forming hasty and unwarranted generalizations Spanish bullfighting, and angered by the ignorance of others.

No one cultural group has a corner on such behavior. Second, we might be able to guess how certain speakers might feel about divorce, hospitality, or even animals. Third, the observations, while clearly not applicable to all members of the groups about which the comments were made, represent the speakers perceptions.

To many, Americans are seen as cold and uncaring. Because perceptions and native value and belief systems play such important roles in communication, it is important to recognize and deal with these perceptions-correct or incorrect, fair or unfair. In the following part of this chapter the concept of value orientations will be explored. This will be followed by a review of the major value orientations associated with people from the United States. These orientations will be contrasted with those of other culture groups.

Such an approach to cross-cultural variations in values and beliefs is far more productive than flat denial or even anger, as we form evaluative frames of reference for ourselves and hold them up to the frames of others we shall, at the very least, learn a great deal about ourselves. VALUE ORIENTATIONS Compiling a list of cultural values, beliefs, attitudes, and assumptions would be an almost endless and quite unrewarding endeavor. Writers in the field of intercultural communication have generally adopted the concept of value orientations suggested by Florence Kluckhohn and Fred Strodtbeck 1961 . In setting forth a value orientation approach to cross-cultural variation, Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck 1961 10 pointed out that such a theory was based upon three assumptions 1. There are a limited number of human problems to which all cultures must find solutions. 2. The limited number of solutions may be charted along a range or Continuum of variations. 3. Certain solutions are favored by members in any given culture group but all potential solutions are present in every culture.

In their schema, Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck suggested that values around five universal human problems involving man s relationship to the environment, human nature, time, activity, and human interaction.

The authors further proposed that the orientations of any society could be charted along these dimensions. Although variability could be found within a group, there were always dominant or preferred positions. Culture-specific profiles could be constructed.

Such profiles should not be regarded as statements about individual behavior, but rather as tendencies around which social behavioral norms rules values, beliefs, and assumptions are clustered. As such, they might influence individual behavior as other cultural givens do like other rules, they may be broken, changed, or ignored. In the Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck classification, three focal points in the range of variations are posited for each type of orientation.

In the man-to-nature continuum variations range from a position of human mastery over nature, to harmony with nature, to subjugation to nature. Most industrialized societies represent the mastery orientation the back-to-nature counterculture of young adults during the 1960s and 1970s, the harmonious stance and many peasant populations, the subjugation orientation. The time dimension offers stops at the past, present, and future. Human nature orientation is charted along a continuum stretching from good to evil with some of both in the middle.

The activity orientation moves from doing to being-becoming to being. Finally, the relational orientation ranges from the individual to the group with concern with the continuation of the group, as an intermediate focal point. Value orientations only represent good guesses about why people act the way they do. Statements made or scales constructed are only part of an as if game. That is to say, people act as if they believed in a given set of value.

Because the individuals in any cultural group exhibit great variation, any of the orientations suggested might well be found in nearly every culture. It is the general pattern that is sought. Value orientations are important to us as intercultural communicators because often whatever one believes, values, and assumes are the crucial factors in communication. CONTRASTIVE ORIENTATlONS Let us take some American cultural patterns that have been identified as crucial in cross-cultural communication and consider what assumptions, values, and attitudes support them. Edward C. Stewart was a pioneer in examining such American behavior in a cross-cultural perspective.

His book - American Cultural Patterns. This book describes dominant characteristics of middle class Americans. Stewart distinguishes between cultural assumptions and values and what he called cultural norms.

Cultural norms are explicit a repeatedly invoked by people to describe or justify their actions. They represent instances in which the behavior and the value attached to it seem at odds. Stewart writes, Because cultural norms are related to behavior as cliches, rituals or as cultural platitudes, they provide inaccurate descriptions of behavior. He points out that Americans are devoted to the concept of self-reliance but accept social security, borrow money, and expect a little help from their friends.

