Cross- cultural Communication This page intentionally left blank

Perception
Perception lies at the very heart of cross- cultural communication. We all 
tend to categorize our experiences in order to make sense of the world we 
live in. The problem is that when we encounter a new world we are not 
familiar with, we are faced with ambiguity, which in turn causes insecu-
rity. Faced with insecurity, our natural tendency is to fall back on our own 
norms and values and perceive the person we are dealing with as alien and 
even hostile. Our negative emotions come to the fore and we stereotype the 
person we are dealing with, and these stereotypes are frequently negative. 
We assume quite incorrectly that we all think about and perceive the world 
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What is Cross- Cultural Communication? 15
in basically the same way. We have a tendency to see things not as they are 
but as we are.
Differences in culture are very often because of differences in perception. 
The problem is that when we communicate internationally, we often mis-
understand the total context. We make mistakes in perception and we see 
things negatively that the speaker in his or her environment would consider 
totally non- confrontational. A good example is direct and indirect criticism. 
In China, Japan and, to a lesser extent, South Korea, it is important not to 
criticize anyone directly in order to save the ‘face’ of the person being criti-
cized. The potential for communication failure is therefore greatly increased 
when the sender and receiver do not share the same cultural perceptions.
We often assume other people experience the same physical, intellectual 
and emotional reactions as we do. We believe that what is pleasing or dis-
tasteful to us is pleasing or distasteful to others. This is clearly not the case 
in reality. We therefore need to understand why this is so and at least to 
recognize our differences of perception. Some examples of attitudes regarding 
perception are as follows:
‘Abroad is unutterably bloody and foreigners are fiends’ (Nancy Mitford, 
1945).
‘Everybody has the right to pronounce foreign names as he chooses’ 
(Winston Churchill).
‘What is true on one side of the Pyrenees is not on the other’ (Blaise 
Pascal, seventeeth- century French philosopher).
Whenever we go to live and work internationally, we all begin our time 
abroad with certain preconceived ideas, attitudes and prejudices. These are 
rooted in our experiences and our culture, and, as we have seen, they 
are coloured and often reinforced by what we read and are told. We look at 
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Heaven is where: The police are British
The cooks are French
The mechanics are German
The lovers are Italian
It is all organized by the Swiss
Hell is where: The police are German
The cooks are British
The mechanics are French
The lovers are Swiss
It is all organized by the Italians
Figure 1.5 Definitions of heaven and hell (mostly apocryphal!)

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16 Cross-Cultural Communication
the world around us through the filter of our own values, prejudices and the 
stereotypes we have built up. The problems occur when we meet other peo-
ple in other cultures who look at the same facts but come up with a different 
view. We may find this uncomfortable, even challenging, and perhaps at first 
sight somewhat intimidating. Other people’s views may well be different but 
not necessarily wrong. If we are to understand their world, we need to under-
stand their perceptions, including their perceived view of us in our culture.
Perception can often play tricks on us as things are not always as they 
seem. Perception is usually selective and culture- driven, and works on differ-
ences rather than similarities. Our perception of another culture is relative 
and comes from our own set of values in our own culture. Perception is, in 
fact, our reality; the ‘facts’ are almost irrelevant until we really understand 
the other culture.
The problem is often that, despite all our best efforts to suspend our 
judgment as we have been taught to do and to avoid stereotyping and be 
tolerant to differences in other cultures, when we are under pressure and 
stressed, we often revert to type and reveal our prejudices.
To overcome our perceptions of others, we need to recognize that other 
people are not better or worse, just different. To deal with others successfully 
and to control our own feelings when faced with ambiguity or insecurity, we 
need to do three things:
Accept difference: we should accept that others are different from us.
Recognize ignorance: we should recognize that we do not know precisely 
how others differ from us. We choose to fill in or ignore contextual 
information in attempting to make decisions and use our own
pre-
programmed cultural bias.
Take responsibility: we should accept responsibility for our feelings and 
reactions when dealing with others.
One useful procedure for helping us to do this is to take the following five 
steps:
STOP: in situations of ambiguity, our natural tendency is to speed up and 
extricate ourselves from the uncomfortable situation. In fact, we need to 
do the opposite, that is, slow down and reflect.