How cultural communities shape personal values and beliefs

Values and Beliefs:

Transformation and Change

Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of the human psyche is how one's personal values and beliefs can transform and change. Whereas, one previously might have imagined that one's value systems and beliefs were "set in stone," events, circumstances, relationships, and changing community membership can either slowly or suddenly work to change one's central beliefs quite unexpectedly. Although many individuals can experience a real sense of personal internal resistance or struggle to changing beliefs and values (perhaps akin to the stereotypical "midlife crisis"), some respond to value change quite readily and without emotional crisis. However, regardless of how one responds, belief and value change is a normal and typically inevitable for those who function in a wide variety of relationships, communities, and situations.

Relationships and Communities:

Their Central Function

Cultural anthropologists have long known the important role that community, and the relationships within community have in transmitting, and perpetuating beliefs and values in the individual. On a broad level, one's culture of origin can represent the most significant "community" for the individual. Not only does this community have important implications with regard to one's eventual belief and value outlook, but each community can transmit very different messages with regard to acceptable and non-acceptable behavior and beliefs.

A good way to think of the way in which one's culture effects values and beliefs is to consider the role of the family as a transmitter of overall societal values. For example, in the dominant White North American culture, children are reared (generally) to be somewhat independent, and to value independence from family as adults. This is often accomplished through parenting styles, as well as peer interaction. For example, children are taught that it is normal to "leave the nest" typically after high school graduation, and those who do not can be marginalized or shamed for failing to do so. However, in many other cultural communities, for example, in traditional Middle Eastern cultures, the same independent behavior is not encouraged, and the same social stigma does not exist with regard to the individual's remaining "in the nest" until or even after marriage.

Although there can be significant variation in individual's belief and values even within the cultural environment of one's community, the individual regardless feels the existence of significant pressure to conform to societal norms -- be they economic, religious, or interpersonal. Thus, one often struggles under the dominant values of one's community, regardless of to the extent to which one cognitively agrees with them.

It is for this reason that when one leaves one's community of origin, be it on the macro (national) or micro (social, religious, career, political groups, etc.) level that the individual begins to change with regard to his or her belief and value system. For example, foreign exchange students may begin to take on the dominant beliefs of the new culture, at least on some levels (for example, an Egyptian villager may return from studying in the United States feeling it not desirable to "move in" with his parents or extended family, and instead purchase a home of his own). Further, a North American after spending many years in Saudi Arabia may find it strange to interact freely with the opposite sex after returning home.

Even on a micro-level, a person leaving a small, racially distinct area may experience changes in beliefs and values after moving to take a job in a hospital in a large, ethnically diverse metropolitan hospital, for example. There, circumstances, experiences, and the beliefs of colleagues may slowly transform personal beliefs about difference, especially under the influence of a dominant ethic that pervades the organization, itself (i.e. hospital policy, "mission," etc.) and enforces specific codes of behavior.

Conclusions: Imagination and Feeling

Although culture definitely plays a role in one's beliefs, having the ability to imagine the feelings of others from their perspective, even if one does not agree with their particular viewpoint, can improve the way in which very diverse people interact. Indeed, having the capacity to "put yourself in another's shoes" is often the key difference between being an effective health practitioner or educator, or one who is perhaps technically good, but personally offensive or ineffective. There is simply no replacement for a good perspective and flexibility regarding the infinite variations in belief and values in the human experience. Having the ability to gain perspective through the understanding of the mechanisms of value and belief formation -- specifically acquired through education, imagination and feeling -- is a peerless skill that should be high on any educational agenda.