Hi. I'm Julie Tietz and welcome to Conflict Resolution, Putting the Pieces Together. Today, we're going to talk about cultural worldview and how our culture of origin has an effect on our perception of how the world should be. We're going to start off by looking at culture.
So what exactly is culture? Well, you may be familiar with some of the things that culture involves. Would be art and language and food. But these are not the only things that are a part of culture. It also includes assumptions on how things are and what they should be in the eyes of our culture. So how the world should operate, how people should address one another, how people should act, and how, generally, things are supposed to be.
So our cultural worldview is how we interpret and make decisions about our environment. And this includes our assumptions and beliefs about what we consider to be right or normal. So it's a collection of assumptions and expectations that are shared by all members of our culture.
And when we say all members, we really need to be careful and recognize that when we are talking about cultural worldviews, we are making broad and general tendencies about members of that specific culture. And it's also important to know that not all members of a specific culture feel or act on their worldview in the same way.
And so when we're talking about worldview, we got to make sure that we are noting that this is broad and general and also to avoid stereotyping. Stereotyping is when we form a belief that those broad and general tendencies of a specific culture or trends or traits apply equal across the board to every single individual member of that group.
And when we do this, we're making the culture and the people of that culture simplistic representatives of abstract traits of their culture, rather than looking at them as individuals. So the difference between recognizing cultural worldview and stereotyping is recognizing, yes, there are some general tendencies or traits that a specific culture has, but also noting that members of a specific culture are individuals and not every single person may have the same worldview or feel the same way as it pertains to their assumptions and beliefs and expectations about how things are or how things should be.
Let's talk a little bit more about how we can express our world views or how cultural worldviews are expressed. So we see traditions and norms and rules within a specific culture that are generally and broadly applied across that specific culture. And we wouldn't consider these worldviews, but rather means of expressing worldview. And they are not worldviews in and of themselves.
They are ways in which we express our cultural view world views. And there are a lot of different ways in which we can express our cultural worldviews. Maybe one way in which we express our worldview is through the clothing that we wear and, broadly, our culture wears similar clothing styles.
But we have to be careful to be sure, again, not to assume that every specific person within that culture has identical beliefs or behaviors about what type of dress to wear and to avoid the stereotyping that occurs when we do so. And so if somebody is wearing a type of dress from a particular culture, we shouldn't assume that that person is necessarily a part of that culture or takes on all of the views of that particular culture.
Let's talk about how cultural worldview relates to conflict. So according to the research of Kohls, Hofstede, and a couple of other academic researchers, they have found that there are certain elements of worldview. And these elements may affect how people perceive and behave in conflict and conflict resolution.
And a part of this comes from that we all take on our assumptions that are derived from our culture and how we expect people to behave. So we believe that our culture and our worldviews are universal and so. When we come in to contact with somebody from a different culture or a different cultural worldview, a cross-cultural conflict can occur, because we are expecting that other person to act in a way that is in line with our own cultural worldview.
So again, the research that has been done shows that our world view may affect how we behave in conflict, how we interact with conflict, and if we'd be more willing to enter into a conflict resolution process, or if we would be reluctant or maybe we are more direct approaching the conflict, or maybe we're avoiding it. So our worldview affects all of these different elements involved in conflict and conflict resolution. It's not necessarily absolute, but it may affect our behavior in conflict and conflict resolution.
Here are your key points on cultural worldview before we go. So culture includes external manifestations, such as art and language and food. But also it includes our assumptions on how things are and how we believe things should be, whereas our worldview is a collection of assumptions that are shared by our culture.
And we have to know that not everyone takes on the same moral view in a culture. So we have to be sure to avoid stereotyping and making it seem like every single person in a culture adapts or believes in the same worldview or behaves the same. So we want to make sure that we are not generalizing too much in terms of individuals within a culture.
And through the research from Kohls and Hofstede and others, we found that our cultural worldview may affect how individuals interact in conflict and conflict resolution. Here are your key terms before we go. Feel free to pause and look at them a little bit closer. Thank you so much for taking the time out to view this. I hope that you've learned something and I can't wait to catch you again next time.