1.1.

Purposes and benefits of encountering other cultures

A long time ago at school, Saliek met Fannie Yung, a Chinese abroad student. When they met,
they found entertaining to compare the differences in their cultures. This gave the chance to
Mr. Saliek to learn about Chinese culture, the Chinese zodiac and the Chinese New Year. With
the pass of time, Saliek and Fannie became close friends.
Later, Saliek started to work in a fast-food restaurant where most of his co-workers were from
Haiti. This time Saliek noticed that his co-workers had a fascination for his culture and also the
Haitians taught Saliek to speak French.
Every time we meet a new culture through new people, especially from different parts of the
world, it will be different. To find those new things is what makes meeting new people
interesting. With the experience, meeting new cultures will be easier, because every time we
meet new people we become more patient, we are in constant learning, and we acquire
empathy for teaching, we understand how people around the world think and that makes us to
rationally take good choices.
According to the story of Saliek and meeting new friends from different cultures the purposes
of benefits of encountering other cultures are:

Purposes Benefits

Experience Patience
Constant learning Empathy
Teaching Rationally thinking
To find new interests Decision making

Reflect on the following questions and try to come up with a solution for each, in case you need
to develop one of these skills:

• In your experience, is meeting new people difficult for you?

• How do you approach new acquaintances? What do you speak about?
• Do you keep in touch with new acquaintance?

As you grow older and collect new experiences, the challenges of creating social networks
become easier. As human beings, we are connected by social bonds, so it is important to
conduct positive experiences with the people you meet. You may consult the value of Positive
Relationship of Tecmilenio to learn more about this concept.
1.2. Exercising your character strengths
Positive psychology oversees trying to find habits we should implement for a life of mental
wellbeing that is related to other areas of our lives.. In this matter, it is a fact that appreciation
for other people and to be socially connected with individuals from different cultures helps us
develop our character strengths.
Character strengths are features of our personality or acting as people in a society which are
highly valued for their positive traits and grouped in six virtues. To own these six virtues will
make us be more productive and be better students and co-workers while keeping us healthier,
happier and more friends (socially connected).
The following image shows the six virtues and their character strengths that can contribute to
develop with when we meet new people from different cultures. Remember that the strengths
and virtues can be developed at different levels for each individual, so it is important to be self-
aware of these.

Think about the experience of getting out of the usual routine and visiting a new people,
whether it is out of the city or country. The word abroad is used to refer to a place that is
different from the one you live in. It is an expression that does not specifies the location, but
gives you an idea that a person is in a different place.
In the English language, there are many ways to refer to places. Here is a list of formal and
informal expressions.
Can you think of different ones?

• Abroad
• Overseas
• Far far away
• Out of the country/town
• Going Away
• Elsewhere
• On a journey/adventure/trip
• Wandering

Introduction
In this topic, you will learn about the changes we have to go through to adapt to a new culture
and the characteristics of each of the steps of the process. After, you will be advised on how to
make a cultural shock easier to overcome the difficulties of interacting in a new social
environment and to feel like home in a different country.
Content
2.1. Cultural adjustment curve
Spending life abroad is life-changing, every time you exchange time with people in other
countries you can learn something new. But the experience of living abroad can be challenging
at the beginning.
Some of the barriers include leaving behind our comforts like relatives and friends, familiar
environments, language barriers; including regional expressions, and social customs on how
people act to certain situations and their attitudes.
A student, tourist or resident will have to react to the new environment. They will start a
process where observation, learning, and reflecting will make them grow and change in
personal, social, and professional aspects of their life until they feel part of the culture, to later
become part of it. This process is called the cultural adjustment curve.
The phases of the curve can be summarized as follows:

As the person gradually begins to feel more at ease in the new environment, the social
networks and exploration of ideas also expand. The experience becomes more objective as the
person learns to accept the reality and maybe practice parts of the new culture while also
holding onto their own cultural traditions.
2.2. How do you represent your culture?
As you know, the cultural adjustment curve can be challenging. The challenges of the curve can
become easier by sharing the characteristics of your culture with your new colleagues or friends
this might create awareness to them; about the cultural shock you go through and what you left
at home.
Sharing your culture can be an enriching experience as you have the opportunity to question
your own traditions and beliefs.
Many times, people do not often share cultural opinions until they face the issue of having to
explain or share with people who have little to no knowledge of a culture. Some of the methods
to share your culture are:
Conclusion:
You don’t need to go abroad to immerse yourself in another culture. You only need the virtue of
curiosity and love of learning, there are many online resources that you can make use of to onle
resources and media to observe, analyze, and learn of other cultures. We recommend that you
dive into documentaries or docuseries that can be helpful to discover cultural information or
historical events.
Are you familiar with the concept of empathy? As part of Tecmilenio, you’ve probably heard of
it as the ability to understand and share the feeling of others. Or, as some might say, to put
yourself in other’s shoes. This ability also comes in handy when exploring new cultures. For
example, you may find that other cultures respect the life of animals as sacred, while in your
experience you may view them differently. It is not a matter or who is right or who is wrong,
but to respect and understand other’s point of view.

Introduction
In this topic you will learn about the importance of being an empathetic person and the
characteristics that a person can have when it is empathetic. Then it will be explained the
dimensions of the intercultural empathy and at the end you will make a practice with your
classmates to develop your empathy with the world.

