CHAPTER 2

Cultural Knowledge

WE CAN MAKE THE BEST OF IT

Chan Yuk Fai ushered his British guest into the crowded Shanghai restaurant. Around them, the atmosphere was busy with the quiet babble of a dozen conversations. Mr. Chan bowed slightly, then leaned forward and smiled. “I think,” he said in excellent English, “I think the food is not the very best in this restaurant.”

Jeffrey Thomson stiffened slightly. He found it hard to conceal his surprise. What was he to make of Mr. Chan’s remark? Mr. Chan had chosen the restaurant. Did he really think the food was poor? If he thought so, why had he chosen this restaurant? Perhaps criticizing the food was just a Chinese custom—something everyone did that had nothing to do with the real quality of the food. Perhaps it was a joke—Mr. Chan was smiling broadly. After all, what did Jeffrey know about the Chinese sense of humor? Or perhaps it was an affectation of modesty. He had read somewhere that Chinese were self-effacing. But he had also read that they were indirect. Maybe criticizing the restaurant was Mr. Chan’s way of saying he did not have a lot of interest in Jeffrey or what he had to say. Maybe it was even some form of veiled insult!

He realized that Mr. Chan was politely waiting for him to respond and that he had no idea what to say. He felt very confused. Best to be noncommittal, he thought. What would I say if someone said that to me in London? He smiled back at Mr. Chan. “I’m sure we can make the best of it,” he replied.

Was it his imagination, or did he see a minuscule reduction in Mr. Chan’s beaming smile?¹

On the surface Jeffrey Thomson’s worries about Chinese culture are about Chinese customs, the ways in which people habitually go about day-to-day activities. The Chinese custom is to show respect for a guest by disparaging one’s own accomplishments, even the selection of a restaurant. Chinese people expect that the guest will return this respect with a compliment. By not doing so, Jeffrey has made a cultural blunder. This custom is specific to the cultural situation, but Jeffrey’s predicament is one that thousands of other travelers from all continents and countries experience. Jeffrey does have some understanding of the cultural differences that exist between himself and Mr. Chan, including his reflection that Chinese people tend to be self-effacing and inscrutable. And he is looking for clues to help him to draw the right conclusion and behave correctly. But his knowledge, his insight, and his experience are simply insufficient for the task. He lacks cultural intelligence.

Components of Cultural Intelligence

Jeffrey’s problem can be divided into three linked components.

First, he lacks detailed knowledge. He understands that cross-cultural differences exist. He has remembered a few characteristics of Chinese people. But these are crude stereotypes, of little help in enabling him to understand the situation.

Second, he lacks mindfulness. Not only does he not know what Mr. Chan’s remark means, but he lacks the ability to observe and interpret the remark in the context of other cues—prior conversations, his dealings with other Chinese, the visible quality of the restaurant, Mr. Chan’s smile, and so on. Because of this, he is unable to read the situation as it develops. Whatever the outcome, he is likely to learn little from the experience. Mindfulness is a means of continually observing and understanding cultural meanings, and using that understanding for immediate action and long-term learning.

Third, he lacks the skill to adapt his behavior. He would love to be able to respond confidently and authentically but also sensitively to his host. He realizes that being able to respond appropriately would put both himself and Mr. Chan at ease and would help their conversation. But because of his lack of both knowledge and interpretive skill the only action he is capable of is to respond as he would “at home.” Jeffrey needs to develop a repertoire of behaviors that will enable him to act appropriately in any cross-cultural situation.

The three components combine to provide intercultural flexibility and competence. In brief, culturally intelligent people have

• the knowledge to understand cross-cultural phenomena

• the mindfulness to observe and interpret particular situations

• the skills required to adapt behavior to act appropriately in a range of situation

These three components are interconnected and build on each other. Because culturally intelligent people have good background understanding, their interpretation is assisted—they know what to look for. But each competency is also based on wider personal characteristics. The people who find cultural intelligence easiest to acquire are interested in novel learning and social interaction and have good communication skills. But those who are unsure of themselves in these areas will likely find that acquiring cultural intelligence increases their competence and confidence in all interpersonal situations.²

In this chapter we focus on the information base—or knowledge—that is the first component of cultural intelligence. Here, what is needed is a basic understanding of culture.

