Culture is a set of rituals, customs, and beliefs that people living at a certain place or geographical entity practice. It is the foundation of civilization that leads our way of life and makes us the person we are. Culture also plays an important role in communication and becoming aware of our ancestral roots.  

On the other hand, cultural awareness is the foundation that involves the ability to know who we are as a person, what are the cultural traits and abilities that have helped in developing our personality. Cultural awareness helps in understanding our cultural values, beliefs, and way of life.

Cultural awareness definition includes the interest and beliefs that are considered the appropriate behavior for a person related to a certain community and culture. It plays an important role in communication when we interact with people of different culture and beliefs. For example, when an Italian interacts with an American he will start the conversation with certain perceptions and have a will treat the person accordingly like the American people will consider Italians as lazy while Americans will be taken as hyper and calculative.

Cultural awareness can increase some misinterpretations in some situations when cultural awareness is taken as cultural prejudices and arrogance. Knowing your culture and traits is cultural awareness but having a negative perspective towards other cultures on basis of your cultural awareness is something wrong that we can have.

Having cultural awareness about the culture we are born and brought up is difficult as we are made to understand the culture will live on a subconscious level. When we start to understand the culture and experience it in certain than only we get the awareness and true knowledge of the culture.

However, the culture has a strong impact on our lifestyle and values, knowingly or unknowingly. Sometimes we understand it, sometimes we don’t. It also happens that we need to step out of our cultural boundaries just to understand the impact of culture on our personality and personality.

There are certain degrees of cultural awareness that we need to follow and makes a person’s approach positive or negative towards his culture and cultures of others. These traits are-

Trait one- ‘I am always right’

Sometimes engrossed in our cultural awareness we find that ‘ I am always right attitude. This trait is the initial level of cultural awareness where a person finds his culture to be the best and always right. Little does he knows about the other cultures.

Trait two – “my way is better”

When we start evolving and understanding the culture of other people we come in the second phase of cultural awareness. We understand their perception and way of life they live but still remain prejudice towards our own culture. At this point cultural awareness become a reason of increasing problems and issues due to cultural differences.

Trait three- ‘two ways”

When as a person we start acknowledging the way of life of other cultures than only we start evolving our cultural awareness. In this stage, we become aware of cultural and lifestyle of others and while choosing our way as the best way of life. However, the offensive feeling for other way diminishes with time it is replaced by respect.

Trait four’ our way’-

When we finally get aware of the cultures and their dimensions and take them as they are with respect.