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Neuliep, Intercultural Communication, 8e
SAGE Publishing, 2021
Lecture Notes
Chapter 5: The Perceptual Context
Learning Objectives
5.1. Discuss cross-cultural differences in perception
5.2. Define and discuss racial and ethnic stereotypes across cultures
5.3. Define and discuss the nature of ethnocentrism and racism
Chapter Outline
I. Introduction
A. Perceptual context: How the human brain takes in, stores, and recalls information.
C. Intercultural communication: A process of connecting the perceptual contexts of
the two interactants within the other contexts.
D. Our knowledge of the world is dependent on our senses, which is subjective and
biased.
E. Culture is the software of the mind: An analogy by Geert Hofstede.
i. Human brain as a computer where information is entered, stored, and
recalled.
II. Culture and Cognition
A. People from different cultures think about different things: Due to differences in
their natural environments.
B. People from different cultures think differently about their life experiences.
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a. Focus is on how Asians (Eastern cultures) and Westerners think
differently from each other and why.
D. A Model of Human Information Processing
i. Stage #1: Input/Sensation.
a. Perception: The mental interpretation of external stimuli via
sensation.
b. Sensation: Gathering of visual, auditory, olfactic, haptic, and taste
stimuli/ information.
c. Perceptual filters: Physiological, sociological, and psychological
processes that screen and bias incoming stimuli.
ii. Stage #2: Storage/Memory
a. Memory: The storage of information in the human brain over time.
• Required for virtually all human communication.
• Without the ability to store information over time, we could
not communicate with others.
d. Three types of long-term memory:
• Episodic long-term memory: A component of long-term
memory in which private individual memories are stored.
Sometimes called autobiographical memory.
iii. Stage #3: Recall/Retrieval
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a. The human information processor excels at retrieval.
• Most adults can easily recall the name of their second-grade
teacher but cannot remember what they had for dinner 3
nights ago.
d. Forgetting could be due to many reasons:
• Decay: When a memory is not rehearsed or used over time.
• Interference: During recall, when new or old information
blocks or obstructs the recall of other information.
• Negative arousal, or anxiety: Persons suffering from anxiety
often report being unable to recall certain information.
• Repression: When people actively, but unconsciously, forget
unpleasant material.
e. Effort required to gather and store information may affect its
retrieval.
E. Cross-Cultural Differences in Memory and Retrieval
i. Cultures have different educational systems and methods, their people may
have different memory skills.
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b. Schooled individuals are more likely to classify similar objects
together, whereas nonschooled persons classify objects based on
their functional similarity.
ii. Exploring Japanese and U.S. students’ recognition memory of statements
made during a videotaped mathematics lesson.
a. The Japanese and U.S. students were equally successful at
recognizing relevant statements, but U.S. students remembered
more irrelevant statements than did the Japanese.
iii. Culture’s language and literacy rate may affect recall.
a. Nonliterate societies develop mnemonic skills differently from those
of literate societies.
F. Categorization and Mental Economy
i. Categorization: Classifying or sorting of perceived information into distinct
groups.
a. Grouping, sorting, or classifying objects, events, or living things
into identifiable groups or compartments based on the belief that
the category members share certain features or characteristics.
ii. All people, regardless of culture, engage in categorization and it is a
necessary part of everyday life.
vi. Form categories based on perceived conspicuous differences.
a. Conspicuous differences categories are based on easily seen
similarities or differences.
b. These types of categories are formed quickly during initial
interaction with someone from a different culture.
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c. Conspicuous differences may stem from skin color, dress, language,
or occupation.
d. These differences help classify others as members of in-groups and
out-groups.
vii. In-groups and out-groups: A principal category formed by people that
often leads to intergroup discrimination and intergroup bias.
viii. Culture affects categorization.
a. People from Asian cultures, especially the Chinese, create holistic
categories and that Westerners create analytic categories.
b. Holistic categories: Focus on context and environmental factors;
relationships are explained with reference to how objects are
related to their environment, and it is held that a part cannot be
separated from the whole.
c. Analytic categories: Characterized by separation of an object from
its context; similarity among objects or people is used to
differentiate them into distinct groups, and predictions about
people are made based on these categories.
