Cultural Self Awareness In Australian Culture

INTRODUCTION

According to Quappe and Cantatore (2005, p.1) cultural awareness is defined as the base for the interacting people from the various cultures other than ours as it helps us to explore outside our own cultural boundaries. Due to the increasing globalisation around the world, cultural self awareness has been a necessity in every sector of life such employment, travel, education, business and etc. Cultural self awareness is very important precursor for cultural intelligence because without being conscious of other’s culture, their language, lifestyles and food it is impossible adopt ourselves with in that culture. Furthermore cultural intelligence is defined as the capacity to adapt with people from various cultural backgrounds as we interact with them (Earley and Ang, cited in Brislin, Worthley and Macnab, 2006, p. 40). This essay will discuss how

This kind of well balanced cultural awareness help to develop the essential cultural intelligence skills that allows an individual to transfer social skills from one culture to another culture and also allows for better cross cultural respect, recognition and adaptation. In my case, my knowledge and experience of my own cultural values and the awareness of Australian culture has been very helpful to recognise and integrate the important cultural aspects of both culture. ‘Cultural intelligence is to be distinguished from other type of interactive intelligence such as emotional intelligence and social intelligence’(Brislin, Worthley and Macnab, 2006, p. 47). However it is easily argued that emotional and social intelligence could not be differentiated from cultural intelligence. For instance; emotional intelligence such as empathy; an ability to understand other people’s emotion is culturally influences and also an important aspect of cultural