Given both the interaction and what I found about Ruth’s culture and my own, the biggest recommendation I can make for successful intercultural communication would be for people to be aware of individual values. “Many [people] hold an integrative set of values, such as I-identity and we-identity patterns across a diverse range of situations” (Ting-Toomey & Chung, p. 48). In other words, I think that these two value pattern often relate to the situation that people find themselves in, more than the what the persons dominate culture may be. Despite that fact that Ruth and I come from …show more content…
However, when I was unable to relate to the conversation, Ruth and her friends cold have been operating from the dominance category of the theory, where people can adopt one major social identity, making other identities subordinate.
Given what I experienced at brunch, and some further research, I couple of things probably happened during the meal. First, “Ireland [has] a higher level of humane orientation… A human orientation relates to ‘the degree to which individuals in organizations and societies encourage and reward individuals for being fair, altruistic, friendly, generous, caring, and kind to others” (Schneider, & Barron, 2008, p. 38). This mean that when Ruth and her friends welcomed me with handshakes and hugs and were interested in me personally, they were operating out of their high humane …show more content…
The first being that when meeting people of another culture for the first time, it is important to know generally how they are accustomed to being greeted. Although this was not a problem in this particular interaction, with culture that are different it could well be the case. Secondly, I think when it comes to interacting with people from another culture in a social setting, where they may be the only one from that culture (like I was), one needs to keep that a lot of talk about your own culture, may make them feel left out or alienated from the group. Making sure to keep the conversation on topics that the other person can also contribute to is always a good idea. That, or even ask them about their own culture so they can expand your own