What Culture Is

The word culture is familiar to everyone, but what exactly does it mean? A useful definition by noted social scientist Geert Hofstede is that culture consists of shared mental programs that condition individuals’ responses to their environment.³ Thus, culture is inherent in everyday behavior, such as Chan Yuk Fai’s and Jeffrey Thomson’s efforts at conversation, but such behavior is controlled by deeply embedded mental programs. Culture is not just a set of surface behaviors; it is deeply entrenched in each of us. The surface features of our social behavior—for example, our mannerisms, our ways of speaking to each other, the way we dress—are often manifestations of deep culturally based values and principles.

A key feature of culture is that these mental programs are shared—Chan Yuk Fai and Jeffrey Thomson share theirs with many other people from their own ethnic or national communities. Hofstede talks about three levels of mental programming, as shown in Figure 2.1.

• The deepest level—human nature—is based on common biological reactions, such as hunger, sex drive, territoriality, and nurturing of the young, that all members of the human race have in common, even though they come from different cultures.

• The shallowest level—personality—is based on the specific genetic makeup and personal experiences that make each individual unique. For example, we may be sociable or introverted, aggressive or submissive, emotional or stable, or perhaps, as a result of learning, have a deep interest in fashionable clothing or a love of good wine. Because of personality, each of us has many characteristics that are different from those of others, even though they come from the same culture.

FIGURE 2.1. Three levels of mental programming

• The middle level—culture—is based on common experiences that we share with a particular group: values, attitudes, and assumptions about proper behavior that we have in common with the group, but not with those outside the group. The group may be large, such as a national population, for example Japanese culture; or small, for example the culture of the committee of a local PTA. In recent years, many business, government, and not-for-profit organizations have recognized the power of culture to shape individual values and actions and have worked hard to establish “organization cultures” that will bond the activities of diverse members to common values and themes such as customer service or conservation.⁴

In this book, we are concerned mostly with national or ethnic cultures. But the notion of smaller cultures—sometimes referred to as subcultures—and the idea of individual personality remind us that huge variation exists within any given culture and that one of the biggest barriers to effective intercultural interaction is basing our behavior on stereotypes, which assume that all members of a given cultural group are identical.

Characteristics of Culture

Culture has some basic characteristics that are worth keeping in mind.

CULTURE IS SHARED

By definition, culture is something that a group has in common that is not normally available to people outside the group. It is mental programming held in common that enables insiders to interact with each other with a special intimacy denied to outsiders.

For example, Scottish people all over the world share an understanding of history that is rooted in conflict with, and oppression by, the English. Even though the two groups nowadays coexist relatively harmoniously, this simple fact creates a bond among Scots and an attitude toward the English that is hard to put into words but is immediately recognized by Scottish people when they meet anywhere in the world.

CULTURE IS LEARNED AND IS ENDURING

The example of the Scots and the English tells us that culture does not arise by accident but builds up systematically over time based on sequences of historical events. The mental programming of a group is learned by its members over long periods as they interact with their environment and with each other. Some aspects of culture, such as religious beliefs, systems of land ownership, and forms of marriage, are built into institutions. Other aspects are passed on through the stories that parents tell their children and through the role models they provide.

CULTURE IS A POWERFUL INFLUENCE ON BEHAVIOR

We have a hard time escaping our culture, even when we want to. The mental programming involved is strong. Even when we question the rationality of some aspects of our culture or seek to adopt cultural flexibility by doing things in line with a different culture, we have a natural tendency to revert to our cultural roots.

For example, one young man was brought up in a strict Christian culture that taught him that the theater is the house of the devil. When he went to university and mixed with more liberal people, he decided that from a rational point of view there was nothing wrong with going to the theater. But on his first visit, he became nauseous and had to leave to be sick. His culture had programmed him extremely powerfully. To some extent this book, in encouraging cultural flexibility in cross-cultural situations, is asking readers to try to do something that may not come naturally.

