To what extent does culture influence perception and/or reason?
Aside from an one's individual family and experience, culture is the most influential factor in the perception. The same person who grew up in two different cultures would probably not recognize the other's way of lifestyle. Furthermore, they would be nothing like each other!
Perception is defined as the ability to see, hear or become aware of something through the senses. The way one hears/sees things is heavily influence by culture. For example, we all have been taught to see or hear something a certain way just by immersion into our own culture. In America, it is generally frowned upon to yell in a quiet room or talk very loudly at someone else. We see it and think "oh, what a jerk." However, in some other cultures, it may be perfectly acceptable to do that, and if an American were to suddenly be thrown into an atmosphere of weird yelling people, they would be freaked out. This is an example of culture influencing perception, because an American would perceive the yelling people to be very rude.
The second part of this prompt questions whether culture affects reason. Culture is still relevant and significant when a person develops reason, but not as much as for perception. Reason is defined as a cause, explanation, or justification for an action of event. Just as culture influences perception, it also influences reason. One is not likely to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge in America but in another culture, their reason may compel them to do so. However, a certain portion of reason is already set from when people are born. MOST people use their reason to tell between the very basic good and bad. There are certain things that cannot be impacted to the point where one would change or skew their opinion on them.
Although I think it would be hard to identify a reason someone would be compelled to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge, I think there is definitely a cultural element that affects the way a person uses reasoning. However, I don't think there are any cultural elements that affect sense perception itself. Maybe certain colors, sounds, feelings, smells, or tastes may have different connotations to different people, but I believe that culture has no effect on the way one takes in direct, sensual information. All people are built biologically the same to be able to absorb the same stimuli the same way. There are always exceptions; for example, people from Ethiopia may not be as sensitive to spicy foods as someone from Virginia may be, but overall, I believe that culture is only able to affect one and not the other.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with the fact that perception is influenced by the culture and environment we grow up. Even though other culture might seem weird through our own perception, I do not think tat different culture are completely unaware of each others behaviors. In other words I disagree with the fact that we do not understand or approve of other cultures, otherwise we wouldn't have had created stereotypes which is the emphasis of a quality in another's culture.
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