Yes! Human behavior is past down from generation to generation. Human behavior is learned behavior. What do you think about that? Just remember that an explanation is not a justification. Crime is a reality in our country whether we like it or not. Poor family values, poverty, poor education, these are the contributing factors that lead many men and women to crime. There are some well read and educated persons who believe that the human brain is wired for violence.
What if I told you that violence was learned? Violence is past down from generation to generation, like wealth and heirlooms. Do you find that hard to believe? What if I told that when human beings lived in caves and ate raw meat, a man and a woman had to be as aggressive and violent as the animals around them in order to survive. "Wow", human beings had to be as aggressive and cunning and primal as the other animals!
Now look at human history, (world history). Now ask yourself, can you see in our world history and the different systems of government. We can see democracy, monarchy, dynasty, tyranny, and empire; all of these forms of government were created by violence, blood shed, or revolution. It is hard to believe that every democracy started with revolution! We value this system of government so much that we will force other countries and people to adopt it.
We are appalled by violence and criminal behavior. We see movies with men in masks cutting up, and torturing and then ultimately killing a naked girl. We read comic books and see violent images on television. Now if you compound these things with children who have never been nurtured or taught how to inter-act with other human beings in a healthy manner. We get what we have now, large prison populations and high crime.
Is human behavior learned? Yes! A child's mind is open and is like a fresh piece of clay. A child's mind is programmed by what he or she hears and sees. We can stop crime completely, with our youngest generations. We can teach positive and edifying social skills. Children are unfortunately taught fear, pride and prejudice and hatred. Children can also be taught to love, and respect themselves and others.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Psychosis Cure
The first time I saw psychosis was in my adored friend Arnold, who seemed to be balanced and very clever. He was 23 years old when suddenly he started to spank his sisters and break everything in his bedroom. He had electroshock therapy.
I was in Greece, after spending 6 months in the USA. When I came back to Brazil I saw him in a clinic. He had lost his conscience forever. This case shocked me very much! I didn't’ follow the development of his psychic disease and when I came back to my country this meeting was the worse meeting of my life!
Arnold had a treatment with a psychiatrist for 5 years and after this period, he committed suicide jumping from the 14th floor, where he had an apartment. At this time I was in Greece studying the meaning of the dreams according to the method of the psychiatrist Carl Jung. In the day he committed suicide I saw in my dream the Earth sphere from some distance and a voice told me that someone was looking for the elixir of life.
He couldn’t find it though…
I continued Carl Jung’s research in the unknown region of the human psychic sphere through dream interpretation discovering the anti-conscience, the primitive, wild and evil human conscience that didn't pass through the conscious transformation of the human part of the human conscience and tries to provoke craziness to the human part.
On 1989 I met a psychotic young lady, who was a friend’s niece. She had this psychosis for 20 years and was not as young as she seemed to be. In the beginning she was very aggressive with me, but later she started to accept me because she was my son’s friend.
She would come to her uncle’s house where my son and I were spending summer vacations and play with him like a kid with the ball, fall in the floor and behave as if she was only 5 years old like my son.
With time, she became my friend, but she never talked with me about anything serious. Only after 6 years she opened her hart to me and told me what had happened with her in the past that was responsible for her psychic disease.
I wrote for her 2 poems explaining which my conclusions after examining the content of the human psychic sphere and after learning the unconscious’ wisdom were. (These are the two first poems of my ebook Wisdom) The unconscious produces the dreams in order to cure us from the craziness we already inherit in our psychic sphere, since the biggest part of it belongs to our wild conscience.
Four years later, after the psychotherapy I provided her, she was much better and she travelled with my son and with me to Brazil. It was the first time in her life that she dared to go so far without being accompanied by her parents. Of course, we had her uncle’s support, since he is Greek and comes often to Greece, but he lives in Brazil. He helped us a lot!
However, I can say that my psychotic friend didn't provoke me any problem. Her behaviour during this trip was excellent! I realized that if she would live with me and have my orientation I would perhaps be able to cure her completely…
However when she came back to Greece, to her usual life, she started behaving as she did before and I couldn't be responsible for her, she had to continue living with her parents.
She is much better now, but not as much as she could be if she had the proper orientation all the time. At least she has a behaviour according to her age and she is able to work and talk normally with anyone when she wants to.
My conclusions after 13 years treating her were very important and the result observed in her personality is very encouraging.
Psychotics can be cured and their human conscience can be half resurrected while schizophrenics cannot recuperate any part of their human conscience after losing it. Schizophrenics can only be able to understand the meaning of their actions, without human sensitivity.
I was in Greece, after spending 6 months in the USA. When I came back to Brazil I saw him in a clinic. He had lost his conscience forever. This case shocked me very much! I didn't’ follow the development of his psychic disease and when I came back to my country this meeting was the worse meeting of my life!
Arnold had a treatment with a psychiatrist for 5 years and after this period, he committed suicide jumping from the 14th floor, where he had an apartment. At this time I was in Greece studying the meaning of the dreams according to the method of the psychiatrist Carl Jung. In the day he committed suicide I saw in my dream the Earth sphere from some distance and a voice told me that someone was looking for the elixir of life.
He couldn’t find it though…
I continued Carl Jung’s research in the unknown region of the human psychic sphere through dream interpretation discovering the anti-conscience, the primitive, wild and evil human conscience that didn't pass through the conscious transformation of the human part of the human conscience and tries to provoke craziness to the human part.
On 1989 I met a psychotic young lady, who was a friend’s niece. She had this psychosis for 20 years and was not as young as she seemed to be. In the beginning she was very aggressive with me, but later she started to accept me because she was my son’s friend.
She would come to her uncle’s house where my son and I were spending summer vacations and play with him like a kid with the ball, fall in the floor and behave as if she was only 5 years old like my son.
With time, she became my friend, but she never talked with me about anything serious. Only after 6 years she opened her hart to me and told me what had happened with her in the past that was responsible for her psychic disease.
I wrote for her 2 poems explaining which my conclusions after examining the content of the human psychic sphere and after learning the unconscious’ wisdom were. (These are the two first poems of my ebook Wisdom) The unconscious produces the dreams in order to cure us from the craziness we already inherit in our psychic sphere, since the biggest part of it belongs to our wild conscience.
Four years later, after the psychotherapy I provided her, she was much better and she travelled with my son and with me to Brazil. It was the first time in her life that she dared to go so far without being accompanied by her parents. Of course, we had her uncle’s support, since he is Greek and comes often to Greece, but he lives in Brazil. He helped us a lot!
However, I can say that my psychotic friend didn't provoke me any problem. Her behaviour during this trip was excellent! I realized that if she would live with me and have my orientation I would perhaps be able to cure her completely…
However when she came back to Greece, to her usual life, she started behaving as she did before and I couldn't be responsible for her, she had to continue living with her parents.
She is much better now, but not as much as she could be if she had the proper orientation all the time. At least she has a behaviour according to her age and she is able to work and talk normally with anyone when she wants to.
My conclusions after 13 years treating her were very important and the result observed in her personality is very encouraging.
