Dealing with culture change - Research Paper Example

Defined as the scientific study of human behavior and processes under diverse cultures, (Adler and Gielen 4) Cross-cultural Psychology delves more on behavioral transformations of an individual when placed in a culturally foreign environment than on the cultural differences of nations. Some of the common types of cultural change effects on an individual are on the emotional state, beliefs and practices, personality, social behavior and relations, interpretation of everyday languages as well as relationship with family.

New geographical surroundings, unfamiliar languages as well as strange customs and other intercultural contact and changes that may cause problems for an individual can collectively be called as culture shock. Culture shock may be traced to past negative events, minimal social support and differences in human values. (Furnham, Bochner 177) Negative life-events include inability to cope with new environment due to previous physical illness and psychological ailment. Negative events also include abrupt changes in environment and situations, traumatic occurrences such as extremely embarrassing experiences.

(Furnham, Bochner 178) Physical and mental illness that weaken the coping mechanism of an individual include tuberculosis, depression, skin diseases, cancer and heart diseases (Furnham, Bochner 178) since these ailments tend to bring patients depression and stigma. Some examples would be a former tuberculosis patient, a person suffering from a heart disease and a person with marks due to a previous skin disease. For a person who has been cleared of tuberculosis, the individual would always be on guard in allowing people to know of this previous medical record thus would lead to a limited social interaction for the former tuberculosis patient.

An individual who has a heart disease, given the condition of his health, would most of the time be irritable and sometimes undergoes self-pity for his condition. Irritability brought