Culture bearers are usually more aware of their cultural norms than their systems of values and assumptions. As Stewart explains, being fundamental to the individual s outlook, they the assumptions and values are likely to be considered as a part of the real world and therefore remain unquestioned. Table 1, illustrates some of the general value orientations identified with North Americans. The left-hand column indicates what the polar point of the orientational axis might represent.

The Contrast American column does not describe any particular culture, but rather represents an opposite orientation. Of course, the American profile is drawn in broad strokes and describes the mainstream culture ethnic diversity is of necessity blurred in this sweeping treatment. Thus, with the reservations noted above, it can be said that in the relationship of human beings and nature, Americans assume and thus value and believe in doing something about environmental problems.

Nature can and should be changed. In addition, change is right and good and to be encouraged. That toe pace of change has increased to a bewildering point in the United States at the present time presents problems, but, as yet, change has not been seen as particularly detrimental. Equality of opportunity is linked to individualism, lack of rigid hierarchies informality, and other cultural givens. It is manifested in American laws regarding social conduct, privacy, and opportunity.

This contrasts with an ascriptive social order in which class and birth provide the bases for social control and interaction. The achievement orientation calls for assessment of personal achievement, a latter-day Horatio Alger Lee Iacocca orientation. A future orientation is joined to the positive value accorded change and action. Directness and openness are contrasted to a more consensus-seeking approach in which group harmony is placed above solving problems. Cause-and-effect logic joined to a problem-solving orientation and a pragmatic approach to problems defines the much-vaunted scientific method.

Intuition and other approaches to evidence, fact, and truth are associated with being orientations and philosophical approaches to knowledge and knowing. Competition and a do-it-yourself approach to life are well served by a future orientation, individualism, and the desire for change. The statements above simply point out some very general orientations that have driven and, to some degree, still guide North American society.

Change is always in the air. Many have pointed out, as Stewart himself does, that these orientations represent white middle class American values. They do. They serve the purpose, however, of providing a frame of reference for cross-cultural comparison. Table 2 offers a contrastive look at some American and Japanese values. Such culture-specific contrast alerts us to the need to examine our cultural values and assumptions from the perspective of others. As one studies the dimensions of contrast, one cannot help but marvel at the communication that does take place despite such diversity.

Okabe, in drawing upon Japanese observations about some well-known American values, reveals a new perspective to us. For example, the bamboo whisk and octopus pot metaphors refer to a reaching out tendency in the United States as opposed to the drawing inward of the Japanese. Omote means outside and omote ura combines both the inside and outside world.

In the heterogeneous, egalitarian, sasara-type, doing, pushing culture of the United States, there is no distinction between the omote and the ura aspects of culture. In the hierarchical takotsubo-type, being, pulling culture of Japan, a clear-cut distinction should always be made between the omote and the ura dimensions of culture, the former being public, formal, and conventional, and the latter private, informal, and unconventional. The Japanese tend to conceive of the ura world as being more real, more meaningful.

Interpersonal relationships contrast on the basis of the role of the individual and group interaction. Japanese patterns are characterized by formality and complementary relationships that stress the value of dependence or amae. Amae is the key to understanding Japanese society. The concept of amae underlies the Japanese emphasis on the group over the individual, the acceptance of constituted authority, and the stress on particularistic rather than universalistic relationships.

In the homogenous, vertical society of Japan the dominant value is conformity to or identity with the group. The Japanese insist upon the insignificance of the individual. Symmetrical relationships focus on the similarities of individuals complementary relationships exploit differences in age, sex, role and status. There are many ways in which the Japanese publicly acknowledge a social hierarchy-in the use of language, in seating arrangements at social gatherings, in bowing to one another and hundreds of others.

Watch Japanese each other and the principles will become quite apparent. Notice who bows lower, who waits for the other to go first, who apologizes more 1 younger defers to older 2 female defers to male 3 student defers to teacher 4 the seller s bow is lower than the buyer s and 6 in a school club or organization where ranks are fixed, the lower ranked is, of course, subordinate. These features of interpersonal relationships lead to an emphasis on the public self in the United States and on the private self in Japan, Americans being more open in the demonstration of personal feelings and attitudes than the Japanese.

Let us look to this question in detail.