Psychotics can be cured and their human conscience can be half resurrected while schizophrenics cannot recuperate any part of their human conscience after losing it. Schizophrenics can only be able to understand the meaning of their actions, without human sensitivity.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Social Engineering, an Innate Human Quality
The stated tenets of data security, confidentiality, integrity and availability purvey the titles of networking books. It is evident there has been a sudden awakening of the importance or lack thereof of data security. Operating systems, applications, networking and internetworking devices, are being examined for vulnerabilities. Threats and risks are no longer ignored. New specializations are being created. A few years ago anti-virus installation and updates was an added-on value.
Today it is a full time responsibility in the world of networking. Firewalls are being developed for the daunting cat and mouse game of malware detection and eradication. Viruses are presented with names that spell trouble; multipartite, polymorphic, phage, stealth; retro. Intrusion detection systems, intrusion prevention systems, and honeypots are fine tuned to provide a comfort zone for the networking professional. These devices can no longer be the one size fits all variety. IDSs are defined as network-based, host-based, signature-based, anomaly-based and the list goes on and on. Resources are being consumed more for protection than data exchange.
I am comfortable with the fact that there is this emphasis placed on data security but still concerned with the non-acceptance of the need for user training. I believe that no security device (read machine) can ever defeat the creativity and manipulative ingenuity of the human brain. Developers are still working on Artificial intelligence. We are born with it. The human's ability to reason, question, debate, infer, deduct, pretend, deceive and mislead can never be curtailed by a box running an IOS and some man-designed algorithms. Encryption technologies are competing with human intelligence. We've gone from being comfortable with 56 bit encryption to 128,192, and 256. Ciphers are stream, block, substitution, transposition, symmetric, asymmetric, yet, with time, they are quickly becoming susceptible. The much touted WPA for WLANs felt that blow last week.
The common factor that seems to defeat the attempts to create the secure network environment is human behavior. Means, opportunity and motive is all that is needed. Of the three, opportunity prevails. Most people have the means, some people have motives. Because of the growth in internet access, more and more people have the opportunity. I remember a few thousand weeks ago very few employees needed internet access to perform their duties. Matter of fact, I can count the number of people who spoke about computers. Today it's just understood. The world's population is becoming more computer savvy each day. The computers' processing power increases because of our ability to learn and improve. Way too much acclaim is given to the PC with little or no recognition of the human mind behind it's growth. Viruses, worms, Trojan horses are all man-made. We are therefore in a battle with our own intelligence. It is therefore essential that we recognize that in order to create a safer networking environment we must begin by addressing or influencing human behavior. The one attack that will never be stopped is social engineering. Our goal as security personnel is to mitigate threats. Can we truly mitigate the threat of social engineering without addressing behavior? I say a resounding no.
Social engineering is an innate human quality or skill. We are exposed to it in our everyday lives. Any parent would agree that kids, especially teenagers are master social engineers. They frame questions knowing the result they want. They extract information with questions that seem to be casual chatter. My daughter has manipulated me into an action that was beneficial to her, ashamed to say, numerous times. The network attacker has that ability. He/she is not going to study UNIX or learn C++ to compromise your network. He/she looks for the most vulnerable or "low hanging fruit". The most vulnerable entity on a network is the user, train and untrained. We can, however, create a more secure environment if we erase some human habits through training.
I remember visiting a doctor's office and hearing the receptionist openly repeating confidential information on the phone. I've seen IP addresses stuck to the monitor in a New York bank. A friend of mine, a New York cabdriver told me that he can be a social engineer with the conversations he overhear in his cab. Recently I did a training class at one large client location, there were a number of PCs in the training room. I was given access to one PC. On that PC I had access to an open email account and read what I know was confidential emails of, get this, a manager. Employees and employers need to be trained as to the art of social engineering. The attacks are carried out through telephone, online, diving in dumpsters, and shoulder surfing. One attack that is almost always successful is the reverse social engineering attack. The employer needs to assure that the end-user is aware of the new trends. Helpdesks are a favorite target for the S.E. Most helpdesks are staffed with entry level IT professionals. Not a great amount of emphasis is placed on training because helpdesk positions are normally stepping stones. A helpdesk does just that, help! If they are not educated they will help. The attacker may be aware of the quick turnover at say ABC Corp. because he worked there before. Previously I spoke about the receptionist at the doctor's office, they need to be trained not only on Word or Excel, but also on social engineering attacks.
Although we have moved positively in the direction of software and hardware testing and design, we are still behind in the most vulnerable area of the network, our staff. Employers need now more than ever to reinforce their security posture by demanding and supporting user awareness training. Policies can no longer be a static, four hundred page document that is only seen during the employment process. Policies must be current, always available and enforced. Employees must be educated as to the need for security, the effect of a compromise on their jobs, compliance issues and repercussions for non-compliance.
An untrained staff will defeat any security policy. Security training should be given as much or even more attention than procuring expensive equipment. Mobilization has increased the availabilty of network resources. Todays network creeps into the Starbucks, the airport, hotels and homes. Users are given access to more and more private information. Devices like laptops, PDAs, and phones store sensitive information that travels with the user.The attacker no longer has to gain physical access to the enterprise network. It it therefore imperative that the playing field be evened by having the user aware of the sensitivity of their work environment.
My hats off to the organizations that have already seen the relevance of employee training. Banks, hospitals, small business owners and the military have upped the ante for staff. My hope is that the practice does not end with the worker/student attaining a certification. It has been said by numerous students of security that the knowledge gained would not significantly affect the status quo at work. Information transfer should be encouraged, users should be rewarded for compliance. Again I stress that for any security policy to be successful, we must affect human behavior.
Today it is a full time responsibility in the world of networking. Firewalls are being developed for the daunting cat and mouse game of malware detection and eradication. Viruses are presented with names that spell trouble; multipartite, polymorphic, phage, stealth; retro. Intrusion detection systems, intrusion prevention systems, and honeypots are fine tuned to provide a comfort zone for the networking professional. These devices can no longer be the one size fits all variety. IDSs are defined as network-based, host-based, signature-based, anomaly-based and the list goes on and on. Resources are being consumed more for protection than data exchange.
I am comfortable with the fact that there is this emphasis placed on data security but still concerned with the non-acceptance of the need for user training. I believe that no security device (read machine) can ever defeat the creativity and manipulative ingenuity of the human brain. Developers are still working on Artificial intelligence. We are born with it. The human's ability to reason, question, debate, infer, deduct, pretend, deceive and mislead can never be curtailed by a box running an IOS and some man-designed algorithms. Encryption technologies are competing with human intelligence. We've gone from being comfortable with 56 bit encryption to 128,192, and 256. Ciphers are stream, block, substitution, transposition, symmetric, asymmetric, yet, with time, they are quickly becoming susceptible. The much touted WPA for WLANs felt that blow last week.
