GROUP INFLUENCE

Experience in a Different Cultural Situation

Experience in a Different Cultural Situation

Introduction

Every individual in this world, living in a particular region acquire the customs, traditions, and values of the existing society. These cultural values have significant momentum to one's life. Interaction with different cultural group members enables us to understand their values and what makes them different from people belonging to a different culture. Normally, every day in my life I interact with different people having unique identity based on cultural differences. A new Indian fast food restaurant opened near my house about three months ago. I normally do not prefer eating South Asian food, but the appearance and promotion of restaurant inspired me to gain different experience in my life. My perceived notions about Indian culture and Indian people were greatly influenced, when I visited the place and realize a difference in my intuitive thinking.

The Experience

New Indian restaurant is located at two kilometer distance from my home. Restaurant was offering a variety of South Indian dishes at a discounted price. Therefore, I thought to visit there along with my friends. I was quite restrictive in visiting the place due to my perceived negative notions about Indian culture and Indian people. Nearly every day, I hear so many negative things about India people in respect of terrorism, poverty, and narrow-minded thinking of people that made me associating quite compulsive negative beliefs about them and their living standard.

Indian culture is highly different from our culture. Its depth factors are different from a western culture. It characterizes their personality based on their action, approach towards seeing the world, and how do they define themselves to other people in comparison to reality. As far as eating at a restaurant is concerned, in reality, I was forced by my friends to try fresh food this time. We all planned to went there on the weekend for lunch. Although, I agreed to go there, but there were many things that made me restrictive to interact with Indian people at the restaurant.

I was driven by the lack of trust in someone or something because everyone trusts him. The confidence that an Indian community gives a person does not come from the individual trusts, but their own desire. There is nothing neither democratic nor rational in the phenomena of group psychology that could have made me to perceive positively all the things prior to experiencing the cultural learning from restaurant visit (Latané, 2000). In other words, imagine a person in whose company, we do not experience the confidence of the group. Similarly, I had many doubts about the quality of food I was going to experience with my friends, and the kind of treatment that we would have to see; perhaps I was mistaken and not the group that was defining the strength of my beliefs about the Indian group. The group's influence is exerted on the individual in the process of social integration that occurs within it. Influence is a process of social relationship between ...