Nevertheless, the experience of migrants, who deliberately and often successfully move from one cultural setting to another, suggests that individuals can learn, and even identify with, aspects of a new culture. In some cases, the requirements of a dominant culture may even cause them to suppress aspects of their original culture. These changes take place through a process known as acculturation.⁵ Being embedded in an unfamiliar setting causes some to learn actively about the new culture, while others attempt to avoid it, often by trying to re-create their old culture in the new situation.⁶ The best adaptation is done by those who learn the new culture while still retaining valuable elements of their original culture. By so doing, they cultivate cultural intelligence.⁷

CULTURE IS SYSTEMATIC AND ORGANIZED

Culture is not random. It is an organized system of values, attitudes, beliefs, and meanings that are related to each other and to the context. When Chan Yuk Fai says, “I think the food is not the very best in this restaurant,” understanding that Chinese people often deprecate themselves is not enough. We need to understand that such deprecation is but one tiny expression of a complex system of values and ideas. It is a surface representation of Mr. Chan’s deepest values and understanding of the world—a mental program based on centuries of survival and cooperation by Mr. Chan’s Chinese ancestors in their largely agricultural economy and culture. As another example, the practice of polygamy, which is frowned on in most cultures, makes good historical sense in some African cultures where it is still practiced. Acceptance of polygamy depends on such factors as family status, economic security, and religious commitment, all of which are based on having more children, and particularly more sons, per family.

Because of the mental programming imposed by our own culture, the cultures of other people often seem strange and illogical. Deeper scrutiny can reveal that each culture has its own, often exquisite, logic and coherence.

CULTURE IS LARGELY INVISIBLE

What we see of culture is expressed in living artifacts, which include communicated messages such as that of Mr. Chan concerning the food. But they also include human activities such as language, customs, and dress, as well as physical artifacts such as architecture, art, and decoration.

Because much of culture is hidden, these obvious and visible elements of culture may be likened to the tip of an iceberg.⁸ Icebergs have as much as 90 percent of their mass below the surface of the water, leaving only a small percentage visible. The important part of the iceberg that is culture is not the obvious physical symbols that are above the surface but the deep underlying values and assumptions that they express. So understanding cultures involves a lot more than just understanding immediate surface behavior such as bows, handshakes, invitations, ceremonies, and body language. The invisible elements of culture—the underlying values, social structures, and ways of thinking—are the most important.

CULTURE MAY BE “TIGHT” OR “LOOSE”

Cultures differ from each other not just in their details but also in their pervasiveness.⁹ Some societies are characterized by almost 100 percent agreement as to the form of correct behavior; other societies may have greater diversity and tolerance of difference. “Tight” cultures have uniformity and agreement and are often based on homogeneous populations or the dominance of particular religious beliefs. Japan is a good example. Countries such as Canada with diverse populations have relatively “loose” cultures, which in some cases are made even looser by the encouragement of freedom of thought and action.

National and Global Culture

As we have mentioned, nation and culture are not identical. Many ethnic cultures, organization cultures, minority cultures, and subcultures may influence different people within the same country. For example, the indigenous peoples of North America have cultural characteristics very different from those of the majority of Canadians and Americans, and both the United States and Canada have many distinctive cultural groupings within their populations. The main focus of this book, however, is on national culture.

Nations are often formed because of cultural similarities among different population groups, and over time they reinforce their adherence to a national culture by means of shared institutions, legal and educational systems, and, of course, nowadays, the mass media. National cultures are particularly important in international business because of the concept of national sovereignty and the need to conduct business affairs within a nation’s legal and political frameworks.

Another issue relating to national culture concerns the apparent growth of “global culture.” Some people argue that as travel, business, and the media become more international, all countries converge toward a single culture, ironing out all the special differences that make each national culture unique. Because of the economic dominance of Western countries, particularly the United States and the larger European democracies, some people think that these countries’ cultural forms will gradually submerge other cultures around the world. Thus, the international proliferation of organizations such as McDonald’s and Starbucks is often welcomed as a sign of economic success, while also being criticized as an intrusion of American culture.

If the convergence theory were correct, it might be a reason to downplay the notion of cultural intelligence. If this were the case, it could be best to work with people from all nations to help them to get away from their own cultural habits and instead to understand and practice values and customs that are becoming standard around the world.

We think that this is a bad strategy for several reasons:

1. While some evidence supports the convergence theory, other evidence opposes it.¹⁰ Many cultures may be becoming “modern,” but they are doing so in different ways. Cultures tend to accept some aspects of other societies and reject others. In Hong Kong, for example, people have retained their traditional Chinese respect for authority while rejecting its fatalism, and have adopted modern competitiveness but rejected modern attitudes toward sexual freedom. Across the world, probably the only real convergence that is taking place is in surface matters such as basic business structures and consumer preferences, rather than in fundamental ways of thinking and behaving.