The common factor that seems to defeat the attempts to create the secure network environment is human behavior. Means, opportunity and motive is all that is needed. Of the three, opportunity prevails. Most people have the means, some people have motives. Because of the growth in internet access, more and more people have the opportunity. I remember a few thousand weeks ago very few employees needed internet access to perform their duties. Matter of fact, I can count the number of people who spoke about computers. Today it's just understood. The world's population is becoming more computer savvy each day. The computers' processing power increases because of our ability to learn and improve. Way too much acclaim is given to the PC with little or no recognition of the human mind behind it's growth. Viruses, worms, Trojan horses are all man-made. We are therefore in a battle with our own intelligence. It is therefore essential that we recognize that in order to create a safer networking environment we must begin by addressing or influencing human behavior. The one attack that will never be stopped is social engineering. Our goal as security personnel is to mitigate threats. Can we truly mitigate the threat of social engineering without addressing behavior? I say a resounding no.
Social engineering is an innate human quality or skill. We are exposed to it in our everyday lives. Any parent would agree that kids, especially teenagers are master social engineers. They frame questions knowing the result they want. They extract information with questions that seem to be casual chatter. My daughter has manipulated me into an action that was beneficial to her, ashamed to say, numerous times. The network attacker has that ability. He/she is not going to study UNIX or learn C++ to compromise your network. He/she looks for the most vulnerable or "low hanging fruit". The most vulnerable entity on a network is the user, train and untrained. We can, however, create a more secure environment if we erase some human habits through training.
I remember visiting a doctor's office and hearing the receptionist openly repeating confidential information on the phone. I've seen IP addresses stuck to the monitor in a New York bank. A friend of mine, a New York cabdriver told me that he can be a social engineer with the conversations he overhear in his cab. Recently I did a training class at one large client location, there were a number of PCs in the training room. I was given access to one PC. On that PC I had access to an open email account and read what I know was confidential emails of, get this, a manager. Employees and employers need to be trained as to the art of social engineering. The attacks are carried out through telephone, online, diving in dumpsters, and shoulder surfing. One attack that is almost always successful is the reverse social engineering attack. The employer needs to assure that the end-user is aware of the new trends. Helpdesks are a favorite target for the S.E. Most helpdesks are staffed with entry level IT professionals. Not a great amount of emphasis is placed on training because helpdesk positions are normally stepping stones. A helpdesk does just that, help! If they are not educated they will help. The attacker may be aware of the quick turnover at say ABC Corp. because he worked there before. Previously I spoke about the receptionist at the doctor's office, they need to be trained not only on Word or Excel, but also on social engineering attacks.
Although we have moved positively in the direction of software and hardware testing and design, we are still behind in the most vulnerable area of the network, our staff. Employers need now more than ever to reinforce their security posture by demanding and supporting user awareness training. Policies can no longer be a static, four hundred page document that is only seen during the employment process. Policies must be current, always available and enforced. Employees must be educated as to the need for security, the effect of a compromise on their jobs, compliance issues and repercussions for non-compliance.
An untrained staff will defeat any security policy. Security training should be given as much or even more attention than procuring expensive equipment. Mobilization has increased the availabilty of network resources. Todays network creeps into the Starbucks, the airport, hotels and homes. Users are given access to more and more private information. Devices like laptops, PDAs, and phones store sensitive information that travels with the user.The attacker no longer has to gain physical access to the enterprise network. It it therefore imperative that the playing field be evened by having the user aware of the sensitivity of their work environment.
My hats off to the organizations that have already seen the relevance of employee training. Banks, hospitals, small business owners and the military have upped the ante for staff. My hope is that the practice does not end with the worker/student attaining a certification. It has been said by numerous students of security that the knowledge gained would not significantly affect the status quo at work. Information transfer should be encouraged, users should be rewarded for compliance. Again I stress that for any security policy to be successful, we must affect human behavior.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Investment Risks Rooted in Human Behavior
Have you ever wondered why you do not achieve the same investment returns as others? What is driving your decisions? Are you blaming the markets or others for your results?
A starting point is that you should be addressing your behavior and how it impacts your financial decisions. A statement I have been making to many people for the last 10 years is: "Investment markets cannot be controlled, but how you manage your reaction to them can be".
Generally, for most investors the reason that they obtain returns which are on average 6% lower than market returns is because of their behavior. Investors generally make poor investment decisions because of their reactions to events and also to their own life circumstances. This can be because they do not know who they are or how to manage their emotional impulses which are driven from how they are wired to behave. The message to be emphasized is that successful investing is about managing your behavior.
If you are an advisor, it is about predicting and managing your client's behavior and also managing your own behavior. So when you talk about managing investment risk, what you are really talking about is managing BOTH human behavior and the market risks. This is fundamental to the value proposition for obtaining advice from an advisor. Clearly, it is important that the advisor also has a high degree of financial emotional intelligence. This being the ability to control his/her emotional impulses and empathetically address his/her clients needs.
Traditionally, when risk is talked about in investing, everyone talks about market risks and to some degree investor risk tolerance. The reality is that there are so many more risks which need to be addressed which all have an impact on the investment decisions made. These additional risks are behavioral. To make the point, we have prepared the following table which highlights many of the "Investment Impact Risks" that can influence investment decisions and ultimately the investment returns a person achieves. This is what needs to be managed.
So, there is a very strong case for every person to have behavioral guidance from an advisor no matter how knowledgeable or experienced they are with investments. The behavioral guide or what we call a "wealth mentor" needs to have a true understanding of a person's Financial DNA which is their financial behavioral style. The Financial DNA is shaped from genetics, early life experiences and then overall life experiences, values and education. At a broad level, the behavioral information that needs to be discovered is in the following categories of information, as they all impact the investment decisions made in some way.
Natural Behavior
Financial Preferences
Communication
Environment
Life Purpose
Values
Passions
Needs & Wants
The reason we advocate that investors and advisors (the behavioral guide) complete behavioral profiles early in the advisory process is because they provide objective and measurable insights into the complete financial behavioral style on a holistic basis. With a good behavioral profile, not only is the risk tolerance discovered, but also completely who the person is at a much deeper level than what any normal person can reliably do on their own. You truly get below the surface. Remember, no matter how evolved you are personally, we all have blind spots and biases. Very often clients "eat" the behavior of the advisor. So, the advisory process becomes dangerous if the advisor is not aware of his or her blind spots.
Which ever angle you come from they all lead to the point that investment risks are rooted in human behavior.
Hugh is the President and Founder of Financial DNA Resources, a leading international Financial Behavior Consulting firm. He has 22 years of unique and diverse financial and business advisory experience. Hugh has worked with financial advisors, professionals, and coaches from all over the world to provide client centric solutions. His educational programs and services are internationally recognized and centered on client discovery, business and personal development, practice management and improving human performance to increase ROI.
A starting point is that you should be addressing your behavior and how it impacts your financial decisions. A statement I have been making to many people for the last 10 years is: "Investment markets cannot be controlled, but how you manage your reaction to them can be".
Generally, for most investors the reason that they obtain returns which are on average 6% lower than market returns is because of their behavior. Investors generally make poor investment decisions because of their reactions to events and also to their own life circumstances. This can be because they do not know who they are or how to manage their emotional impulses which are driven from how they are wired to behave. The message to be emphasized is that successful investing is about managing your behavior.
If you are an advisor, it is about predicting and managing your client's behavior and also managing your own behavior. So when you talk about managing investment risk, what you are really talking about is managing BOTH human behavior and the market risks. This is fundamental to the value proposition for obtaining advice from an advisor. Clearly, it is important that the advisor also has a high degree of financial emotional intelligence. This being the ability to control his/her emotional impulses and empathetically address his/her clients needs.
