Interpersonal Communication at Your Workplace

Communication and Diversity Barriers

According to the Population Reference Bureau (2014), the US population will reach a point by 2043, when Caucasians will no longer be a majority, given the growth of Latino, Asian, and multi-racial segments of the citizenry. The populations in the African continent will more than double to 2.1 billion by 2050. Other developing nations are experiencing large population growth rates as well. Arguably, the ever-increasing global world and technology have led to the population increase and, as such, more peoples of the world will be interacting in global business ventures.

Despite, or because of, this rapid growth in the diversity of organizational members, many coworkers may find managing and responding to their diverse work environments difficult. Frequently, these difficulties arise from one of three barriers to accepting diversity:

• Preconceptions or lack of knowledge
• Stereotyping
• Prejudice

Preconceptions or Lack of Knowledge

To process large amounts of information every day, we tend to place things or people into groups. Grouping things or people is a natural, cognitive, and perceptual process that can lead to misperceptions. Categorizing can reduce complex individuals to a single category, and thus expects them to behave in ways consistent with their category, regardless of the circumstance.

Individuals are often categorized based on limited knowledge and preconceptions. You might categorize an individual based on your perception of a person’s ethnicity (which may be wrong) and then assume that the individual endorses specific values based on that ethnicity. You may believe that your Japanese-American colleague endorses collectivism and large power differences while, in fact, your colleague may be a fourth-generation American who endorses individualism and low power differences. Although categorizing is natural and normal, you need to be aware of how your tendency to categorize may impede your understanding of others.

Stereotyping

Stereotyping is another barrier to accepting diversity. Stereotypes are a direct result of assumptions that overgeneralize the attributes of a particular group, often leading to stereotype threat within that group (Appel & Kronberger, 2012). You stereotype when you assume that every member of the group possesses certain characteristics. When you stereotype others, you may be basing your beliefs on your interactions with just a few individuals—or perhaps on no interactions at all. Stereotypes may also be based on information you have read, seen in the media images, or obtained from others.

Once you develop a stereotype, it tends to influence what you expect from members of the stereotyped group. Stereotypes also influence what you perceive and how you interpret others’ behavior. When you hold these types of beliefs and expectations, they tend to erase a person’s individual characteristics. You are likely to communicate with an individual as if your stereotypes were accurate, rather than basing your messages on the person’s actual behavior and communication. Over time, the person or group being stereotyped becomes psychologically uncomfortable or threatened due to the stereotype negativity (Appel & Kronberger, 2012).

Prejudice

Stereotypes often lead to prejudice. Prejudice occurs when people harbor negative feelings toward individuals because of their membership in a group (Rothenberg, 1992). Prejudice can be based on physical characteristics, ethnicity or perceived ethnicity, age, national origin, religious practices, and a number of other identity categories.

Prejudice tends to arise out of feelings of ethnocentrism. Most people view their own group as the standard against which they evaluate others. Thus, one's own ethnic, regional, or class group is the one that seems right, correct, or normal. This tendency to view one's own group as the center against which all the others are judged is described as ethnocentrism. It comes from the Greek words "ethnos," which means nation, and "kentron," which refers to the center of a circle (Ting-Toomey, 1999). People behave ethnocentrically when they view their own values, norms, modes of belief, and behavior as better than those of the other groups.

While everyone experiences ethnocentrism to some degree, it can lead to polarized thinking and behavior; if you are right, correct, normal, and even superior, then they must be wrong, incorrect, abnormal, and inferior. Such thinking can seriously interfere with the ability to communicate effectively with members of different groups.

References:

Appel, M., & Kronberger, N. (2012). Stereotypes and the achievement gap:Stereotype threat prior to test taking. Educational Psychology Review, 24(4), 609−635.

Population Reference Bureau. (2014). Persistent racial/ethnic gaps in theU.S. Retrieved from http://www.prb.org/Publications/Reports/2014/us-inequality-racial-ethnic-gaps.aspx

Rothenberg, P. S. (1992). Race, class and gender in the United States: An integrated study. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press.

Ting-Toomey, S. (1999). Communicating across cultures. New York, NY:Guildford.