III. Stereotyping
A. Stereotypes: Usually negative but sometimes positive perceptions of individuals
based on their membership in groups.
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i. Study of stereotypes in the U.S. mainly focused on White stereotypes of
Black Americans, which have been particularly brutal and negative.
ii. Melting-pot metaphor: Essence of the political doctrine in the U.S. is
modeled on it. People of all the different cultures immigrating to the United
States get “stirred up in the great pot until cultural differences are boiled
away and a single culture remains American.”
vi. The fundamental feature of any pluralistic society: Ethnic attitudes exist
between different groups, particularly in-groups and out-groups.
vii. The Foundations in Area Studies for Translators (FAST) program: A
degree program designed for students to study the national cultures of the
United States, England, Canada, and Finland.
F. Media Influence on Stereotypes
a. Cultivation process is a dynamic, interdependent one that evolves
and adapts with each new generation of viewers.
iii. Heavy viewers of television believe that the real world is similar to the
world they see on television, which may not be true.
iv. Representation of Black Americans and Hispanic/Latino.
a. Over the past several decades, the televised images of these two
groups have evolved.
b. From late 1950s through the 1980s, the frequency of Black
American images in fictional television increased and began to
take on professional and intellectual roles.
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v. Representation of Asian American.
a. Traits associated with the model minority stereotype: Close family
ties; academic success; white-collar, high- wage employment; law-
abiding conduct; discipline; and accountability.
b. Asian Americans possess these traits despite their racial
background, which some then use as evidence to deny U.S.
institutional racism.
G. Why Stereotype?
i. Out-group homogeneity effect: The tendency to see members of an out-
group as highly similar while seeing the members of the in-group as unique
and individual.
iii. Two reasons why stereotypes are so widely held by groups of people.
a. First, stereotypes may arise out of real conditions. For example: A
disproportionate number of people from a particular racial or
ethnic group may live in poverty, so members of other groups
stereotype all of them as poor or even lazy.
b. Second, role of stereotypes in self-fulfilling prophecies. For
example: Members of a subordinate stereotyped group may have
difficulty obtaining high-paying, prestigious employment because
members of the dominant group refuse to hire them. Hence, they
accept low-paying, less prestigious jobs and reinforce the
stereotype.
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b. Our sense of esteem is nourished when we differentiate our in-
groups from out-groups, usually by assigning traits that are
favorable to the in-group and negative for the out-group.
v. Stereotype threat: When a stereotyped group believes the stereotype about
them may be true.
a. Whenever there is a negative group stereotype, along with a person
to whom the stereotype can be applied and a performance that
might confirm the applicability of the stereotype to the person,
stereotype threat can emerge.
b. It is the fear or anxiety people feel when performing in some area in
which their group is stereotyped to lack ability.
c. It occurs because individuals are afraid of the implications of
confirming the stereotype held by others.
g. Can occur in variety of ways.
• One’s personal self: What if this stereotype is true of me?
• One’s group membership: What if this stereotype is true of
my group?
• One’s standing as perceived by out-group members: What if
out-groups see me as stereotypical?
h. Women have been observed to underperform on quantitative tasks
in comparison with men when stereotypes about women’s math
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abilities are made explicit but not when these stereotypes are
presented as irrelevant to the task.
H. Stereotypes and Expectations
i. Stereotypes distort social perception of others: Human perception is not
necessarily accurate and honest. Perception is influenced by one’s needs,
wishes, and expectations. People perceive what they expect to perceive,
regardless of reality.
IV. Ethnocentrism
A. Ethnocentrism: Technical name for view of things in which one’s own group is the
center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it.
i. Core: Tendency for any people to put their own group in a position of
centrality and worth, while creating and reinforcing negative attitudes and
behaviors toward out-groups.
B. Ethnocentric attributional bias: The tendency to make internal attributions for the
positive behavior of the in-group while making external attributions for its
negative behavior; also called the ultimate attribution error.
i. When people perceive what they regard as some negative act performed by
a member of an in-group, they attribute such behavior to situational factors.
