Shane Morrell

Management 357
Professor Wilson
2/28/14
Individual Paper #1
In our daily lives we almost always face different cultures and the way
we adjust ourselves or resist to change ourselves to those cultures is the
question we face every day. People change or resist change differently
depending on how they were raised and their engraved cultural norms. When
people are taken out of their cultural norms the way they react to differences
in norms goes two different ways, which are either resisting the differences
and not accepting them or allowing the differences to mesh with your
cultural environment and adapting. Awareness of our surroundings culturally
and ethnically causes these natural human reactions but we ultimately
decide if we are willing to adapt and understand different cultural
environments.
As I stated before these reactions are normal human reactions when
faced in culturally different environments. The more normative of the two
reactions would be refusal because of our want to stay in the same place
culturally. This is what our book calls cultural cruise control. When you
picture cruise control you think of a moving highway but I believe the deeper
meaning is the constant comfortable speed that the car travels which relates
to the comfortable feel we get in our cultural environment. Individual
experiences and beliefs shape this cultural cruise control and we use it to

interact with people of similar cultural environments. By creating our own

cultural cruise control we are able to surround ourselves with similar people
but being this selective can cause problems and also possibly losing chances
at widening perspective. In doing this we create blinders that make us
ignorant of people around us and their different perspectives and cultural
norms. Not adapting or adjusting to the cultural environments of others
creates many selfish perspectives as so many people uphold to their cultural
norms and have a very hard time accepting what is different. The cultural
cruise control mindset is one that understands there are differences but
believes it is taking place somewhere else.
It is possible for people to break away from their individualistic and
ignorant cruise control mindset to adapt to new situations in new cultural
environments. Taking the blinders down allows individuals to be more open
and realize that there are differences in people all around us. Due to the fact
we create our own cultural cruise control, when we break free from them and
start realizing how many differences there are it is normal to still categorize
others in groups they may have no affiliation with. If the individual is able to
limit categorizing and can understand cultural environments in depth then
they would realize how poor their judgments and stereotypes were thus
making them more open to change and diversity as a whole.
When interacting with other cultural environments it is all about how
the person handles themselves. How each individual acts is based on many
circumstances which include the comfort ability of the individual with being

outside of their cultural environment and the amount of awareness the

individual has about others. You can tell whether or not an individual is
comfortable in a different cultural environment by the amount of
conversation going on between the two cultures. My father taught me that
the best way to get someone to respect you is to have a firm handshake and
to be able to hold a conversation with anyone. I believe that I am very
comfortable no matter what situation I am dropped into. There are some
individuals that on the other hand are more inclined to be passive when
dropped into different cultural environments because they arent really
comfortable but want to hopefully become more comfortable by being
around and taking in things that go on in the different cultural environments.
Three different types of discrimination are individual vs. institutional
discrimination, intragroup vs. intergroup discrimination, and blatant vs.
subtle. Throughout my life I have experienced these a few different times but
the one that sticks out to me was when I got to Bryant. I play lacrosse and in
high school the players on our team were liked and respected by our
teachers as we tried to uphold a positive image that had been there for
decades. Lacrosse is a well-known and respected sport in Pennsylvania but
when I came to the cultural environment of New England I had to adapt to
the differences. When I got here there was still a team wide image we aimed
to uphold for Bryant University which was positive. It seemed as though no
teacher understood what lacrosse was and would cut no slack for us during
our spring season on assignments we missed due to travel. The worst part is

that I have heard several of my peers and a few academic advisors blame
things on the lacrosse team. Whether it be signing into study hall and leaving
or leaving Salmo a mess it seemed to always be the lax team. I was
passive my first year as I tried to learn the way of the world her and now I
cant stand when I hear things like that. I try not to tell many people still that
I play lacrosse due to the natural instinct people have about lacrosse and our
players. It is bothersome to be put in a stereotype like that and I hope one
day the people around her can stop using us as scapegoats and respect the
work that we do on and off the field. We are taught as a team to support all
of our other teams and the school as a whole but I dont see it coming back
full circle yet.