Understanding Differences in Perception for Multicultural Cooperation

Perception is an abstract term that differs from person to person. It is improbable that one’s perception is the same as the view of another person of the same background, let alone someone from a different cultural region. It is fascinating how a seemingly obvious thing such as how you understand something could lead to many of the relationships among people of various cultural backgrounds took a turn for the worse. By understanding this difference in personal view, I strongly believe that one can resolve many errors in intercultural communication.

First of all, perception is the process by which one organizes, understands, and gives meaning to the information that one collects from the environment around them. Perception is heavily affected by one’s personality, background, values,... Therefore, one’s view over a certain matter differs from person to person and could be varied tremendously in a multicultural atmosphere. In an organization, a policy change can mean good for one individual but terrible for another, creating dissatisfaction. Therefore, understanding and being respectful of others’ perspectives is the key to effective intercultural communication.

To correctly perceive how others perceive and action, we have to understand the attribution theory. According to (Heider, 1958), human beings will always strive to understand the cause of their achievements and failures. This understanding would serve as precedence and were they to face such a situation again, their actions would likely be guided by the same attribution of success or failure. Weiner (1985) argued that individuals tend to attribute their results based on three dimensions: locus of control, stability, and causality. In other words, attribution theory explains the process of observing an event, interpreting that event based on distinctiveness, consensus, consistency factors, and establishing a causal relationship to their own internal attributes, or external factors. However, the process of one’s reason is often clouded by bias. One example of such bias is self-serving bias. This concept explains that an individual might overestimate factors so that they would be less responsible for any mistakes they have made.

In a professional setting, attribution theory has been used to explain a phenomenon where entrepreneurs are more likely to attribute their success to their own abilities while deferring the cause of their failures to external factors (Rogoff, Myung-Soo Lee, & Dong-Churl Suh, 2004). This attribution error is more commonly known as self-serving bias. This error in perception might help boost the individual’s confidence, but they cannot learn from their mistakes since they could not realize that they were at fault. By understanding this attribution process, entrepreneurs can refrain from blaming external factors and reflect on their own failures as their own doing. Similarly, students can also benefit from this realization. High-achievers often take pride in their own competence and generally refuse to accept failure by attributing it to foreign components. Hence, by grasping this theory, students can recognize their imperfection and learn not to make the same mistakes.

An example of this is during my Multicultural Cooperative Workshop course. I was displeased by the lack of communication between Domestic students and International students in the team. Domestic students only talk to each other in Japanese, and they hardly spoke to international students as we couldn’t understand Japanese. I attributed the lack of communication to external factors being the Japanese students who did not try to communicate with me. However, from their point of view, I was the one who had stayed aloof and did not strike up a conversation with them. This was an example of self-serving bias, which had both the domestic students and me overestimating external factors and blaming the respective other parties for the lack of conversation. To solve this problem, we had to change our way of thinking to a more open mindset, to see the issue through the eyes of our counterparts and understand their perspectives.

Furthermore, attribution theory also explains how individuals interpret others’ behaviors. When an individual perceives another’s action, they unconsciously apply their perception onto the other person and assume the reason why they did such acts. This could help one to predict the reasoning of others. However, this assumption is prone to error especially among people from different cultures as this process varies from person to person, with greater distinction for different cultures. For example, in one culture, praising the cook after a meal is considered appropriate; while in another, the same action could be interpreted as being surprised about the person’s ability to cook, thus creating a disrespectful vibe.

In my situation, I did not understand that Japanese people would not usually strike up a conversation with strangers, and would only reply if the other party initiate first. In Vietnamese culture, people are more proactive and more likely to start conversations with strangers without much hesitation. As I was not aware of these differences, I fell subject to another fundamental attribution error, the false consensus bias. Since I incorrectly believed that our cultures had minimal differences, I expected the same behavior from my domestic peers. To tackle this issue, one can prepare beforehand the knowledge about their peer’s culture and most importantly, be understanding of the difference in perception.