2. A society may also appear to accept change, but in fact the change is often recontextualized to fit preexisting cultural patterns.¹¹ For example, even though a McDonald’s restaurant may look very much the same in any part of the world, the experience of visiting a McDonald’s is very different for Japanese or Chinese or French or U.S. people. For example, people from many Western countries see McDonald’s as the place one goes to for fast food, but many Chinese people visit McDonald’s to have an “American experience.”

3. Even if convergence is taking place, the pace of change is very slow. The evolution of culture in any society is not easily predicted.¹² Traditional cultural patterns tend to be deeply embedded. Those who intend to sit back and wait for the rest of the world to catch up with the West in terms of culture will have to wait for a very long time.

4. Societies worldwide are recognizing the value of diversity in human affairs. Just as biodiversity has a value in allowing ecosystems to deal with major change, so too does cultural diversity offer us a wider range of viewpoints and ways of doing things. Many societies nowadays go out of their way to ensure that cultures under threat are protected from submergence by majority cultures.

Key Cultural Values

In Chapter 1, we rejected the laundry-list approach to understanding cultures—learning everything one needs to know about every culture one is likely to deal with—on the basis that cultures are so diverse and so complex that the task is impossible.

Nevertheless, we can “unpackage” cultures by describing their essential features to aid understanding. It is a bit like the language we use to describe people. Sally may be a unique individual with specific qualities and quirks of character that would take a long time to describe. But if we say Sally is intelligent, extroverted, emotionally stable, and unassertive, we have in a few words conveyed a lot of information that might differentiate Sally from other people.

Just as we can summarize people’s individual characteristics, we can summarize the characteristics of a culture. An important way to describe both the similarities and differences among cultures is by their underlying values. These cultural values are fundamental shared beliefs about how things should be or how one should behave.

Consider the following case.

HOW ARE YOUR JOB INTERVIEWS GOING?

Barry and Miguel, students approaching graduation at the University of Nevada, are close friends. On graduation, each seeks a position in a major company, Barry in the United States and Miguel in his native Mexico. But their strategies for finding jobs are quite different.

While at university, Barry has tried to develop himself as a unique individual, consciously improving his skills, his initiative, his personal goals, and his identity. He has read books that tell him: “You are unique, you are a brand, develop yourself as a product and market yourself to get the highest price and best prospects you can.” In corporate interviews, Barry aims to shine. Also, he does not expect to have any particular loyalty to the company that hires him. In a dog-eat-dog world, Barry will always go for the best deal he can get.

Miguel attends no corporate interviews, not even with companies that have big operations in Mexico. As far as he is concerned, it is not for him to find himself a job; it is for his family, particularly his father and his uncles, who own a small business in Mexico City and have business contacts they will use to secure him openings. Miguel knows that if he arranges interviews personally without his family’s blessing, this will be an unforgivable offense against his family. He is confident that on his return to Mexico he will have job opportunities arranged through family members and friends. He will be expected to take the job his family favors, and to give long-term loyalty both to the family and to his new employers. He wants to give that loyalty: it’s the way things should be.

One night, Barry and Miguel discuss their rapidly approaching careers. They have difficulty in understanding each other. “How can you let yourself be so dependent on others?” says Barry. “Some people would see it as nepotistic and corrupt.” “How can you live your life as a man apart?” says Miguel. “Don’t you care about the people who help you? Some people would see you as selfish and ungrateful.”

The explanation for the cross-cultural misunderstanding in the case of Barry and Miguel is based on an important dimension of variation between cultures. Latin Americans have a much more group-oriented culture than Americans. Many activities, ranging from the kind of job seeking referred to above to methods of decision making, are based on groups—extended families, organization departments, volunteer groups. This results because of differentiating factors called individualism and collectivism.

• In individualist cultures people are most concerned about the consequences of action for themselves, not others. They prefer activities conducted on one’s own or in relatively private interactions with friends. Decisions are made by the individual according to his or her own judgment as to what is appropriate and on the individual rewards that will accrue.

• In collectivist cultures, people primarily view themselves as members of groups and collectives rather than as autonomous individuals. They are concerned about the effects of actions on these groups and the approval of other people in their groups. Their activities are more likely to be undertaken in groups on a more public basis. Decisions are made on a consensual or consultative basis, and the effects of the decision on everyone in the social group are taken into account.

