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Culture Shock

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Submitted By mrdewale
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Through the evaluation of early literatures by Oberg (1958) and Pedersen (1995) culture shock was only looked on as a personal construct rather than a reaction developed as a response to an unfamiliar culture.They both identified it as a way to understand how individuals feel when unaccustomed to a new environment or culture and how they cope successfully with it. However in much clearer research by(Murdoch & Kaciak,2011),it was defined as abandoning the guidance of normal social cues and finding oneself in unexplainable signs of denial of the host country and celebratory of the home country which they called “regression”.However, nothing about how an individual can adapt to the culture or environment and find a way to steer a way out of it was given. Culture Shock and Effects (Adler, 1975) from examining foreign students was able to note the fact that culture shock subjective symptoms differs from one person to another in terms of severity and span but still this research can be floored due to disparity in the methodology of this research.There are instances where sojourners lose all their former pre-existing signs of social normality and have to adapt to the new environment eventually causing anxiety and depression, for example smiling is seen in different countries as being friendly or happy but in most Asian countries smiling is viewed as a sign of weakness (Ferraro, 2006).However (Eschbach, 2001) stressed the effects on only stress and anxiety forgetting other symptoms such as apprehension, misery and a helpless feeling(Mio,1999).If conditions like this continue to accumulate, the psychological effect may continue to deepen in span, hereby restricting peoples adaption to a new culture.It may also have an impact on how problems are analyzed and solved hereby decreasing the strive for a new culture moreover failure to vanquish culture shock may most likely cause the victims to become vicious to the host country hereby affecting personal relationships(Ferraro, 2006) Culture Shock and Ethnicity According to epidemiological studies conducted by (Karp,Perl 2013), culture shock has been viewed as having an higher infection rate on non-whites than white sojourners mostly due to disparity in terms of socio-fiscal status, ability to access medical health care and lastly due to differences in area of residence.A person from Africa might have more difficulty adapting to the culture differences in the United Kingdom than someone from Australia due to the fact that economically and physically they are quite similar Culture Shock and Gender Lastly there is an issue of culture shock and its relation to gender. Even though there are numerous studies relating to culture difference on a foreigners acclimatization ,only a few have involved an analysis of culture shock in relation to gender and eventually when they do, references about women are usually very brief and cynical. Female students are usually viewed as having more issues on lodging, meteorological conditions ,alienation and making confidants( Rorhlich&Martin 1991) than their male counterparts as a result of “double jeopardy” for being female and foreigners(Mallinckrodt & Leong,1992)

In conclusion, there might be sufficient literature to explain the definition of culture shock in terms of its effect on students but research on its effects on different ethnicities and genders is lacking which is necessary to understand how different people react to this psychological issue

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