Discussion Post #2

[Haley Zhao]

In the article “Figuring Foreigners Out,” the author discussed the differences between cultures. I have been hearing the idea of individualist-collectivist many times. It's also a common belief that Asians tend to have a collectivist culture, while Americans are more individualistic. For the discussion about monochronic and polychronic times. I think it could vary from person to person or one household to another. But at the same time there is an overarching perception of time in one culture, as the author states -- cultures do tend to be more one way than the other.
In Geert Hofstede’s cultural dimension, six dimensions were presented and the countries each fit somewhere on each scale. Although it could be a bit of generalization, I agree that his study offered interesting insight about the difference in each country’s culture. I found the dimension “uncertainty avoidance” to be interesting. It was defined as “the extent to which the members of a culture feel threatened by ambiguous or unknown situations and have created beliefs and institutions that try to avoid these.” I was kind of surprised to find China was rated at a low score while France got a score of 86. The explanations kind of helped, Hofstede actually took more elements into consideration than what each dimension appeared to be.