Chapter 5: Cultural Patterns and Communication:

Taxonomies
Key Terms
affective autonomy: A type of autonomy that encourages individual pursuits of pleasurable
emotional states, enjoyable feelings, varied experiences, and an exciting life.
assertiveness: A cultural dimension that describes the degree to which people are assertive,
confrontational, and aggressive in social relationships.
autonomy: A cultural dimension in which people are regarded as independent and are
encouraged to express their unique preferences, tendencies, abilities, and feelings.
autonomy versus embeddedness: A cultural dimension that describes a preference for the kinds
of relationships and boundaries that ought to exist between individuals and the larger group.
cultural patterns: Shared beliefs, values, norms, and social practices that are stable over time
and that lead to roughly similar behaviors across similar situations.
culture: A learned set of shared interpretations about beliefs, values, norms, and social practices
that affects the behaviors of a relatively large group of people.
egalitarianism: A cultural dimension that views others as social and moral equals who
voluntarily choose to work together as peers to fulfill shared interests.

egalitarianism versus hierarchy: A cultural dimension that addresses people’s need to organize
and coordinate their activities in a way that preserves and fulfills the goals of the social group.
embeddedness: A cultural dimension that views people as nested within a collective social
network, such that identification with the group is a central concern and maintenance of harmony
in social relationships is paramount.
future orientation: A cultural dimension that describes the degree to which people focus on
future-oriented behaviors such as planning while delaying immediate gratifications.

gender egalitarianism: A cultural dimension that describes the extent to which people minimize
or accentuate gender-role differences and gender discrimination.

gender expectations: A cultural dimension that describes beliefs about appropriate behaviors for
men and women.

harmony: A cultural dimension of acceptance and blending into the natural and social worlds
where humans are seen as an integral part of nature.

harmony versus mastery: A cultural dimension that describes people’s orientations to social
and natural resources.

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hierarchy: (1) A cultural dimension that views the unequal distribution of social, political, and
economic power as legitimate and desirable. (2) A fundamental interpersonal decision rule that is
based on status and authority for making choices.
high-context cultures: A cultural dimension describing cultures that prefer high-context
messages, in which most of the meaning is either implied by the physical setting or is presumed
to be part of the individual’s internalized beliefs, values, norms, and social practices.
humane orientation: A cultural dimension that describes the degree to which people encourage
others to be fair, altruistic, friendly, generous, caring, and kind.
individualism–collectivism: A cultural dimension that describes the degree to which a culture
relies on and has allegiance to the self or the group.
indulgence–restraint: A cultural dimension that describes the degree to which a culture values
pleasure, enjoyment, and hedonism or restraint, personal control, and self-discipline.
ingroup: A social group with which a person closely identifies, belongs to, and feels part of.
ingroup collectivism: A cultural dimension that describes the degree to which people express
pride, loyalty, and cohesiveness to their families.

institutional collectivism: A cultural dimension that describes a culture’s institutional practices

that encourage collective actions and the collective distribution of resources.

intellectual autonomy: A type of autonomy that encourages people’s independent pursuit of

thoughts, ideas, and knowledge.

intercultural communication: A symbolic, interpretive, transactional, contextual process in

which people from different cultures create shared meanings.
low-context cultures: A cultural dimension describing cultures that prefer to use low-context
messages, in which the majority of the information is vested in the explicit code.
masculinity–femininity: A cultural dimension that describes the degree to which a culture
values assertiveness and the acquisition of wealth as opposed to caring for others and the quality
of life.
mastery: A cultural dimension that encourages cultural members to direct and control the natural
and social worlds.
nation: A political term referring to a government and a set of formal and legal mechanisms that
regulate the political behavior of its people.
outgroup: Social groups with which a person does not closely identify, belong to, or feel part of.
performance orientation: A cultural dimension that describes the degree to which people
encourage others to excel at task- and performance-related activities.

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power distance: A cultural dimension that describes the degree to which the culture believes that
institutional and organizational power should be distributed unequally and the decisions of the
powerholders should be challenged or accepted.
task-relationship dimension: A cultural dimension that describes the degree to which cultures
emphasize the relative importance of “getting the job done” or maintaining good social
relationships.
time orientation: A cultural dimension that describes how people conceptualize the passage of
time and the value they place on time.
uncertainty: The extent to which a person lacks the knowledge, information, and ability to
understand and predict the intentions and behaviors of another.
uncertainty avoidance: A cultural dimension that describes the extent to which the culture feels
threatened by ambiguous, uncertain situations and tries to avoid them by establishing more
structure.
values: What a group of people defines as good and bad or what it regards as important.

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