Culture As Dynamic: Toward A Social Psychological Process Model Of Intercultural Communication

Dissatisfaction with currently prevailing models of intercultural communication isgenerally noted in academia due in part to their inability to capture the dynamic aspectof culture and their de-emphasis on the intergroup dimension of intercultural processes.The primary goal of this dissertation was to develop a social psychological processmodel focusing on these two neglected areas and conduct initial tests to confirm itsutility in intercultural research. A historical review, critical analyses, and integrativesyntheses based on interdisciplinary bibliographic and empirical data were involved inthe theoretical exploration. The psychological experimental method of priming wasemployed in two empirical tests. Case analysis was conducted in the third test.The dissertation set out to map out the diverse ways of conceptualizing culture inthe current field, explore their philosophical foundations, and provide evidence andexplanations for the prevalence of the fixed-trait view in contemporary interculturalscholarship. This view, which defines culture in terms of its static and orderlycharacteristics and sees culture’s behavioral influence as linear, was then critiqued andits conceptual and empirical challenges explored.Following the critique was a critical analysis of some improvements for this viewacross disciplines and a review of the emerging dynamic process view of culture alongwith issues of cultural identity management and motivation to accommodate incommunication. Based on these reviews and a critical discussion of selected keymodels, a process model of intercultural communication was proposed. This model,departing from the assumption that culture is a coherent meaning system, sees cultureas a coalescence of loosely-connected knowledge systems (Chiu&Hong,2007). Itposits that the role of culture takes the form of applying cultural knowledge, whichfollows the principle of availability, accessibility, and applicability (Higgins,1996;Wyer&Srull,1986). The application of cultural knowledge is moderated by one’scultural identity and motivation to accommodate. This model, which stressescontextual constraints on cultural functioning and human agency in culture andcommunication, seeks to establish some kind of cultural causation. Three studies were conducted to test the model. Study I investigated howtemporary accessibility of cultural knowledge (some “Chinese” and “American”conditions) influences social attribution and how cultural identity moderates thisprocess. Ninety-nine three-year diploma (vo-tech) sophomore English majors wererandomly assigned to three priming conditions (Chinese, American, and neutral) andcompleted the exact same attribution task. Statistically significant differences insituational attributions were found between the Chinese and American primed groups.Specifically, the Chinese participants gave contrastive responses to the primed culture(e.g., they used more situational attributions when primed with American culture thanwhen primed with Chinese culture, a tendency contrary to the empirically establishedcultural differences in social attributions between North Americans and East Asians).Study II examined how contextual cues influence the chronic accessibility ofcultural knowledge in an intercultural situation and how cultural identity andcommunication accommodation moderate this process. One hundred and sixteenChinese university students were randomly assigned to two priming conditions(Chinese and American experimenters as the culture prime) and were asked to writedown eight proverbs and sayings that guided their action. Findings suggest that theparticipants generated a more converged sayings pool before an Americanexperimenter than those with a Chinese experimenter, suggesting that high intergroupsalience in the American priming condition led to the affirmation of Chinese culturalidentity and hence a collection of more traditional and more widely circulated sayings.Furthermore, in terms of sayings content, a stronger individualistic value orientationwas found in the Chinese priming condition than in the American priming condition.Taken together, the participants seem to have given contrastive responses in the task.Study III was a case study aimed at understanding the nature of the over-tuningeffect in intercultural communication using the process model. Human agency inculture and communication, cultural identity management, motivation to accommodate,dynamics between the assumed cultural knowledge applicability and communicationappropriateness were all highlighted.The three studies thus have initially confirmed the viability and utility of the model in framing intercultural communication. The principles of cultural knowledgeapplication was revealed in the tests, demonstrating the fact that the relationshipbetween culture and communicative behavior is not linear, that one’s cultural identityand motivation to accommodate do moderate the application of cultural knowledge,and that one key factor influencing communication effectiveness is whether theassumed applicability of cultural knowledge is consistent with socially establishedappropriateness in its application. In brief, the three tests have uncovered humanagency in culture and communication and enabled us to establish some kind of causallink between cultural knowledge and individual communicative behavior. The presentresearch has implications for developing dynamic approaches to interculturalcommunication, reframing cultural differences, reconsidering intercultural competence,and enriching research methodology.