You are what you think — how your intercultural experiences shape you
Rania arrived in the UK last year as a scholarship student from Libya. Despite the conflict at home, she is flourishing in the relative humdrum of a British university. “I thought it would be intense and the students would be, sorry to say this but, like nerds and not sociable. But I am pleased with it, what I expected was not as exciting as I’ve found it to be.”
Rania, a Computer Science student, saw her opportunities in Libya blocked by war. She says, “it was normal and everyone was trying to do better to improve their conditions and then it just exploded. It went crazy.”
“At a point, I really cared so much and I was like crying and so worried and praying. But I just gave up, like, I’m helpless, I cannot do anything.”
Fortunately, she was offered the chance to study abroad, “this is an opportunity no-one should miss.”
And her experiences abroad have been life-changing — she has noticed a profound change in her mindset and character, “it is this experience that’s definitely going to make me change, like, I wouldn’t imagine coming here, having to go through all this, and still be the same person. No way.”
Experience isn’t shock
Rania is one of an estimated 244 million people living in a country other than where they were born. Her tale makes up a small part of the human story of migration.
Human migration is accelerating — we are experiencing the largest and most rapid movement of people in human history as people move for refuge or, more commonly, for opportunity.
This is not only because there are more of us than ever before, but also because technology, society and economics have conspired to make travel so much easier. Everybody, if they are not a migrant themselves, knows somebody who is.
Intercultural contact represents a fundamental change in the way we engage with the world — shaping our identities and our beliefs. Exposure to the unfamiliar triggers a change in the way we think about the world as we must negotiate new constraints (such as conflict) or opportunities (such as work or study).
These experiences are commonly characterised as shock. The anthropologist Kalervo Oberg’s original proposal of culture shock holds that sojourners go through four predictable phases of cultural adjustment (honeymoon, crisis, adaptation and adjustment).
However, experiences such as Rania’s could hardly be described as shock. Shock is an emotional response to the environment. While Rania had circumstance thrust upon her, she was still able to exercise imagination and creativity over her own situation. It was her imagination which steered her course of action. As a result, these experiences have had a powerful influence on her social identity.
So how can we better explain such a profound change? In order to do this, we have to look at what’s going on in our brains.
A cognitive imperative
We are extremely social animals. Evolution has endowed us with a set of mental processes that have made us highly social. Our resting brain’s default is to think about other people. In fact, our social relations condition who we are, shaping our behaviour, values and identity.
Other people make us feel good — social networks are associated with positive health outcomes, mental wellbeing, longer life expectancy, and educational and employment success.
Conversely, relations can also be painful; conflict can make us bitter, hurt and angry and consume our whole being. Grief is literally like physical pain. Neurological studies of the brain show that losing a close friend or family member affects the brain in much the same way as it experiences physical pain.
There is a strong link between our social relations and thought. Our cognition and our capacity to engage with the world in complex social networks evolved together.
Our social relations have real causal powers over the way we are and the way we think about the world. Social interaction with those around us shapes our values and behaviour.
So, when we experience a significant change in social context (such as that experienced when we move to a foreign country), it follows that our thoughts change as we need to respond to new constraints and possibilities — we are compelled to think about the world in new ways and conform to new ways of being and doing as we seek consensus in our social groups — not so much culture shock as a kind of cognitive imperative — a need to think about ourselves and where we fit in.
Cumulatively, the experiences we encounter influence how we think about the world, reasoning becomes routine, representing a significant change in identity and mindset.
The intercultural mindset
Intercultural contact may affect our mindset in three ways:
1. Independence — facing the world on your own
Whether or not we travel alone or with someone, those we can draw on for social support are often some distance away. We may no longer be able to rely on those closest to us, and their advice may not be suitable for the new context in any case.
As a result, we find a need to engage with the world independently, while drawing on reasoning to make sense of the new context. Thought is the basis for overcoming incongruity, allowing us to develop behaviours more fitting to the environment
In the absence of others, there is no one else to confirm your thoughts, resulting in a need to figure things out on your own. This results in the habituation of ways of thinking about the world characterised by purpose and instrumentality.
While a lack of social relations can be distressing, reasoning can often overcome this, and we may emerge as more independent beings as a result of our experiences.
2. Open-mindedness — becoming more tolerant
People make sense of their social world through familiar symbols and markers which reflect our identity — a shared understanding of the world. However, the new culture may be so dramatically different that our habits and values lose coherence, and we may experience a sense of dissonance.
This forces us to think about ourselves and where we fit in. As we reflect on the new context, we may ask ourselves “what’s going on?”
Detachment from the social order may be discomforting. However, it can also be profoundly liberating, as freedom from social constraints can open up possibilities for experimentation with the world.
Intercultural experiences expose us to events which may make us deeply uncomfortable — poverty, inequality, unfairness — and which challenge our way of thinking. In these circumstances, it is one’s values that become the guide.
These concerns may take on particular significance, making us more thoughtful, open and tolerant. These values, while not universal, may emerge as a way of dealing with diversity. Research tells us that people who live in diverse communities display a greater degree of tolerance over time.
3. Consensus — a need to conform
When we find ourselves in a context very different from our own, we must negotiate new rules and values. It is a human psychological trait that we must seek consensus in our social groups in order to make it easier to perform social tasks.
As a result of intercultural contact, people must find ways of getting along with others who they may be very different from.
Contradictions and tensions between cultural systems do not bring about consensus on their own. We are compelled into thinking about our social world and where we fit in. This is done by intuiting what others think through observation.
Every social interaction requires this intuition, so it has a reciprocal effect — both the home and the foreign culture must achieve a consensus with each other.
Consequently, there may emerge a shared cognition from people sharing experiences, a tendency for values, behaviours and habits to converge over time — what may become an intercultural mindset.
This is a strong force for social cohesion.
For Rania, her social relations provided a strong buffer from the conflict at home. She says, “socially I find I’ve developed great and strong friendships with my friends. Can I just say we clicked just like straight away? None of us had any difficulties with anyone else.”
These strong relationships provided the basis for overcoming her hardships and she was able to find her place in the world.
She says of her experiences so far, “I’m certainly more independent now.” And, her values were beginning to play a role in shaping her life, as she reflected on her social world.
“I don’t want computer science to be restricted to men and socially awkward guys who don’t interact with people. I actually want to do the subject and encourage people after time to go and explore … like some girls, I mean, to do the subject.”
“I’m not terrified of that at all, I’ve thought about it, but I don’t think it will cause me any trouble.”
Call to action:
If you are going through a period of cultural adaptation, ask yourself some of the following questions:
- how is the change in environment affecting who I am? My beliefs? My values? My way of thinking?
- what steps can I take to fit in better with my newly found environment?
- how can I become more independent in my way of looking at the world? Or, to be more precise, what can I do to become clearer on my own position, when I am stuck in-between two different cultural ways of thinking?
Your intercultural experiences inevitably affect your way of thinking.
Make sure that you remain aware of how they are affecting you, so that you don’t just go through the change passively, but actively shape who you are in the process of becoming.
