What is Cultural Divide?

This cultural divide is the boundary in the society that divides communities whose societal, economic structures, chances for success, styles, conventions, are so unlike that they have significantly different psychologies".

The cultural divide is a virtual barrier source of the cultural differences which hinder interactions, and the harmonious exchange between people from different cultures. One example is, shunning from eye contact with the superior showed deference and respect to the East Asian cultures; however, it may be interpreted as one suspicious behavior when in the Western cultures. The examining on the cultural divide normally concentrates on identifying and linking cultural divide at distinctive levels of society.

The Significance

Cultural divide may have significant influence on the global operations of international organizations that required communication in between people from distinctive states. Usually, ignorance of the difference in culture like taboos and social norms can lead to communication crash within the organization.

Adequately big cultural divides can also discourage teams from looking to comprehend the point of view of the other party as differences in between the groups had been observed as immutable. Such gaps will in turn inhibit the efforts made to attain the consensus between the groups.

Factors and causes:

  1. Internal

  2. External

Internal – the internal reasons of Cultural Divide may refer to the causes from the innate or the personal characteristics of the person, like the personal means of thinking, the internal mental structure and the habit that persuades how the person acts.

  1. Ideological differences – norms, way of thinking and rules are usually inculcated ever since young and it will help in shaping the mindset and the thinking style of the person, which may explain how two distinctive cultural groups will view the similar thing very differently. One example is, the Western cultures in the history of the Judeo-Christian faith in the exclusive soul and concentrate on the search of personal rights tend to accept the individualistic mindset whereas in the East Asian traditions with the history of teachings from the Confucianism seem to view the person as the connection to the bigger community and hence improve the more collectivist mindset. Therefore, it is more usual for people in collective society make an outside attribution while the people in an individualistic society making an internal credit. Thus, the differences may cause how situations, objects or people are perceived differently.

  2. Stereotypes – the insights about the out teams or the different mores will tend to be enable and resistant by the long-standing notions or media of stereotypes. As the outcome of utilizing schemas to shorten the earth as it will appear, anyone may depend on the set of the well-established stereotypes accessible in the personal culture to view and define the out-group. Per se, the danger of stereotypes is that when it is incorrect and shades us to the specific key understanding of the particular type of people, and when the stereotypes lean to continue even with the latest information, the trouble of cultural divide may be perpetuated.

  3. Social identity theory - social identity theory involve an inherent and apt favoritism towards the people of similar social group as the people and you who share the same characteristics, also called as the in-team favoritism. This wanting to achieve and to maintain the positive self-image inspires people to situate their own team in the superior position as associated to out-team.