For example: It’s not his fault.
ii. When people perceive what they regard as a positive act performed by
members of an in-group, they attribute such behavior to dispositional
factors. For example: She’s so smart.
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c. By age 2 or 3, we engage in social perspective-taking of those most
central to us. These people, our biological or adopted families, are
ii. Ethnocentrism is essentially descriptive, not necessarily pejorative.
a. Ethnocentrism forms the basis for patriotism and the willingness to
sacrifice for one’s central group.
b. On the other end of the continuum, tendency for people to see their
own way as the only right way can be dangerous and lead to
pathological forms of ethnocentrism that result in prejudice,
discrimination, and even ethnic cleansing.
iii. Humans view other cultures from their own cultural vantage point: Our
culture is the standard by which we evaluate other cultures and the people
from those cultures.
D. Ethnocentrism, Intercultural Communication, and Interpersonal Perception
i. Ethnocentrism negatively influences intercultural communication.
a. One’s cultural orientation acts as a filter for processing incoming
and outgoing verbal and nonverbal messages.
ii. High levels of ethnocentrism are dysfunctional with respect to intercultural
communication and expand on Fred Peng’s concept of communicative
distance and Janet Lukens’s concept of ethnocentric speech.
a. Peng: alleges that ethnocentric attitudes are reflected in linguistic
diversity and create communicative distance between interactants
that manifests itself in the expressions, idioms, and words of the
speakers.
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iii. Ethnocentrism acts as a perceptual filter that affects not only the
perceptions of verbal and nonverbal messages but also perceptions of their
source.
a. We tend to initiate and maintain communication with those to whom
we are attracted.
b. When we interact with someone from another culture, however, our
perception of the other’s attractiveness is affected by our degree of
ethnocentrism.
iv. Judgment of another’s credibility is affected by ethnocentrism.
a. Persons are thought to be credible to the degree that they are
perceived to be informed, qualified, trained, intelligent,
trustworthy, and so on.
b. However, because they see themselves as superior, ethnocentrics
tend to judge out-group members as less competent, less honest,
less trustworthy, and so on.
E. Ethnocentrism and Communication in the Workplace
i. Neuliep, Hintz, and McCroskey investigated the effects of ethnocentrism in
an employment interview.
ii. Theresa House: Cultural or ethnic similarity, or both, between interviewee
and interviewer may play a role in hiring decisions.
iii. A study that investigated the effects of ethnocentrism on manager–
subordinate communication.
a. Participants watched a video of an Asian student manager
reprimanding a White student worker.
well as general attitudes about the manager.
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d. For group of participants who watched White student manager,
there were no significant correlations between ethnocentrism and
any of other variables.
v. Manager-Subordinate transactions: Position of an effective manager is one
that fosters a certain level of obedience and compliance by subordinates.
a. Ethnocentrism interferes with perceptions that is, ethnocentric
managers perceive out-group subordinates as less attractive or
credible.
b. Ethnocentric subordinates may perceive out-group managers as less
credible or attractive.
F. Ethnocentrism and Racism
i. Racism and ethnocentrism are not synonymous, they are related.
a. To be ethnocentric but not racist is possible. To be racist and not
ethnocentric is unlikely.
ii. Biological component at the core of racist ideology that does not exist in
the concept of ethnocentrism.
iii. Racial groups are social constructs that are perceived to be biological
while Ethnic groups can be conceived around blood, common history,
nationality, religion, or even geographic region.
iv. Origins of racism and ethnocentrism.
a. Many scholars believe that ethnocentrism is a universal
phenomenon that reflects a biologically rooted survival instinct
experienced, to some degree, by all people in all cultures.
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a. In U.S. history, racism is often associated with the forced
immigration and enslavement of Africans.
b. The enslavement and brutal treatment of Africans was a blatant
violation of any sort of equality creed.
vi. Frustration–aggression hypothesis: A socioeconomic–political
explanation of the causes of racism.
a. During times of social, economic, or political stress (e.g., depressed
economy, mass immigration), the dominant cultural group often
will place blame on subordinate racial groups.
vii. Racism, stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination are often linked.
a. When a racial group is labeled inferior, stereotypes emerge.