Traditionally, when risk is talked about in investing, everyone talks about market risks and to some degree investor risk tolerance. The reality is that there are so many more risks which need to be addressed which all have an impact on the investment decisions made. These additional risks are behavioral. To make the point, we have prepared the following table which highlights many of the "Investment Impact Risks" that can influence investment decisions and ultimately the investment returns a person achieves. This is what needs to be managed.
So, there is a very strong case for every person to have behavioral guidance from an advisor no matter how knowledgeable or experienced they are with investments. The behavioral guide or what we call a "wealth mentor" needs to have a true understanding of a person's Financial DNA which is their financial behavioral style. The Financial DNA is shaped from genetics, early life experiences and then overall life experiences, values and education. At a broad level, the behavioral information that needs to be discovered is in the following categories of information, as they all impact the investment decisions made in some way.
Natural Behavior
Financial Preferences
Communication
Environment
Life Purpose
Values
Passions
Needs & Wants
The reason we advocate that investors and advisors (the behavioral guide) complete behavioral profiles early in the advisory process is because they provide objective and measurable insights into the complete financial behavioral style on a holistic basis. With a good behavioral profile, not only is the risk tolerance discovered, but also completely who the person is at a much deeper level than what any normal person can reliably do on their own. You truly get below the surface. Remember, no matter how evolved you are personally, we all have blind spots and biases. Very often clients "eat" the behavior of the advisor. So, the advisory process becomes dangerous if the advisor is not aware of his or her blind spots.
Which ever angle you come from they all lead to the point that investment risks are rooted in human behavior.
Hugh is the President and Founder of Financial DNA Resources, a leading international Financial Behavior Consulting firm. He has 22 years of unique and diverse financial and business advisory experience. Hugh has worked with financial advisors, professionals, and coaches from all over the world to provide client centric solutions. His educational programs and services are internationally recognized and centered on client discovery, business and personal development, practice management and improving human performance to increase ROI.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Repetitive Dreams and Human Behavior
Repetitive dreams reflect behavioral disorders not well defined and visible to the outside world.
When you experience the same dream many times in your life, it is because you are procrastinating about something very important that must be done for your own safety. This is always related to your behavior; the dream is not telling you to go back to school and finish your studies for example, even though this necessity could be part of what you are procrastinating about.
The repetitive dreams are very serious. They show you that you have to understand something very important that you are ignoring and that you have to change your behavior, once you realise it. They reflect your immaturity on some levels and your ignorance as well.
Therefore, repetitive dreams reflect the repetition of your mistakes; you do not understand what you have to do, and therefore you are not doing what you must do. This is why the wise unconscious mind is trying to make you aware of it in your dreams.
Your dreams address the themes of your life and your psychical world. Later they start addressing issues about other people and the reality of where you are in your life.
If you keep seeing the same dream, this is because you still haven't learned the lesson. The unconscious mind has to show you the same thing many times, in the hope that some day you'll learn the lesson.
You have to care about the interpretation of your dreams and use the unique scientific method which exactly translates their meaning.
If you cannot understand what you are procrastinating about and what is wrong with you, don't worry. Start writing down your dreams and translating their symbolic meaning - your own dreams will show you which exactly your problems are and how you can solve them.
Repetitive dreams are very common; you are not the only one that sees them.
The bitter truth is that most people have repetitive dreams in their lives, but they never care about their meaning and this is why they never correct their mistakes or change their behavior.
Your dreams are very important messages from the unconscious mind, which is constantly trying to save the human side of your conscience from the invasion of the craziness which exists in the wild side of your conscience. Dreams are like slides with lessons and essential information for you.
If you care about their meaning and you follow the guidance you receive, you are going to correct behavioral disorders and negative tendencies before they ruin your personality and your life, and discover wisdom, self-confidence, peace and happiness.
Prevent Depression and Craziness through the scientific method of Dream Interpretation discovered by Carl Jung and simplified by Christina Sponias, a writer who continued Jung's research in the unknown region of the human psychic sphere.
When you experience the same dream many times in your life, it is because you are procrastinating about something very important that must be done for your own safety. This is always related to your behavior; the dream is not telling you to go back to school and finish your studies for example, even though this necessity could be part of what you are procrastinating about.
The repetitive dreams are very serious. They show you that you have to understand something very important that you are ignoring and that you have to change your behavior, once you realise it. They reflect your immaturity on some levels and your ignorance as well.
Therefore, repetitive dreams reflect the repetition of your mistakes; you do not understand what you have to do, and therefore you are not doing what you must do. This is why the wise unconscious mind is trying to make you aware of it in your dreams.
Your dreams address the themes of your life and your psychical world. Later they start addressing issues about other people and the reality of where you are in your life.
If you keep seeing the same dream, this is because you still haven't learned the lesson. The unconscious mind has to show you the same thing many times, in the hope that some day you'll learn the lesson.
You have to care about the interpretation of your dreams and use the unique scientific method which exactly translates their meaning.
If you cannot understand what you are procrastinating about and what is wrong with you, don't worry. Start writing down your dreams and translating their symbolic meaning - your own dreams will show you which exactly your problems are and how you can solve them.
Repetitive dreams are very common; you are not the only one that sees them.
The bitter truth is that most people have repetitive dreams in their lives, but they never care about their meaning and this is why they never correct their mistakes or change their behavior.
Your dreams are very important messages from the unconscious mind, which is constantly trying to save the human side of your conscience from the invasion of the craziness which exists in the wild side of your conscience. Dreams are like slides with lessons and essential information for you.
If you care about their meaning and you follow the guidance you receive, you are going to correct behavioral disorders and negative tendencies before they ruin your personality and your life, and discover wisdom, self-confidence, peace and happiness.
Prevent Depression and Craziness through the scientific method of Dream Interpretation discovered by Carl Jung and simplified by Christina Sponias, a writer who continued Jung's research in the unknown region of the human psychic sphere.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Psychology - The Study of the Human Mind
Why are children stubborn? Why do some people become addicted to alcohol or gambling? How do you help an abused child? All of these are difficult and challenging questions that the field of psychology is trying to answer.
So, then what exactly is psychology? There are many misperceptions created by television and movies today, but the basic answer is that psychology is both an applied and academic science that studies the human mind and behavior. Research in psychology seeks to understand and explain thought, emotion, and behavior. Psychology is applied to individuals via mental health treatment, performance enhancement, self-help, ergonomics, and many other areas affecting health and daily life.
Psychology History and Schools of Thought
While people have always been fascinated by human behavior, it wasn't until the late 19th century that psychology began to be considered an actual science. Wilhelm Wundt established the first psychology lab in Germany. He believed in a school of thought called structuralism-believing that certain structures in the mind caused behavior. Over the course of psychology's history, different schools of thought have competed for prominence. Here are the major schools of thought in psychology:
•Structuralism. The belief that there is a connection between sensation and emotion and behavior.
•Functionalism. The idea that the human brain is much like a computer, designed to carry out specific functions.