Individualism and collectivism are not either/or. They are values dimensions along which different cultures can be understood. Of all measures of cultural variation, individualism and collectivism may be the most useful and powerful.¹³ However, it is important not to simplify these dimensions by, for example, equating individualism with selfishness or introversion, or collectivism with socialism. Both individualists and collectivists have relationships and groups, but the type of relationship is different: collectivists actually tend to have fewer groups with which they identify, but these are wide, diverse groups, such as tribes or extended families, and the bonds of loyalty are strong. Individualists often identify with many different groups, but the bonds are superficial. Individualism is most common in developed Western countries. A strong relationship exists between a country’s individualism and its wealth (Gross National Product, or GNP).¹⁴ The recent political fashion of free markets and the encouragement of entrepreneurship play to individualism, and developed countries have seen a marked international trend in this direction, leading, for example, to a general decline in individuals’ loyalty to their employing organizations, and, indeed, their organizations’ loyalty to them. Individualism and collectivism provide a basis for describing national culture in terms of the country’s position on these dimensions and for comparing any two national cultures on the same basis. When other dimensions or aspects of culture are added to the picture, more detailed assessments and comparisons can be made.

SCHWARTZ VALUE SURVEY

Individualism and collectivism, while perhaps the most important dimensions of cultural variation, are not the only dimensions that researchers have been able to identify. For example, Israeli psychologist Shalom Schwartz and his colleagues did a more recent and more sophisticated mapping of cultures according to their value orientations.¹⁵ They identified three universal requirements that every culture has: the need to specify how individuals should relate to the wider society, the need for society to preserve itself, and the need to define how society should relate to the natural world. Schwartz’s idea was that while all societies have to address these requirements, they do so in different ways. In each society this leads to a shared set of fundamental beliefs about how things should be or how one should behave. By examining fifty-seven national cultures, Schwartz and colleagues derived seven fundamental value dimensions:

• Egalitarianism—recognition of people as moral equals

• Harmony—fitting in harmoniously with the environment

• Embeddedness—people as part of a collective

• Hierarchy—unequal distribution of power

• Mastery—exploitation of the natural or social environment

• Affective autonomy—pursuit of positive experiences

• Intellectual autonomy—independent pursuit of one’s own ideas

Figure 2.2 shows the relative positions of countries along the seven dimensions.

It is impossible to represent perfectly the relative position of countries on seven dimensions in the two-dimensional space of the printed page. However, by using a technique called a co-plot, Schwartz and his colleagues were able to present the relationships quite accurately. The position of each country along the vector of each cultural dimension indicates how similar or different each country is on that dimension. For example, Canada and New Zealand are very similar on all seven dimensions. However, the United States, which is similar to these two countries on other dimensions, ranks higher on the mastery dimension (more like Japan). By examining the position of your own country and that of others on this map you can increase your knowledge about the areas of potential cultural harmony or conflict with members of another culture.

FIGURE 2.2. Co-plot of value dimensions across national cultures Source: Adapted from Sagiv & Schwartz (2000)

THE GLOBE STUDY

Another way of understanding similarities and differences across cultures is to examine which countries cluster together in their positions on various measures of cultural values. Based on a large-scale study of cultural differences in values, researchers who conducted the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) study grouped the sixty-two societies they studied into ten clusters.¹⁶ These clusters, shown in Figure 2.3, are based on overall similarity of countries based on nine value orientations.

• Institutional Collectivism: The degree to which organizational and societal institutional practices encourage and reward collective distribution of resources and collective action

• In-Group Collectivism: The degree to which individuals express pride, loyalty, and cohesiveness in their organizations or families

• Power Distance: The degree to which members of a collective expect power to be distributed unequally

• Uncertainty Avoidance: The extent to which a society, organization, or group relies on social norms, rules, and procedures to alleviate unpredictability of future events

• Gender Egalitarianism: The degree to which a collective minimizes gender inequality

• Assertiveness: The degree to which individuals are assertive, confrontational, and aggressive in their relationships with others

• Humane Orientation: The degree to which a collective rewards individuals for being fair, altruistic, generous, caring, and kind to others

• Future Orientation: The extent to which individuals engage in future-oriented behaviors such as delayed gratification, planning, and investing in the future

• Performance Orientation: The degree to which a collective encourages and rewards group members for performance improvement and excellence

