How much effect does culture have on an individual?

Together with genetics and your parents’ modus operandi of raising you, it defines your values, your behaviours and your reactions to the behaviours of others.

A lot. Your culture and subculture influence how you interact with others. It is easy to have misunderstandings when you live or interact with people from another country, ethnicity, or even family. I was raised in USA, my husband was raised in Mexico. There have been many misunderstandings between family members and myself. I think it is important to make an effort to understand the culture you are living in now and conform to a certain point. You are in their country now. Not give up what makes you you. I am sure they will appreciate some of the things that make you “Canadian” in their observation. I would suggest when you feel unsure about something to ask, and be willing to explain it is different where you are from. If you can say it in a way that you respect their customs and expectations and want to learn I think you will have little problem.

It has a tremendous effect. People who grow up with little exposure to other cultures often have a hard time seeing how much they’ve been formed by their own culture. They tend to assume that their worldview and mores are the gold standard, and when they finally encounter someone from elsewhere, they try to hold them to that standard. They’re unable to step back from the situation and see that this “outsider” isn’t crude and uncultured, just busily assimilating a whole new set of rules. Life-long Parisians would be just as clueless if they had to navigate the Canadian social landscape.

My experience with Parisians is that they interpret American openness, ready smiles, and lack of restraint as child-like. The way I often heard it was “Les Americains, c’est des gros enfants”, because in their culture, that would be childlike behavior and one would be expected to be much more buttoned down by adulthood. But in our culture, someone who behaved like a Parisian would be considered aloof and cold.

Not much. You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.

Somewhere, Dorothy Parker’s smirking and downing a shot.

Would you do this?

@Clair Why did you do that to my brain?

@jeffgoldblumsprivatefacilities hehe. NOM NOM NOM

@Clair I just threw up a little in my mouth.

It depends. If you live in a fairly diverse area, then the effects your culture has on you are diluted, because you can experience other viewpoints, social norms, manners…and cuisine. ;)

But I would say that culture still plays a huge role in how you think. I’m Asian. So one of my inherited cultural values is this emphasis on education as the key to a successful life. Some others are frugality and a deep respect towards my elders. I also feel uncomfortable talking about really private matters with close friends, but I am unsure if it’s a traditionally Asian thing to be reserved, or if it’s just my parents. I also tend to be less assertive and more passive, because I assume that good work will be eventually noticed.

But there are things I haven’t inherited:

1. A strong work ethic (made up for with massive amounts of guilt);
2. the Asian bias towards having lighter skin (they sell skin lightening products as cosmetics in many Asian countries, and women of the older generation especially are fanatical about covering their arms and necks when going out);
3. conservative values as regards marriage, dating, relationships.

Culture is the social expression of language, and language is stuff that our thoughts are made of. Culture not only defines who we are, or what we think about, but how we think. Culture gives meaning to our words, and context to our thoughts. Every thought is a product of culture – the rich connectedness of strings of ideas, responses, manifestations, bounced off of everyone around us, and everyone around them throughout history, redefined by our present perspectives.

Good point, @simpleD . I recently read a study that looked at how speakers of languages that assign gender to nouns will attribute qualities to an object based on what gender their language uses for its name, For instance, if language A uses a masculine gender for the sun (which obviously doesn’t have a gender), and language B uses a feminine gender, and the speakers of the two languages are asked to choose adjectives to describe the sun, the language A speakers will tend to choose more traditionally “masculine” language. Clearly, our native language colors how we model our world.

@Harp The french attitude toward American casualness also stems from a complex of cultural superiority. It’s Jean-Luc Godard’s country looking down on Steven Spielberg’s country, not in spite of popular appreciation for mindless US entertainment but because of it.

@lamedb It’s not any easier for a french person who was raised in the provinces to adjust to the brand of rudeness and arrogance that is de rigueur in Paris and on the Riviera. In the provinces you automatically greet people in small stores. You don’t shake their hands or anything, but if you don’t say a short “hi” upon entering you see heads turning to you and people stare at you like you just peed on their shoes. Not on the Riviera. Here or in Paris store owners take your money, throw you pack of cigarettes on the counter and look at you in a way that says “just be happy I didn’t have you pick it up from the floor”.

If you were raised with strong values there are behaviors that you just can never get used to, no matter what justification can explain them. I’ve seen many people leave the Riviera and Paris because the mentality was contrary to everything their culture taught them.

I watch horrible things happen every day and see them excused as “culture.” When I say horrible I mean young children, in some cases infants, being raped by male elders because it is their right according to their culture. That is not true, but it is used as an excuse. Girls as young as 12–14 are commonly taken as wives by the elders, and that is acceptable but not infants. Women and children are abused and beaten. Children are not sent to school or if they do go, they are taken out for weeks at a time for ceremonies. The children are exposed to gambling and drunkeness. They are rarely taught good hygiene or nutrition so their life expectancy is much shorter. The list goes on and on. And it does not change from one generation to the next because it is all the children know. Because they never have the discipline of going to school whether you feel like it or not, it is almost impossible to hold a job which requires you to show up on a regular basis. So the reliance on welfare never ceases.

So I would say yes, culture plays a huge role in how one’s values and ethics are formed.

All fantastic answers. As an aside, this thread is related, and could perhaps provide some insight.

Reading these answers made me think of an additional point. @rooeytoo pointed out how some cultures do abhorrent, inhumane acts and chalk it up to culture. But, mostly we are talking about smile or not smile; shake hands or bow; chatting before getting down to business or business first; on time or 20 minutes late. I offer that these relatively minor things are not worth judging or feeling badly about, and just accept it as different. We all know the old saying when in Rome do as the Romans do.