•Psychoanalysis. Created by Sigmund Freud, this school of thought believes in the rigorous probing of an individual's personal problems, motives, goals and attitudes as a way to heal the mind.
•Behaviorism. Proponents of this theory essentially hold that all human behavior is learned from one's surrounding context and environment.
•Humanism. This much more recent school of thought came as a reaction to behaviorism and Psychoanalysis, and emphasizes the importance of values, intentions, and meaning in the individual. The concept of the "self" is a central focus for most humanistic psychologists.
•Cognitivism. This branch of psychology believes that psychology should be concerned with a person's internal representations of the world and with the internal or functional organization of the mind.
As psychology moved away from its philosophical roots, psychologists began to employ more and more scientific methods to study human behavior. Today, researchers employ a variety of scientific methods, including experiments, correlational studies, longitudinal studies, and others to test, explain, and predict behavior.
Areas of Psychology
Students of psychology soon realize that the subject covers a huge range of material. The diverse topics students might study include social behavior, personality, research methods, therapeutic techniques, and much more. Because it's such a broad and diverse field, a number of different subfields and specialty areas have emerged. The following are some of the major areas of research and application within psychology:
•Abnormal Psychology is the study of abnormal behavior. This specialty area is focused on research and treatment of a variety of mental disorders and is linked to psychotherapy and clinical psychology.
•Biological Psychology studies how biological processes influence the mind and behavior. This area is closely linked to neuroscience and utilizes tools such as MRI and PET scans to look at brain injury or brain abnormalities.
•Clinical Psychology is focused on the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of mental disorders.
•Cognitive Psychology is the study of human thought processes and cognitions. Cognitive psychologists study topics such as attention, memory, perception, decision-making, problem solving, and language acquisition.
•Comparative Psychology is the branch of psychology concerned with the study of animal behavior.
•Developmental Psychology is the branch of psychology that looks at human growth and development over the lifespan.
•Forensic Psychology is an applied field focused on using psychological research and principles in the legal and criminal justice system.
•Industrial-Organizational Psychology is the area of psychology that uses psychological research to enhance work performance, select employee, improve product design, and enhance usability.
•Personality Psychology looks at the various elements that make up individual personalities.
•School Psychology is the branch of psychology that works within the educational system to help children with emotional, social, and academic issues.
•Social Psychology is a discipline that uses scientific methods to study social influence, social perception, and social interaction. Social psychology studies diverse subjects including group behavior, social perception, leadership, nonverbal behavior, conformity, aggression, and prejudice.
Today, psychologists prefer to use more objective scientific methods to understand, explain, and predict human behavior. Psychological studies are highly structured, beginning with a hypothesis that is then empirically tested. Academic psychologists focus on the study of different sub-topics within psychology including personality psychology, social psychology, and developmental psychology. These psychologists conduct basic research that seeks to expand our theoretical knowledge, while other researchers conduct applied research that seeks to solve everyday problems. Applied psychology focuses on the use of different psychological principles to solve real world problems. Examples of applied areas of psychology include forensic psychology, ergonomics, and industrial-organizational psychology. Many other psychologists work as therapists, helping people overcome mental, behavioral, and emotional disorders.
Psychology is a broad and diverse field with a variety of related professions. If you are considering studying psychology, you are pursuing one of the most important and basic of the human sciences. You can expect to have a long, satisfying, and fascinating career if psychology is your field.
So, then what exactly is psychology? There are many misperceptions created by television and movies today, but the basic answer is that psychology is both an applied and academic science that studies the human mind and behavior. Research in psychology seeks to understand and explain thought, emotion, and behavior. Psychology is applied to individuals via mental health treatment, performance enhancement, self-help, ergonomics, and many other areas affecting health and daily life.
Psychology History and Schools of Thought
While people have always been fascinated by human behavior, it wasn't until the late 19th century that psychology began to be considered an actual science. Wilhelm Wundt established the first psychology lab in Germany. He believed in a school of thought called structuralism-believing that certain structures in the mind caused behavior. Over the course of psychology's history, different schools of thought have competed for prominence. Here are the major schools of thought in psychology:
•Structuralism. The belief that there is a connection between sensation and emotion and behavior.
•Functionalism. The idea that the human brain is much like a computer, designed to carry out specific functions.
•Psychoanalysis. Created by Sigmund Freud, this school of thought believes in the rigorous probing of an individual's personal problems, motives, goals and attitudes as a way to heal the mind.
•Behaviorism. Proponents of this theory essentially hold that all human behavior is learned from one's surrounding context and environment.
•Humanism. This much more recent school of thought came as a reaction to behaviorism and Psychoanalysis, and emphasizes the importance of values, intentions, and meaning in the individual. The concept of the "self" is a central focus for most humanistic psychologists.
•Cognitivism. This branch of psychology believes that psychology should be concerned with a person's internal representations of the world and with the internal or functional organization of the mind.
As psychology moved away from its philosophical roots, psychologists began to employ more and more scientific methods to study human behavior. Today, researchers employ a variety of scientific methods, including experiments, correlational studies, longitudinal studies, and others to test, explain, and predict behavior.
Areas of Psychology
Students of psychology soon realize that the subject covers a huge range of material. The diverse topics students might study include social behavior, personality, research methods, therapeutic techniques, and much more. Because it's such a broad and diverse field, a number of different subfields and specialty areas have emerged. The following are some of the major areas of research and application within psychology:
•Abnormal Psychology is the study of abnormal behavior. This specialty area is focused on research and treatment of a variety of mental disorders and is linked to psychotherapy and clinical psychology.
•Biological Psychology studies how biological processes influence the mind and behavior. This area is closely linked to neuroscience and utilizes tools such as MRI and PET scans to look at brain injury or brain abnormalities.
•Clinical Psychology is focused on the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of mental disorders.
•Cognitive Psychology is the study of human thought processes and cognitions. Cognitive psychologists study topics such as attention, memory, perception, decision-making, problem solving, and language acquisition.
•Comparative Psychology is the branch of psychology concerned with the study of animal behavior.
•Developmental Psychology is the branch of psychology that looks at human growth and development over the lifespan.
•Forensic Psychology is an applied field focused on using psychological research and principles in the legal and criminal justice system.
•Industrial-Organizational Psychology is the area of psychology that uses psychological research to enhance work performance, select employee, improve product design, and enhance usability.
•Personality Psychology looks at the various elements that make up individual personalities.
•School Psychology is the branch of psychology that works within the educational system to help children with emotional, social, and academic issues.
•Social Psychology is a discipline that uses scientific methods to study social influence, social perception, and social interaction. Social psychology studies diverse subjects including group behavior, social perception, leadership, nonverbal behavior, conformity, aggression, and prejudice.
Today, psychologists prefer to use more objective scientific methods to understand, explain, and predict human behavior. Psychological studies are highly structured, beginning with a hypothesis that is then empirically tested. Academic psychologists focus on the study of different sub-topics within psychology including personality psychology, social psychology, and developmental psychology. These psychologists conduct basic research that seeks to expand our theoretical knowledge, while other researchers conduct applied research that seeks to solve everyday problems. Applied psychology focuses on the use of different psychological principles to solve real world problems. Examples of applied areas of psychology include forensic psychology, ergonomics, and industrial-organizational psychology. Many other psychologists work as therapists, helping people overcome mental, behavioral, and emotional disorders.