As shown in Figure 2.3, the clusters of countries reflect such factors as common language, common religion, common climate, geographic proximity, common economic system, and shared political boundaries—all of which can be shown to contribute to national cultural variation.¹⁷ This typology underscores the historical basis of cultural variation. For example, the composition of the Anglo cluster indicates that as a result of migration this culture was diffused from England to Ireland, the United States, Canada, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, and its position relative to other clusters indicates its own roots in Saxony (Germany) and Jutland (northern Denmark). Likewise the Confucian Asian cultural cluster reflects the strong historical influence of China and Confucian ideology. Even physically isolated Japan shared significant cultural interactions with China over time. As with the mapping of the Schwartz value orientations, by referring to the GLOBE cultural clusters you can get a first approximation of the extent to which you might share cultural values with people from other societies.

FIGURE 2.3. Country clusters according to the GLOBE study

Effects of Culture: The “In-Group” and the “Out-Group”

An important aspect of culture is the way we use it to define ourselves. If we state that we are “American,” “Thai,” “Muslim,” or that we “work for IBM,” our assertion places us inside a boundary that excludes a lot of other people. It differentiates us. It sets up expectations—intentional or unintentional—as to the kinds of attitudes and behavior that others can expect from us.

This tendency is important in terms of bias—typically bias is in favor of our own group or culture (the “in-group”), and against others (the “out-group”) external to our own. Therefore, we typically discriminate in our own group’s favor.

Most importantly, we tend to identify everything about the in-group as being normal (i.e., the way things ought to be done). Consequently, whenever we encounter people doing things a different way, we tend to see their actions not just as different but as deviant, even as wrong. We are particularly likely to do this when operating on our own turf, yet even when we are overseas we tend to take our own common experiences at home as the norm for how others ought to behave.

For example, although the United States and Mexico are geographically close to each other, the GLOBE clusters suggest that a significant cultural distance separates them. The GLOBE value scores for the two countries and the average for the entire worldwide sample (on a scale of 1 to 7) are as follows in Table 2.1.¹⁸

The table shows that the United States has a very high level of assertiveness, performance orientation, and gender egalitarianism as compared to the world average and to Mexico. Mexico, on the other hand, has very high uncertainty avoidance compared to the world average and the United States. It is easy to see how it might be difficult for individuals from one country to know how to behave socially in another country or to understand the process of making decisions in still another when those countries are from different groups.

TABLE 2.1

As in the case of Barry and Miguel presented previously in the chapter, consider how an American and a Mexican with no prior cross-cultural experience might perceive each other from the standpoint of their own cultures. Despite some very different scores in both countries, individuals from each are likely to judge the other as though his or her own country represents the norm. Each will take “the way we do things at home” as a starting point. The American may find irritating Mexicans’ emphasis on social activity, the slowness of their consultative decision making, their comfort with status differences between men and women, and their discomfort with any sort of ambiguity or with taking decisive action on their own initiative. For their part, the Mexican might see Americans as being self-centered, aggressive, and single-mindedly focused on performance.

The first step to cultural flexibility is to understand your own culture and how it affects your interpretation of the behavior of others. This is an important part—though far from the only part—of the cultural makeup and stereotyping that you most likely bring to each new cross-cultural situation you face. We have already suggested that you locate your own culture in terms of the Schwartz map or the GLOBE clusters. Think about your culture again in terms of all of its special features and idiosyncrasies. Try to look at it through the eyes of people from contrasting cultures.

Summary

This chapter describes how knowledge of what culture is and how it varies and affects behavior is the first stage of developing cultural intelligence. Culture is not a random assortment of customs and behaviors. It is the values, attitudes, and assumptions about appropriate behavior that are shared by people in specific groups. It is systematic and organized and has developed over time as a result of societies learning to deal with their common problems. Cultures can be defined according to their values—the fundamental beliefs that people within the culture share about how things should be and how one should behave. Culture is shared; it is passed on from one generation to the next. While it has a profound influence on behavior, the most important aspects of culture are invisible. A key feature of culture is that it categorizes others and us into in-groups and out-groups. This categorization of people into “them and us” underlies much cross-cultural behavior. There are several important dimensions along which cultures can be defined, the most important being individualism and collectivism. By understanding our own culture we can then make initial comparisons with others to understand areas of possible agreement or disagreement. The knowledge gained in this way is a necessary first step to becoming culturally intelligent. In subsequent chapters we link this knowledge with the important elements of mindfulness and cross-cultural skills.