How Does Culture Influence Behavior?

How Does Culture Influence Behavior

Culture influences our behaviors in diverse ways. It is because the culture is the people’s way of life. Culture includes the social ethics, principles, or morals seen in society. A method of living that encompasses people’s beliefs, values, customs, language, and traditions is what we know to be culture.

The question is: how does culture influence behavior?

Culture includes the totality of people’s way of life, from their dressing up to their manner of eating, beliefs, language, norms, and values. People view the world from where they are coming from and consequently react according to their culture. To answer the question, how does culture influence behavior, we should note that there are many ways in which culture influences and impacts lives. For instance, students coming from different cultural backgrounds may react to their teacher in a way that is not acceptable in the school settings, even though it’s fair, judging by where they are coming.

The Significance Of Culture 

Culture adds excellent value to society, especially intrinsic virtues. Cultural participation can be of great benefit to people and affects them personally. Culture offers delightful and beautiful experiences, providing people with emotional and intellectual intelligence.

Through culture, people can display creativity. Thus, it influences our behaviors greatly. We can examine the significance of culture in various ways. These multiple ways include the economic sector, health and well-being, active communities, tourism advancement, and cultural strategizing, among others.

Culture has incomparable power to influence lives massively. Furthermore, we consider it as society’s lifeblood. And that is because cultural perception differs in food, dressing, language, beliefs, and values. It is a form of identity for a group of people. With the importance of culture in mind, we cannot overlook how they greatly influence behavior.

In the job sector, culture assists the economy by providing and creating jobs for individuals. It triggers creativity in other industries, which may appear in different forms, such as product development, regional advancement, community transformation, and tourism accretion.

It enhances the quality of life and ensures the overall health of people. In other words, due to an improved or advanced learning, health clinics and hospitals have recorded improvements in all facets.

Culture shapes the education in our society. It leads to the innovation and implementation of better ways to learn, therefore having a positive influence on the future. Culture is a driver for a new change in the rural and urban areas. Its full impact is what we cannot overlook.

Characteristics Of Culture 

Culture consists of five essential components. They are:

Culture is learnable:

It doesn’t matter how old a person is; you can learn a different culture, either consciously or unconsciously. In essence, it means that you can learn all kinds of behaviors. Going to the gym, a pattern of making one’s hair, standing in line, the mode of dressing are all behaviors that we can learn.

Learned behaviors come in two ways. These types are overt and covert behavior. The former involves behaviors that you display outside, such as going to football games or eating with forks. They are visible behaviors that you can learn.

The latter, covert behavior, are behaviors that are not openly visible to the people, such as the feeling of hatred for an enemy or planning for tomorrow.

Culture is abstract:

It is a fact that culture is something that you cannot see or touch, thereby making it abstract. Culture only exists in the minds of people, and it portrays itself through the habits of people. It practically affects people’s way of thinking and the ways people do things.

You can only see culture in a behavioral form or in a regularly patterned fashion called culture.

Culture is a designed, cultivated behavior: 

Culture, from its definition, shows that you learn behaviors. Culture patterns and aligns with someone’s behavior or perhaps, one’s behavior is dependent upon another. The model is according to someone’s behavior.

Culture is an outcome of behavior: 

Cultural knowledge is the outcome of behavior. The individual begins to learn how to handle certain things. It could be how to swim or even show hatred towards someone.

Culture is dynamic: 

The dynamic nature of culture is proof that it is liable to change as it interacts with other cultures. The integration of different people makes it very simple for culture to change as a result of constant interaction with other cultures. The exchange of ideas and symbols are factors that contribute to its dynamism. It makes it easier for people to adapt to changes in the environment.

Types Of Culture

People express their cultures in diverse ways. However, social scientists developed two fundamental categories to explain things produced by society. The various types of culture are:

Material culture: 

Material culture refers to the tangible things that society makes. Cars are one of the significant products of Americans. We know Americans for their strong affinity in the production and use of vehicles. It is a cultural phenomenon and stands as a symbol of the place. We also see other cultures in different African countries, such as gold and diamond production.

Non-material culture: 

The non-material culture refers to the intangible things produced by a culture. It speaks of the parts of culture you cannot touch, feel, hold, or touch. They have a significant influence on our lives and forms the basics. It includes language, values, beliefs, equality, and social roles. Although we cannot see these factors, it does not mean that they do not exist.

Elements Of Culture

Norms, languages, artifacts, symbols, and values contribute to the elements of culture. The combination of cultural elements produces a unique way of living in society.

We can consider language to be one of the elements of culture. Language is evolving as the day goes by. Almost daily, new ideas created. Some languages depend on symbols for effective communication, while some rely on non-verbal or spoken communication. Humans strive to understand their world using symbols, signs, gestures, signals, and words.

Another essential element of culture is the values and beliefs. They stand as a means of transmitting culture from one generation to another. Tenets and convictions make up the belief people have. Values help to shape society. It also points out the wrongs and rights and good morals, which indicates the ones that should continue and the one that needs revisiting.

Also, norms are elements of culture. It defines how people behave following what the people in a society declares to be good and right, and what most members of the society must follow.

Maintenance Of Culture

Failing to preserve and maintain the culture that people value and respect will lead to a society without norms and values. It robs them of connection, making the younger generation not to be able to see the importance of culture. It affects both the behavioral pattern of people, replaces the rights with the wrongs, thereby, causing a weak society without backbones.

Culture stands as a backbone to many people. It gives them a reason to live, love, and maintain that oneness and togetherness. Failing to uphold culture can ruin bonds and relationships, and lose specific values to what is obtainable in present times. Irrespective of civilization and modernization, cultures remain outstanding and make people who they are.

You define people from their display of culture. In essence, culture is an identity. People need to hold on to their beliefs and values, primarily when it is affecting lives positively.

How Culture Influences Behavior

Generally, from all angles, people are emerging from different parts of the world. When people come from different backgrounds, they come with the different ways they view things. Thus, the fact that culture affects how an individual behaves is an undeniable factor. Culture influences every part of an individual’s life. It affects the way they dress, eat, daily routine, food, interaction with others. All these contribute to how it influences people’s behavior. People learn these behaviors and acts on them.

Cultural Planning

Cultural Planning is a direct help offered to the development of a community’s resources. One does this by first identifying it and then leveraging it. It also includes combining those resources across all angles of preparation and decision making.

Through cultural planning, culture gains recognition through its contribution to the urban and rural regions, cosmopolitan and metropolis areas of the world. Through its added value, communities are increasingly experiencing a real sense of living, prosperity, and rebranding.

The local government pioneers, commissions, and others, sponsors cultural planning. It entails communal participation to maximize a community’s cultural resources and integrates them all to resolve daunting issues. You implement the cultural plan when you seek to achieve sustainable development of communities, its independence, economic progress, and its social equity. Cultural Planning creates room for culture to flourish, establishing tolerance, unity, and oneness in society.

Conclusion

Culture is the building block of every society. People are who they are as a result of culture. Thus, we can look at the question, how does culture influence behavior? As a result, we realize that culture has a significant influence on people. Its impact is what we see in the behavioral patterns of people. Culture affects the upbringing of the younger ones. As they grow, they cleave to the culture they see.

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