According to Social psychologists, a stereotype is an over-generalized belief concerning a certain group of people. The reason for being generalized is because stereotypes are taken to be true for every individual person within the group. Despite the fact that stereotypes can be both negative and positive, they are, in everyday usage, understood as irrationally based negative attitudes concerning different social groups as well as their members (Cardon & peter, 162). When it comes to intercultural settings, the main aim of the participant is to understand the personality and attitudes of the communication partner. During this process, people mainly apply evidence as well as their existing beliefs concerning the members of that cultural group. These are known as cultural stereotypes. This paper aims at explaining how stereotypes hinder effective communication across cultures.
Discussion
Different research works have indicated that when people stereotype; they draw conclusions about an entire group of people that are based on common assumptions. Although stereotypes can shape communications, they are in most cases inaccurate and can sometimes result in considerable communication breakdowns. Most of the French people are open to the world as well as its diverse cultures. However, stereotypes hinder their intercultural communications due to the numerous communication barriers related to stereotyping (Jandt & Fred, 54). For instance, it has been proved by researchers that French observers only favor information that they believe is consistent with the existing expectancies, while rejecting or ignoring the information that is inconsistent with stereotypes.
Additionally, there exists numerous racial as well as gender stereotypes within the French contemporary workplace which negatively affect intercultural communications. Most of the organizations in the country are known to tailor communications to the minority internal audience based on poorly informed stereotypes. The communication missteps lead to lack of education, diversity as well as awareness of opportunities between the employees of different cultures (McCann, Robert & Shaughan, 328). Moreover, intercultural communication stereotypes negatively affect how French organizations receive feedback from employees and customers. For instance, communication researchers indicate that most of the French managers and executive directors perceive American female workers as more emotional while American male speakers are taken to be authoritative (Ting-Toomey, Stella & Leeva, 65).
Moreover, stereotypes negatively affect the way French communicators respond to their audience. For example, when it comes to face-to-face communications, most of the French employees admit that they are always uncomfortable communicating honestly with people from other cultures who they perceive to be uncooperative and aggressive based on stereotypes. It has also been proven that people respond differently to their colleagues with positive stereotypes than those with negative ones. Such behaviors make leaders and managers believe that certain groups of people are less cooperative when it comes to private meetings which makes them uncomfortable assigning them more tasks.
Most of the French businesses and organizations train their workers on communicating behaviors in major international as well as foreign markets. However, when such training is solely based on stereotypes it always has damaging results. For instance, any organization conducting business in Italy should understand that although the cultural norms in Italy allow for considerable looser timing than U.S protocols, not every Italian tolerates meetings that start late as well as vendors who fail to show up on time (Samovar et al., 37). Stereotypes can, therefore, hinder intercultural communications mostly when businesses train their workers to adhere to stereotypical practices as they risk offending clients.
Another reason as to why stereotypes hinder intercultural communication is that they normally lead to in-group favoritism, ethnocentrism as well as social antagonisms between people of different cultures. Additionally, stereotypes lead to prejudice that attributes negative characteristics which carry more emotional components (Martin, Judith & Thomas, 44). Stereotypes lead to negative feelings like anger, fear, dislike as well as condescension during intercultural communication. The feelings explain why people from a certain culture favor their own members.
Different research works have also indicated that stereotypical notions concerning the behaviors of members of the other party are responsible for individual emotional reactions to the other group of people (Kaufmann & Eva-Maria, 76). For instance, negative projected stereotypes hinder intercultural communication as they always lead to displaced hostility. This means that people behave towards others in hostile ways because of the assumption that the other party has hostile attitudes concerning their culture.
Stereotypes are also the reason as to why people from one culture assumes similarities instead of differences in other cultures which is among the major barriers to intercultural communication. While assuming similarities between cultures, people are mainly caught unaware of critical differences which affects intercultural communications. When one has no information concerning a new culture, it sometimes makes sense to assume that there are no differences and so one can talk and behave the way they would in their home culture. This hinders intercultural communications as some cultures perceive some actions to be rude or unethical during communication which might not be the case in another person’s culture. It is worth noting that the inverse is also a barrier to intercultural communication. When people assume differences instead of similarities, they end up failing to recognize the important aspects that different cultures share in common (Ion, Ana & Carmen, 277).
Despite the fact that stereotypes have some positive effects on intercultural communication, the negative effects outdo the positive ones. This means that stereotypes hinder intercultural communication because their continual use reinforces some false beliefs about other cultures. They also make people assume that the widely held believes about specific cultures are true of every person in the group (Lyons, Anthony & Yoshihisa, 67). For example, when a particular culture is stereotyped as dishonest, people always apply the stereotype to every member of the culture without considering any individual differences. When people use negative stereotypes to interpret behaviors and attitudes of people within a certain culture, intercultural communication is negatively affected by the negative stereotypes are highly reinforced. The group of people being stereotyped is therefore at risks because the negative stereotypes always become self-fulfilling prophecies for them (Weiping, 78).
Conclusion
It is evident from the above discussion that when people from various cultural backgrounds meet, the specific perceptions they have on each other can negatively affect their communication as well as interactions. Additionally, it comes out clear that culture is not necessarily based on nationality alone. Stereotypes and biases based on age, occupation, gender, appearance as well as social class equally influence intercultural communication outcomes. This is mainly because; they can lead to cultural barriers between people as well. Exploring the different roles of social stereotypes in relation to intercultural communication offers a chance to understand cultural foundations of the cognitive process of categorization. This means that it allows people to grasp folk perceptions of their colleagues from other cultures
Work Cited
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