Feeling out of place? Dr. Adrian Furnham discusses culture shock and its effects on business.
Dr. Adrian Furnham is a South African born psychologist who’s done research into the phenomenon known as “culture shock”. Not sure what culture shock is? Culture shock is the effect moving to a different culture has on you, your family, and your relationship with the world. It’s a fascinating topic, and we thank Dr. Furnham for his excellent insight!
1. How has your experience with economics and business shaped the way you view psychology?
Yes indeed, particularly with regard to understanding motivation. Economists have (or had) a very narrow and simple materialistic and rationalist view. I have also been surprised by how little business is interested in theory or research and so quick to embrace evidence-free fads and fashions.
2. Were there any (mild or extreme) personal experiences of culture shock when you started traveling around the world?
I’ll refer to my paper on culture shock: “I had been brought up on everything English by English parents and therefore expected to find everything totally familiar. It was not. England was smaller, dirtier and more inward looking than I imagined. I was surprised by the class divide and people’s general reluctance to acknowledge it. I was surprised by their hostility to me knowing that I was a white South African. I was, it seemed, expected to take the whole burden of the monstrous apartheid system on my shoulders. I was guilty of the sins of those that ran the country… I did not expect to feel culture shock at all and I did.”
3. How do different ages affect culture shock? Are younger people quicker to assimilate or adapt to new cultures?
Yes much… more adaptable, but this also depends on personality and intelligence.
4. How does this affect the family dynamic, if one family member is happier than another?
Very important….lots of data to suggest that the homemaker (usually mother) stays at home in the new country while wage-erner and children at work and school learn the language and the customs so they become cut-off and depressed which effects all others in the family. Adolescents in a new culture are also prone to depression.
5. Your article talks about different mindsets when someone joins a new culture. Of these mindsets, chauvinism seems to be the worst, or not ideal, state of integration…
Indeed… it is a sort of cultural superiority or narcissism
6. How could chauvinism negatively affect a company as a whole, apart from the person’s image within a small circle of people?
Because they become blinkered, over-confident and victims of group think…they are obsessed with homogeneity of the preferred culture which is not good.
7. Would someone with the “Marginal” mindset possibly have a steadily deteriorating mental state because of it? If so, are there any means to curb it?
Yes..because they seem unclear who they are and what they believe. To give them a mediating framework..the idea that they are advantaged, being culturally richer and are culturally multi-lingual, more “people of the world”
8. How do you tell the difference between someone experiencing the crisis stage of culture shock, or them experiencing issues with their mental health over an unrelated incident?
The former is usually milder, happens at a particular period and has identifiable symptoms
9. When it boils down to it, should a company prioritize an individual’s emotional and familial health, or the projected profit of sending someone overseas?
Aah! A trick question. The (politically) correct answer is the former, but the common reality is the latter
It’s kind of depressing knowing that someone who has dealt with both the business and psychological side of this agrees with the public that business usually puts its profits before it’s employees. I think it would be beneficial for businesses and their employees to start relying on evidence-based practices like many social programs do.
This interview also raised a couple of questions in my mind;
The first, how much does personality and intelligence influence a person’s experience of culture shock? Has it been measured previously? Is there a way to prepare oneself to experience culture shock less severely?
The second, how could family’s decrease the likelihood of depression occurring in homemakers and adolescents? Would introducing them to the culture, little by little, before the move decrease the likelihood of this occurring? Or would it be better for them to attempt to just dive into the culture once they’ve moved?
I’ve been lucky enough to have lived in different countries and I also have travelled a lot. I have experienced culture shock myself.
I was wondering if there is any research on what is easier for a person to accept: A culture that is completly different from your own and in which you have to learn a completly new “way of life”?
Or a culture that is expected to be similar to your own and where the differences lie in the small details?
I could imagine that both come with unique challanges. One requires you to start over and the other requires you to do a lot of fine tuning.
This is an interesting article to read, especially being one who has moved overseas to live in a different country. I have also experienced a culture shock after moving because it seems that people do things so differently from what I am used to.
However, I feel that overall, this article could use extra explanation and details, as it seems to use a lot of professional or psychology terms that may be difficult to understand for a reader who have no prior knowledge about psychology. In addition, most of the answers are single statements that could do with further elaboration and examples. For example, in question 8, some examples of what these identifiable symptoms are could be brought in so that it is more relatable for the reader.
What I wish I read more about would be regarding the specifics of the phenomenon of ‘culture shock’.
What determines the severity of culture shock? While the article mentioned age, personality and intelligence, there is once again not much explanation. Could it be that extroverts are less likely to experience culture shock than introverts, as introverts deemed less open and outgoing? Do the type of cultures also play a role in culture shock (e.g. collectivist vs. individualistic cultures)? Or is it more of the little ways of life and behaviour that one may encounter that is specific to the country that may induce culture shock?