Psychology is a broad and diverse field with a variety of related professions. If you are considering studying psychology, you are pursuing one of the most important and basic of the human sciences. You can expect to have a long, satisfying, and fascinating career if psychology is your field.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Workplace Bullying and Terrorism
Terrorism is not something you would associate with today's workplaces, but it is a reality that victims face on an almost daily basis, resulting in psychological trauma. It is a metaphor that can be used to describe workplace bullying as a life-threatening experience. Victims are 'set up' for relentless attack by bullies, with a view to their total destruction. Compassion is not at all in evidence in this torturous process. Clandestine meetings are held to discuss the strategy by which to inflict maximum damage on the target and to remove him/her without the attackers being suspected. The target is in the 'sights' of these schemers, and is to be destroyed.
These workplace terrorists have their own active service units to provide the necessary back-up and support, usually work from the shadows, study how not to be detected, and launch their deathly attacks on the (often) unsuspecting victim. These "eyes and ears" are a protected species, being in league with the workplace bullies who can protect them. Indeed, they know that so long as they provide significant information about the target to the 'handler,' protection is guaranteed.
They always act outside employment and natural law, violate human rights, infringe international law, and still hope to get away with it. Often these workplace terrorists are results-driven, and are rewarded with bonuses or promotion for their services to the firm, while the poor hapless victim is either sacked or leaves to get alternative employment.
You may be experiencing this kind of anti-social behaviour at work, or know someone who is, but do not know how to deal with it. Workplace bullying is not uncommon in many workplaces, and because of its nature, may be difficult to detect and prove without very good evidence. However, it is not impossible to do, and with the right information, a pathway may be followed that will lead to the light at the end of the tunnel.
These workplace terrorists have their own active service units to provide the necessary back-up and support, usually work from the shadows, study how not to be detected, and launch their deathly attacks on the (often) unsuspecting victim. These "eyes and ears" are a protected species, being in league with the workplace bullies who can protect them. Indeed, they know that so long as they provide significant information about the target to the 'handler,' protection is guaranteed.
They always act outside employment and natural law, violate human rights, infringe international law, and still hope to get away with it. Often these workplace terrorists are results-driven, and are rewarded with bonuses or promotion for their services to the firm, while the poor hapless victim is either sacked or leaves to get alternative employment.
You may be experiencing this kind of anti-social behaviour at work, or know someone who is, but do not know how to deal with it. Workplace bullying is not uncommon in many workplaces, and because of its nature, may be difficult to detect and prove without very good evidence. However, it is not impossible to do, and with the right information, a pathway may be followed that will lead to the light at the end of the tunnel.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
How To Understand Cross-Cultural Analysis
Cross-cultural analysis could be a very perplexing field to understand with many different viewpoints, aims and concepts. The origins of cross-cultural analysis in the 19th century world of colonialism was strongly grounded in the concept of cultural evolution, which claimed that all societies progress through an identical series of distinct evolutionary stages.
The origin of the word culture comes from the Latin verb colere = "tend, guard, cultivate, till". This concept is a human construct rather than a product of nature. The use of the English word in the sense of "cultivation through education" is first recorded in 1510. The use of the word to mean "the intellectual side of civilization" is from 1805; that of "collective customs and achievements of a people" is from 1867. The term Culture shock was first used in 1940.
How do we define culture?
There are literally hundreds of different definitions as writers have attempted to provide the all-encompassing definition.
Culture consists of language, ideas, beliefs, customs, taboos, codes, institutions, tools, techniques, works of art, rituals, ceremonies and symbols. It has played a crucial role in human evolution, allowing human beings to adapt the environment to their own purposes rather than depend solely on natural selection to achieve adaptive success. Every human society has its own particular culture, or sociocultural system. (Adapted from source: Encyclopaedia Britannica)
Generally culture can be seen as consisting of three elements:
Values - Values are ideas that tell what in life is considered important.
Norms - Norms consists of expectations of how people should behave in different situations.
Artefacts - Things or material culture - reflects the culture's values and norms but are tangible and manufactured by man.
Origins and evolution of Cross-cultural analysis
The first cross-cultural analyzes done in the West, were by anthropologists like Edward Burnett Tylor and Lewis H Morgan in the 19th century. Anthropology and Social Anthropology have come a long way since the belief in a gradual climb from stages of lower savagery to civilization, epitomized by Victorian England. Nowadays the concept of "culture" is in part a reaction against such earlier Western concepts and anthropologists argue that culture is "human nature," and that all people have a capacity to classify experiences, encode classifications symbolically and communicate such abstractions to others.
Typically anthropologists and social scientists tend to study people and human behavior among exotic tribes and cultures living in far off places rather than do field work among white-collared literate adults in modern cities. Advances in communication and technology and socio-political changes started transforming the modern workplace yet there were no guidelines based on research to help people interact with other people from other cultures. To address this gap arose the discipline of cross-cultural analysis or cross-cultural communication. The main theories of cross-cultural communication draw from the fields of anthropology, sociology, communication and psychology and are based on value differences among cultures. Edward T. Hall, Geert Hofstede, Fons Trompenaars, Shalom Schwartz and Clifford Geertz are some of the major contributors in this field.
How the social sciences study and analyze culture
Cultural anthropologists focus on symbolic culture whereas archaeologists focus on material and tangible culture. Sociobiologists study instinctive behavior in trying to explain the similarities, rather than the differences between cultures. They believe that human behavior cannot be satisfactorily explained entirely by 'cultural', 'environmental' or 'ethnic' factors. Some sociobiologists try to understand the many aspects of culture in the light of the concept of the meme, first introduced by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. Dawkins suggests the existence of units of culture - memes - roughly analogous to genes in evolutionary biology. Although this view has gained some popular currency, other anthropologists generally reject it.
Different types of cross-cultural comparison methods
Nowadays there are many types of Cross-cultural comparisons. One method is comparison of case studies. Controlled comparison among variants of a common derivation is another form of comparison. Typically anthropologists and other social scientists favor the third type called Cross-cultural studies, which uses field data from many societies to examine the scope of human behaviour and to test hypotheses about human behavior and culture.
Controlled comparison examines similar characteristics of a few societies while cross-cultural studies uses a sufficiently large sample that statistical analysis can be made to show relationships or lack of relationships between certain traits in question. The anthropological method of holocultural analysis or worldwide cross-cultural analysis is designed to test or develop a proposition through the statistical analysis of data on a sample of ten or more non literate societies from three or more geographical regions of the world. In this approach, cultural traits are taken out of the context of the whole culture and are compared with cultural traits in widely diverse cultures to determine patterns of regularities and differences within the broad base of the study.
Aims of cross-cultural analysis
Cross-cultural communication or inter cultural communication looks at how people from different cultural backgrounds try to communicate. It also tries to produce some guidelines, which help people from different cultures to better communicate with each other.
