Practicality and efficiency

Practicality and efficiency are also hallmarks of the dominant culture. Unlike some Asian cultures, gift giving in the United States is usually kept within the limits appropriate to the giver’s budget. In America garage sales are common and people are not embarrassed to buy used items. At a restaurant with a large group, people usually “go Dutch,” with everyone paying for their own meals. It is easy to see that individuality, independence, and self-reliance are central considerations in the pragmatic attitude evinced by Americans. Because strong group ties do not play a major role in U.S. societal activities, there is no need to build interpersonal relations based on a system of mutual obligations, as is done in many collectivistic cultures. The role of efficiency in America can also be seen in the highly structured use of time, discussed earlier. Americans also tend to be very rational or logical when working on problems. “Just give me the facts,” an often heard phrase in the U.S., illustrates the importance of objectivity when making a decision or a judgment. Reason takes precedence over emotionality, subjectivity, or sentimentality.

Materialism/acquisitiveness

Acquiring material possessions has always been an integral part of life for most Americans. “Americans consider it almost a right to be materially well off and physically comfortable.”30 In fact, Americans consider their materialistic nature “natural and proper” [31]. From Bender’s perspective, U.S. materialism is a natural outgrowth of the nation’s philosophy of equal opportunity for all [32]. However, Americans have historically been willing to work hard to realize their dreams. Thus, the acquisition of material possessions, such as a large home, a variety of clothes for every occasion, convenient personal transportation, and a large selection of foods, is considered just reward for hard work. The American preference for a large selection of material items to choose from is clearly illustrated in your typical supermarket, which carries over 48,000 items [33], and the number of sandwich and condiment choices available at Subway©.

HALL’S HIGH-CONTEXT AND LOW-CONTEXT ORIENTATIONS

Anthropologist E.T. Hall categorizes cultures as high- or low-context, depending on the degree to which meaning comes from the contextual environment rather than the words exchanged during communicative interaction [82]. The assumption underlying Hall’s classifications is that “one of the functions of culture is to provide a highly selective screen between man and the outside world. In its many forms, culture therefore designates what we pay attention to and what we ignore” [83]. Hall saw context as “the information that surrounds an event; it is inextricably bound up with the meaning of the event” [84]. His work revealed that cultures were often characterized by high- or low-context communication, which he described in the following manner:

A high-context (HC) communication or message is one in which most of the information is already in the person, while very little is in the coded, explicitly transmitted part of the message. A low-context (LC) communication is just the opposite; i.e., the mass of the information is vested in the explicit code [85]. Although all cultures possess some characteristics of both high- and low-context variables, most can be ranked along a scale for this particular dimension (see Table 2). To emphasize this fact, various cultures have been placed on a continuum rather than using only two opposing categories.