Content
3.1 Types of empathy
Understanding the importance and characteristics of an empathetic person helps to understand
that intercultural empathy is a key element to succeed across cultures. Specifically, intercultural
empathy is divided into three main dimensions where each of the dimensions can be considered
a process in the acquisition of intercultural empathy. The three dimensions of intercultural
empathy are: Cognitive, emotional, and behavioral.
Cognitive empathy is based on the idea of putting yourself in the shoes of others. It is a change
of perspectives where we have to try and understand the distress of other people.
Emotional empathy brings the change of perspective to another level. To practice emotional
empathy you must feel what people feel and have the experience of internal conflict where you
will start thinking about how to solve other's distress.
Behavioral empathy means to adjust the way you will act when facing someone in cultural
shock or distress. But the correct adjustment of your behavior also needs the cognitive and
emotional empathy to have an appropriate adjustment for the harmony of an intercultural
socialization
3.2 Intercultural empahty
Sometimes you want to give your opinion, but you might think it is not appropriate. This can
happen to a person that goes through a cultural shock. Someone going through a cultural shock
might have problems expressing themselves. Imagine them having problems to express
something in a different language that is not native to them. Also, imagine being home-sick or
having doubts about, if the actions and opinions they want to give are cultural appropriate.
These problems occur often in encounters of people from different cultures. We cannot avoid
conflicts or misunderstanding, but we can take them as an opportunity.
Watch the following video that explains the differences between empathy and sympathy.
Keep in mind the three elements of empathy that are mentioned on the video: Perspective,
being non-judgemental, and to recognize emotions of others. To understand cultural diversity,
there are two ways of exercising empathy. The first is when you encounter a person from a
different culture you have to be aware when someone is having a difficult time adapting to a
different culture, to put yourself in their shoes, and then, to adjust your behavior to the needs
of the person having difficulties. After practicing this, you can consider yourself empathetic
with the ability to sense, understand and be supportive of other’s difficult feelings.
Characteristics of an empathetic person

• Sensitive to their environment

• Intuitive
• Connects with others quickly
• Put others before themselves
• Desire to improve the world
• Creative
• Compassionate
• Emotional intelligence
• Supportive to others
• Healthy relationships

Although each situation and interaction require different responses, it is important to maintain a
set of tools that can be useful when dealing with an issue. Besides the hard skills, such as
engineering, electronic, chemistry or physics, professionals nowadays must consider soft skills
and emotional intelligence to conduct themselves in the ever-changing and complicated
working field.
Conclusion:
Empathy comes with putting into practice various actions, such as listening and observing. How
can you connect with others? Reflect on this and comment with your group the possibilities to
be more empathethic.

Before we start
Read the following article about prejudice and culture:

• The Hofstra Chronicle. (2019). Pride and Prejudice: Diversity is about understanding, not
composition. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/2tjKreU

Pay attention to the sentence: “The benefits of diversity can overshadow the drawbacks if we
each do our part to increase our cultural and social awareness, understanding and sensitivity.”

• Identify the meanings of the words overshadow and drawbacks. Use these words in
other sentences or context.
• What is the takeaway message of this article? Comment in class.

Introduction
In this topic, you will learn about the concepts of prejudice and discrimination, and understand
what are the effects of people that practice it and how to solve it. At the end you will put into
practices all the learnings from module 1.

Content
4.1. What is prejudice?
When you are with your family and friends, you are used to speaking, playing, telling jokes, and
even conducting business. This behavior it is a reflex of your own culture. But, in a multicultural
environment we have to measure the way we act and avoid antipathy to other cultural
expressions different than ours and learn how to act with the help of empathy towards other
cultures.
In the other hand to have antipathy towards others is known as prejudice. Researchers found
that prejudice develops a negative personality and it can lead to a hateful behavior to other
human beings. Prejudice occurs when the stereotypes affect our vision of the world, especially
people.
During this module, you have learned about being open to new cultures and being ready to
interact with new people and always try to connect with the world. This method is recognized
as skills that can help you to tackle prejudice and develop your intercultural competence.
4.2. Discrimination
Discrimination is a behavior caused by prejudice. A case of discrimination occurs when people
are treated negatively with differences based on their cultural belonging. People can be
discriminated by their:
Empathy can help us to avoid direct or indirect discrimination. Someone is acting with direct
discrimination when the person acts negatively to people with specific personal characteristics
and someone acts with indirect discrimination when their attitudes towards people with
different characteristics put them in disadvantage.
However, how is prejudice or discrimination propagated? Some authors say that humans have
an unconscious mental process that makes us generalize and take information as it is, without
analyzing or questioning.
For example, if you Google an image by typing mathematics professor, you may find similarities
in the main images. It is a common thing to generalize, as it is a way for our brain to gather the
most important information and concepts.
The following video describes the motives and implications of prejudices or as some authors
refer to it as unconscious bias.
Answer the following questions:

• According to the video, what are the three main influences to make a decision?
• In your own words, explain the meaning of unconscious bias.
• By the end of the video, it mentions a strategy to avoid unconscious bias, what is it?
• Discuss with your classmates the most common bias about your culture, and how does
it make you feel?

Conclusion:
Self-awareness is a strategy that will help you to realize when you are being participant in
prejudice or unconscious bias. It is important to mention that generalization and stereotype
although they may have a negative connotation, they are part of our cognitive background. As
students, we must be able to adapt to new situations that will prepare us for the job
environment.