Culture has an interpretative function for the members of a group, which share that particular culture. Although all members of a group or society might share their culture, expressions of culture-resultant behaviour are modified by the individuals' personality, upbringing and life-experience to a considerable degree. Cross-cultural analysis aims at harnessing this utilitarian function of culture as a tool for increasing human adaptation and improving communication.
Cross-cultural management is seen as a discipline of international management focusing on cultural encounters, which aims to discover tools to handle cultural differences seen as sources of conflict or miscommunication.
How laypersons see culture
It is a daunting challenge to convey the findings of research and field work and discuss cross-cultural issues in diverse contexts such as corporate culture, workplace culture and inter cultural competency as laypeople tend to use the word 'culture' to refer to something refined, artistic and exclusive to a certain group of "artists" who function in a separate sphere than ordinary people in the workplace. Some typical allusions to culture:
Culture is the section in the newspaper where they review theatre, dance performances or write book reviews etc.
Culture is what parents teach their kids and grandparents teach their grandchildren.
"You don't have any culture," is what people say to you when you put your feet on the table at lunchtime or spit in front of guests.
"They just have a different culture," people say about those whose behaviour they don't understand but have to tolerate.
Different models of cross-cultural analysis
There are many models of cross-cultural analysis currently valid. The 'Iceberg' and the 'Onion' models are widely known. The popular 'Iceberg model' of culture developed by Selfridge and Sokolik, 1975 and W.L. French and C.H. Bell in 1979, identifies a visible area consisting of behaviour or clothing or symbols and artifacts of some form and a level of values or an invisible level.
Trying to define as complex a phenomenon as culture with just two layers proved quite a challenge and the 'Onion' model arose. Geert Hofstede (1991) proposed a set of four layers, each of which includes the lower level or is a result of the lower level. According to this view, 'culture' is like an onion that can be peeled, layer-by layer to reveal the content. Hofstede sees culture as "the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another."
Cross-cultural analysis often plots 'dimensions' such as orientation to time, space, communication, competitiveness, power etc., as complimentary pairs of attributes and different cultures are positioned in a continuum between these.
Hofstede dimensions to distinguish between cultures
The five dimensions Hofstede uses to distinguish between national cultures are:
Power distance, which measures the extent to which members of society accept how power is distributed unequally in that society.
Individualism tells how people look after themselves and their immediate family only in contrast with Collectivism, where people belong to in-groups (families, clans or organizations) who look after them in exchange for loyalty.
The dominant values of Masculinity, focussing on achievement and material success are contrasted with those of Femininity, which focus on caring for others and quality of life.
Uncertainty avoidance measures the extent to which people feel threatened by uncertainty and ambiguity and try to avoid these situations.
Confucian dynamism. This Long-term versus Short-term Orientation measured the fostering of virtues related to the past, i.e., respect for tradition, importance of keeping face and thrift.
Trompenaars dimensions to distinguish between cultures
Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner (1997) adopt a similar onion-like model of culture. However, their model expands the core level of the very basic two-layered model, rather than the outer level. In their view, culture is made up of basic assumptions at the core level. These 'basic assumptions' are somewhat similar to 'values' in the Hofstede model.
Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner use seven dimensions for their model of culture:
Universalism vs Particularism (what is more important - rules or relationships?)
Individualism vs Communitarianism (do we function in a group or as an individual?)
Neutral vs Emotional (do we display our emotions or keep them in check?)
Specific vs Diffuse (how far do we get involved?)
Achievement vs Ascription (do we have to prove ourselves to gain status or is it given to us just because we are a part of a structure?)
Attitude to Time
Past- / present- / future-orientatedness
Sequential time vs Synchronic time(do we do things one at a time or several things at once?)
Internal vs External Orientation (do we aim to control our environment or cooperate with it?)
Criticism of current models
One of the weaknesses of cross-cultural analysis has been the inability to transcend the tendency to equalize culture with the concept of the nation state. A nation state is a political unit consisting of an autonomous state inhabited predominantly by a people sharing a common culture, history, and language or languages. In real life, cultures do not have strict physical boundaries and borders like nation states. Its expression and even core beliefs can assume many permutations and combinations as we move across distances.
There is some criticism in the field that this approach is out of phase with global business today, with transnational companies facing the challenges of the management of global knowledge networks and multicultural project teams, interacting and collaborating across boundaries using new communication technologies.
Some writers like Nigel Holden (2001) suggest an alternative approach, which acknowledges the growing complexity of inter- and intra-organizational connections and identities, and offers theoretical concepts to think about organizations and multiple cultures in a globalizing business context.
In spite of all the shortcomings and criticisms faced by the Hofstede model, it is very much favoured by trainers and researchers. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, it is a wonderful and easy to use tool to quantify cultural differences so that they can be discussed. Discussing and debating differences is after all the main method of training and learning. Secondly, Hofstede's research at IBM was conducted in the workplace, so Hofstede tools brings cross-cultural analysis closer to the business side of the workplace, away from anthropology, which is a matter for universities.
Bibliography and suggested reading:
Dawkins, Richard (1976). The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press
French, W.L. and C.H. Bell (1979). Organization development. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Hofstede, Geert "Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind", 1997
Holden, Nigel 2001, Cross-Cultural Management: A Knowledge Management Perspective, Financial Times Management
The origin of the word culture comes from the Latin verb colere = "tend, guard, cultivate, till". This concept is a human construct rather than a product of nature. The use of the English word in the sense of "cultivation through education" is first recorded in 1510. The use of the word to mean "the intellectual side of civilization" is from 1805; that of "collective customs and achievements of a people" is from 1867. The term Culture shock was first used in 1940.
How do we define culture?
There are literally hundreds of different definitions as writers have attempted to provide the all-encompassing definition.
Culture consists of language, ideas, beliefs, customs, taboos, codes, institutions, tools, techniques, works of art, rituals, ceremonies and symbols. It has played a crucial role in human evolution, allowing human beings to adapt the environment to their own purposes rather than depend solely on natural selection to achieve adaptive success. Every human society has its own particular culture, or sociocultural system. (Adapted from source: Encyclopaedia Britannica)
Generally culture can be seen as consisting of three elements:
Values - Values are ideas that tell what in life is considered important.
Norms - Norms consists of expectations of how people should behave in different situations.
Artefacts - Things or material culture - reflects the culture's values and norms but are tangible and manufactured by man.
Origins and evolution of Cross-cultural analysis
The first cross-cultural analyzes done in the West, were by anthropologists like Edward Burnett Tylor and Lewis H Morgan in the 19th century. Anthropology and Social Anthropology have come a long way since the belief in a gradual climb from stages of lower savagery to civilization, epitomized by Victorian England. Nowadays the concept of "culture" is in part a reaction against such earlier Western concepts and anthropologists argue that culture is "human nature," and that all people have a capacity to classify experiences, encode classifications symbolically and communicate such abstractions to others.
Typically anthropologists and social scientists tend to study people and human behavior among exotic tribes and cultures living in far off places rather than do field work among white-collared literate adults in modern cities. Advances in communication and technology and socio-political changes started transforming the modern workplace yet there were no guidelines based on research to help people interact with other people from other cultures. To address this gap arose the discipline of cross-cultural analysis or cross-cultural communication. The main theories of cross-cultural communication draw from the fields of anthropology, sociology, communication and psychology and are based on value differences among cultures. Edward T. Hall, Geert Hofstede, Fons Trompenaars, Shalom Schwartz and Clifford Geertz are some of the major contributors in this field.
