An Assignment Submitted by
When I was moving from Saudi Arabia to the United States, I was full of expectations and excitement, as I have learnt the American culture and I was glad to experience it in person. While I am happy to be here and continue to encounter with the American culture, however, the reaction of certain people and social situations I have experienced made me concerned about the state of social development in the U.S. I realized that in spite of being frustrated and discouraged to seek social contact, I will have to implement different patterns of behavior and manifest new emotional reactions.
Psychological Theory #2: Stereotyping
The U.S. is a multicultural country, where such phenomenon as cultural stereotypes embodied in generalized knowledge and behavior towards certain cultures are normal. At the same time, judging the other on the basis of stereotypes is a negative phenomenon, rather than the indicator of norm. According to Aronson, Wilson & Akert (2009), stereotypes leads to social categorization and fixed generalized beliefs about certain individuals or groups of people. Stereotypes represent a mixture of preconceived ideas about phenomena, event, person, which affects the ability of perceiving them adequately. At the same time, stereotypes do not represent completely a negative phenomenon, especially in a multicultural environment. As the U.S. contains a wide variety of cultures, ethnicities, and nationalities, stereotyping is inevitable. While it is possible to perceive this phenomenon as an element of inadequate education, the research shows that stereotypes emerge due to convenience reasons, where individual holds partial knowledge about particular culture (Wilson & Akert, 2009). Also, not in all cases stereotypes are false in terms of characteristics of events, people, or, as in case, a culture.
Usually, people, who stereotype others, try to fit even a new knowledge into their model of world. In my case, it was the reaction to my place of birth. Not all people express their reaction verbally, yet it was quite clear that due to their limited knowledge about Saudi Arabia, they had certain stereotypes of my country. One of the examples was wondering how I managed to receive formal education, as some people believed we do not have schools. Other examples include some wide-spread stereotypes, like we live in the desert, ride camels, and are not educated, which is completely untrue and inappropriate. I think in order to eliminate stereotypes in the American culture, it is effective to educate people about it. Therefore, I asked questions why they think or treat me in the way they do providing further information about my country and my culture. I think it is possible to destroy or at least minimize the stereotypes among people, which will help me as well as the American community to understand my culture better.
Psychological Theory #2: Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
At the same time, one of the most frustrating frameworks exiting in the society is self-fulfilling prophesy. Aronson, Wilson & Akert (2009) claim that this theory enables an individual to make a false prediction, believe in its truthfulness, and act in compliance with this prophesy, which automatically supports the initial false belief. This model of behavior may refer to the personal actions as well as refer to other individuals. One person may have a negative perception of another individual and starts to treat him or her improperly; when the addressee began to manifest negative behavior as a reaction, the first person thinks he or she was initially right. It is not news that some Americans consider Muslims as terrorists, which leads to the negative treatment of my people.
As the self-fulfilling prophesy claims, certain actions trigger relative reaction, thus, my people realize that it is possible to act in the same way towards the Americans. Once, I was in the restaurant’s restroom where I needed to fix my hijab. One of the women who was there said I have to go back where I belong, which shocked me at once. I have never encountered with such a treatment before and it made me really sad and frustrated. Later, I realized that it is necessary to understand the reasons why some people react in this manner and try to resolve the issue in order not to be frustrated in future. While it is possible to ignore the aggressive encounters like that, it is also crucial to eliminate the model of self-fulfilling prophesy among others and try to show a different behavior than they had expected. I follow this model of behavior since I came to the U.S. by treating the others kindly and not react negatively to the aggressive escapades like that. I consider that it will prevent a person from fulfillment of the false prophesy connected to my culture and to me as a person.
Psychological Theory #3: Social Identity Theory
The third theory I and applying is the framework of social identity. According to Aronson, Wilson & Akert (2009), social identity theory has the ability to connect the personal self to the events in the external environment. It aims at investigating the issue of how the perception of personal self refers to the social environment. One of the reasons of applying this theory is the overall feeling of disconnection to the society and environment in the U.S., which determined the specificity of mental events and states I have manifested. I felt like I was losing my personality when I had a negative experience in the country or my views were beginning to change. The research shows that the process of identifying yourself with a certain social group usually occurs through the connection to their in-group norms, where cultural expectations and the sense of belongingness tend to be the outcomes of this process (Aronson, Wilson & Akert, 2009). In my case, I went through the similar experience trying to blend in and seek for the connectivity with the locals. Not in all cases, these goals were achieved. I consider that the main reason was the inability to go outside the in-group norms existing in each cultural group, which is caused by different factors. It is not a negative phenomenon as well, as each cultural group tends to have its own social identity characteristics that can both prevent from interrelation with other groups or, oppositely, contribute to the inclusion of the outside members.
I realized that I had a positive self-esteem only when I was communicating with close friends and people from my community and I was unable to feel in the same way with the others. It produced the models of behavior different in the cases when I was interacting with different people. Being able to increase knowledge about the cultural and social elaborations within a certain culture, affect personal growth and development of identity as well.
Conclusion
Overall, I have realized that certain social psychology theories, including stereotyping and self-fulfillment prophesy theories prevent people from social development and progress in knowledge and the quality of interactions in the community. Yet, social identity theory affects directly personal behavior of individual hindering from exploring the world and communicating with different people. Yet, the ability to escape the negative consequences encapsulated in these three frameworks provides a person with the method of solving the social problems and contributing to the development of the social growth.
References
Aronson, E., Wilson. T. D. & Akert, R. M. (2009). Social Psychology. New York, NY: Pearson.
