Multicultural Experience Paper

A multicultural experience can be optimistic or a negative educational experience. Some investigators have established that multicultural experiences increase creativeness and insight within one’s learning. “Multiculturalism is a body of thought in political philosophy about the proper way to respond to cultural and religious diversity ” (Stanford Encyclopedia,(2010). Most people will have at one multicultural experience during his or her life. Even trying a new car wash or going to a new church could lead to a multicultural experience. Multiculturalism can be a positive or negative experience within one’s life; however, it will be a learning experiences regardless.

The experience of multiculturalism permits a person or group to open a new pathway to accepting a chance to learn about the way other individuals live. The experience of other individuals helps one to comprehend and teach broadmindedness to others. In contrast a multicultural experience can have a negative effect. One important drawback to multiculturalism is the separation that may produce within society. For example, creating prejudices, stereotypes regarding other cultures, which subsist in one’s surroundings.

I was invited to come to my co=worker church to experience there culture opposed to my church. I walked into Trinity Church Sunday afternoon, I documented immediately that the church’s name was not accidentally chosen, it was something, or someone within their faith. The name of the church was on many statues within the church. Songs of prayer is how the service starts, which is much different from my church. Most of the songs did not remind me of the songs we harmonized at my church. Within my church we commence the worship with a candle lighting and a reading from the Bible. As the worshippers sang I looked around and seen that the majority of the people where white, which was very different from my church, our church has White, Hispanic, and African American.

The tone begins to transform when the Priest started to converse to the congregation. The theme of talk was marriage and faith. I thought that as when the Priest stated the topic that the people sighed with excitement. In addition to my shock each time the Priest spoke words that the people approved of the people replied with a word of “yes,” however at my church our congregation replies with the words “Amen.” I was not very comfortable at this service, listening to the Priest and watching the reaction of the congregation. I believe that I felt uncomfortable because of my nonparticipation and not understanding the group’s denomination. Near the conclusion of the service I started to agree with what the Priest was trying to convey to the group, I found myself replying with the congregation. I almost replied “amen,” however, I did stop myself although I was saying the word in my mind.

Social Aspects

A group is two or more people interacting with each other and offering each other their thoughts and opinions. A group will talk things over, make choices, and sometimes just get together for fun. This is because of the possible intention of providing information, determining goals, offering reinforcement, and the need to be involved within the group. The group action of a collection exerts power on co-actors through the simple interactive mechanism of social facilitation, social loafing, and de-individuation (Changing Minds, 2011). At the core of social procedures lay, the psychological mechanism of measurement apprehensive founded on the suggestion that an individual believes he or she is being judged or evaluated by another group, or individual. Social facilitation orders that the significance of the impact that a group or individual has in regard to a person is embroidered with numbers. Additionally, existing in a group increases higher replies, constructive or unconstructive, ending in social stimulation (Klehe, Anderson, & Hoefnagels, 2007).

Social facilitation is the tendency of individuals to execute easy or well-learned jobs better when other individuals are near, or the strengthening of prevailing response in the attendance of other individuals (Myers, 2010). In addition, social loafing occurs when evaluation apprehension reduces by group incorporation. When a circumstance, which individuals gather from a group without providing a lot, social loafing can present a negative for a group (Klehe, Anderson, & Hoefnagels, 2007). However, if a job within a group is determined to be a difficult, or has negative factors of social loafing it can be lessened, and at the identical time of the positive of social loafing can be given emphasis. When evaluation apprehension lessens, individual actions can be capable of domination, given that failure of self-awareness, and devotion is usual within a grouping (Klehe, Anderson, & Hoefnagels, 2007).

Preconceived Ideas

The “Contact Hypothesis” of organizational workings, concur that absorption may take place through congenital groups, intimate relations, main contacts, and family loops. An adaption can take place during lesser contact with smaller group situations. Because classically a worship assembly is not where main contact takes place, accommodation is the main door for behavior transforms happens (Klehe, Anderson, & Hoefnagels, 2007). Within the new environment I observed in the beginning the service commenced and the congregation led me to exhibit social loafing. The groups anonymity resulted in my quietness.

As the service continued my behavior was overpowering by the method of social behavior; because the evaluation apprehension lessened, followed from the actions of the group. Toward the end of the service, I started to interact with the group. By employing the accommodation of my preconceived ideas regarding a church that was pre-dominantly white, and a church that was not at all like the one I am used to. I finally was calmed by the incorporation of the dominate reply of the group into the outline of my personal behavior (Changing Minds, 2002-2011).

With the new experience that I have encountered, regardless of the values, and viewpoints of the individuals of the different culture, helped me to conquer the difference of the method of worship that in the opening controlled my oral confirmations; in the end allowed me to de-individuation myself and let group identification take place. The theory of “social integration melting pot better” clarifies my accepting the manner of worship at my coworker’s church, even with the encounter of ethics and individuals of a different race because of the beliefs that we both shared (Hirschman, 1983).

At the closing the church worship at my coworkers church was an encouraging and positive experience that in the beginning I thought would be negative experience. The mechanisms of social loafing and social facilitation were on point with my actions and insight of the new method of worship I attended. Moreover, the contact theory of organization mechanic assumes the accommodation because of behavioral dis-inhibition that can explain the oral actions that I exhibited toward the end of the mass.

References

Changing Minds.org (2011). Retrieved from http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/social_loafing.htm

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), From: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2010/entries/multiculturalism/>.

Hirschman, C. (1983). America’s Melting Pot Reconsidered. Annual Review Of Sociology, 9397-423.

Klehe, U., Anderson, N., & Hoefnagels, E. A. (2007). Social Facilitation and Inhibition During Maximum Versus Typical Performance Situations. Human Performance, 20(3), 223-239. doi:10.1080/08959280701333040

Myers, D. (2010). Social Psychology (10th ed.). New York: McGraw Hill.