How the social sciences study and analyze culture
Cultural anthropologists focus on symbolic culture whereas archaeologists focus on material and tangible culture. Sociobiologists study instinctive behavior in trying to explain the similarities, rather than the differences between cultures. They believe that human behavior cannot be satisfactorily explained entirely by 'cultural', 'environmental' or 'ethnic' factors. Some sociobiologists try to understand the many aspects of culture in the light of the concept of the meme, first introduced by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. Dawkins suggests the existence of units of culture - memes - roughly analogous to genes in evolutionary biology. Although this view has gained some popular currency, other anthropologists generally reject it.
Different types of cross-cultural comparison methods
Nowadays there are many types of Cross-cultural comparisons. One method is comparison of case studies. Controlled comparison among variants of a common derivation is another form of comparison. Typically anthropologists and other social scientists favor the third type called Cross-cultural studies, which uses field data from many societies to examine the scope of human behaviour and to test hypotheses about human behavior and culture.
Controlled comparison examines similar characteristics of a few societies while cross-cultural studies uses a sufficiently large sample that statistical analysis can be made to show relationships or lack of relationships between certain traits in question. The anthropological method of holocultural analysis or worldwide cross-cultural analysis is designed to test or develop a proposition through the statistical analysis of data on a sample of ten or more non literate societies from three or more geographical regions of the world. In this approach, cultural traits are taken out of the context of the whole culture and are compared with cultural traits in widely diverse cultures to determine patterns of regularities and differences within the broad base of the study.
Aims of cross-cultural analysis
Cross-cultural communication or inter cultural communication looks at how people from different cultural backgrounds try to communicate. It also tries to produce some guidelines, which help people from different cultures to better communicate with each other.
Culture has an interpretative function for the members of a group, which share that particular culture. Although all members of a group or society might share their culture, expressions of culture-resultant behaviour are modified by the individuals' personality, upbringing and life-experience to a considerable degree. Cross-cultural analysis aims at harnessing this utilitarian function of culture as a tool for increasing human adaptation and improving communication.
Cross-cultural management is seen as a discipline of international management focusing on cultural encounters, which aims to discover tools to handle cultural differences seen as sources of conflict or miscommunication.
How laypersons see culture
It is a daunting challenge to convey the findings of research and field work and discuss cross-cultural issues in diverse contexts such as corporate culture, workplace culture and inter cultural competency as laypeople tend to use the word 'culture' to refer to something refined, artistic and exclusive to a certain group of "artists" who function in a separate sphere than ordinary people in the workplace. Some typical allusions to culture:
Culture is the section in the newspaper where they review theatre, dance performances or write book reviews etc.
Culture is what parents teach their kids and grandparents teach their grandchildren.
"You don't have any culture," is what people say to you when you put your feet on the table at lunchtime or spit in front of guests.
"They just have a different culture," people say about those whose behaviour they don't understand but have to tolerate.
Different models of cross-cultural analysis
There are many models of cross-cultural analysis currently valid. The 'Iceberg' and the 'Onion' models are widely known. The popular 'Iceberg model' of culture developed by Selfridge and Sokolik, 1975 and W.L. French and C.H. Bell in 1979, identifies a visible area consisting of behaviour or clothing or symbols and artifacts of some form and a level of values or an invisible level.
Trying to define as complex a phenomenon as culture with just two layers proved quite a challenge and the 'Onion' model arose. Geert Hofstede (1991) proposed a set of four layers, each of which includes the lower level or is a result of the lower level. According to this view, 'culture' is like an onion that can be peeled, layer-by layer to reveal the content. Hofstede sees culture as "the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another."
Cross-cultural analysis often plots 'dimensions' such as orientation to time, space, communication, competitiveness, power etc., as complimentary pairs of attributes and different cultures are positioned in a continuum between these.
Hofstede dimensions to distinguish between cultures
The five dimensions Hofstede uses to distinguish between national cultures are:
Power distance, which measures the extent to which members of society accept how power is distributed unequally in that society.
Individualism tells how people look after themselves and their immediate family only in contrast with Collectivism, where people belong to in-groups (families, clans or organizations) who look after them in exchange for loyalty.
The dominant values of Masculinity, focussing on achievement and material success are contrasted with those of Femininity, which focus on caring for others and quality of life.
Uncertainty avoidance measures the extent to which people feel threatened by uncertainty and ambiguity and try to avoid these situations.
Confucian dynamism. This Long-term versus Short-term Orientation measured the fostering of virtues related to the past, i.e., respect for tradition, importance of keeping face and thrift.
Trompenaars dimensions to distinguish between cultures
Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner (1997) adopt a similar onion-like model of culture. However, their model expands the core level of the very basic two-layered model, rather than the outer level. In their view, culture is made up of basic assumptions at the core level. These 'basic assumptions' are somewhat similar to 'values' in the Hofstede model.
Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner use seven dimensions for their model of culture:
Universalism vs Particularism (what is more important - rules or relationships?)
Individualism vs Communitarianism (do we function in a group or as an individual?)
Neutral vs Emotional (do we display our emotions or keep them in check?)
Specific vs Diffuse (how far do we get involved?)
Achievement vs Ascription (do we have to prove ourselves to gain status or is it given to us just because we are a part of a structure?)
Attitude to Time
Past- / present- / future-orientatedness
Sequential time vs Synchronic time(do we do things one at a time or several things at once?)
Internal vs External Orientation (do we aim to control our environment or cooperate with it?)
Criticism of current models
One of the weaknesses of cross-cultural analysis has been the inability to transcend the tendency to equalize culture with the concept of the nation state. A nation state is a political unit consisting of an autonomous state inhabited predominantly by a people sharing a common culture, history, and language or languages. In real life, cultures do not have strict physical boundaries and borders like nation states. Its expression and even core beliefs can assume many permutations and combinations as we move across distances.
There is some criticism in the field that this approach is out of phase with global business today, with transnational companies facing the challenges of the management of global knowledge networks and multicultural project teams, interacting and collaborating across boundaries using new communication technologies.
Some writers like Nigel Holden (2001) suggest an alternative approach, which acknowledges the growing complexity of inter- and intra-organizational connections and identities, and offers theoretical concepts to think about organizations and multiple cultures in a globalizing business context.
In spite of all the shortcomings and criticisms faced by the Hofstede model, it is very much favoured by trainers and researchers. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, it is a wonderful and easy to use tool to quantify cultural differences so that they can be discussed. Discussing and debating differences is after all the main method of training and learning. Secondly, Hofstede's research at IBM was conducted in the workplace, so Hofstede tools brings cross-cultural analysis closer to the business side of the workplace, away from anthropology, which is a matter for universities.
Bibliography and suggested reading:
Dawkins, Richard (1976). The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press
French, W.L. and C.H. Bell (1979). Organization development. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Hofstede, Geert "Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind", 1997
Holden, Nigel 2001, Cross-Cultural Management: A Knowledge Management Perspective, Financial Times Management
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