Cultural Influence on Judgements

Exploring the Concept of Culture
How Much Culture Influences our Judgments
What Would You Do?

• To help students understand how culture plays an integral role in how we analyze and view the world.
• To realize how people commonly judge a situation or make daily observations based on what’s acceptable or “normal” in their own culture.

• Identify some U.S. cultural characteristics to use as examples.
• Understand how these cultural characteristics influence our perceptions of situations and behaviors.
• Learn to observe and describe before making judgment.

• What Would You Do? Handout – one per person
• What Would You Do NOW? Handout – one per person

• Pass out the What Would You Do? handout and ask each student to fill it out individually.
• Have them put it aside once completed.
• Start a class discussion asking questions such as:
  • What is culture? (Write answers on the board)
  • Which of the things identified can be easily seen and which ones are harder to distinguish? (i.e. attitudes, values)
  • Ask for examples of American values (i.e. individualism, success).
  • Ask how these values are demonstrated in American society (i.e. individual seats in a classroom).
  • Point out that value differences often cause differences in behaviors and how one perceives a situation.
• Then, hand out the What Would You Do Now? handout and have each student fill out the form individually.
• Once they are done, put students in 2-3 people groups and have each group discuss how their answers changed from the first exercise.
• Have each group summarize the group discussion and then present it to the class.
• Debrief the exercise with the results and the goals with the whole class.