Reflection on Culture: Exploring Personal Cultural Influences

This assignment is a reflection on the student's personal cultural background and its influence on their perspectives, feelings, and thoughts. The student defines culture, identifies their own cultural background (Indian culture), and explains how it shapes their identity and views. Using the Gibbs Reflective Cycle, the student explores their initial feelings, evaluations of their cultural lens, and analyzes how their cultural experiences have shaped their biases and understanding of other cultures. They discuss their initial judgments based on cultural differences, and how exposure to other cultures has broadened their perspective. The student concludes by acknowledging the strong influence of culture, the limitations of their previous views, and outlines an action plan to further expand their cultural knowledge and understanding, emphasizing the importance of avoiding cultural biases and embracing diversity. The essay references relevant literature to support the reflection.

Running Head: REFLECTION ON CULTURE
REFLECTION ON CULTURE
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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REFLECTION ON CULTURE
Description:
Culture, in general, is demarcated as the way of living a life of groups of the individual. It
is the belief, objects, behaviours and the other characteristics which are shared by the people
(Suchday et al., 2018). Indian culture is filled with arts, and vibrant festivals and its culture
reflect the diversity (Purnell & Fenkl, 2019). My views and perception about the society, the
family is different from that of the other individual.
Feelings:
I believe that every individual is influenced by their own culture. I belong to an Indian
culture, which is exceptionally dissimilar to that of the Australian culture (Ghosh, 2018).
Initially, I was not able to mingle with the individual from a different culture. Sometimes, I use
to judge people based on their looks, way of living, which is influenced by the culture.
Evaluation:
I am born and brought up in India, hence is attached firmly to the Indian culture. I had not
experienced much exposure to the other culture, which is one of the primary reasons behind my
views and perception of different cultures. Apart from that, my family has a strong cultural
background, beliefs and values, due to which I use to judge individuals from another culture.
Analysis:
Initially, I use to judge people based on their culture due to lack of cultural exposure.
However, after spending time with individuals who belong to a different culture, my cultural lens
has been changed. I was firmly attached to the families’ values, and beliefs and hence do not
know much about the other culture. However, when I started living with individuals from

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REFLECTION ON CULTURE
different culture away from my family, I got a chance to know them. I analysed that every
culture is beautiful in its way. All the cultures have both flaws and strength and hence should not
be judged (Hess, Blaison & Kafetsios 2016).
Conclusion:
From the above essay, it can be concluded that culture has a strong influence on the
individual. Due to the lack of cultural exposure, strong family values and cultural beliefs, I had
not much knowledge regarding the different cultural values. Due to these aspects, I was
influenced by my own culture and used to judge other’s cultural beliefs and values. However,
after spending time away from India, I got to know about a different culture and realised that my
perception regarding other’s religion is wrong. My cultural values have limited my view and my
knowledge and also influenced the way; I use to see another individual.
Action plan:
As stated earlier, my views regarding the different culture, I will try to keep it that way. I
will further enhance my knowledge regarding different culture. In the future, I will try not to
judge anyone based on there and instead will gather knowledge regarding that culture. I will read
more about a different culture. I was biased towards my own culture, but now I will try not to be
biased based on the culture. I will try to mingle among the individual of a different culture to get
adapted to the new culture.

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REFLECTION ON CULTURE
References:
Ghosh, R. (2018). Multiculturalism in a comparative perspective: Australia, Canada and India.
Canadian Ethnic Studies, 50(1), 15-36.
Hess, U., Blaison, C., & Kafetsios, K. (2016). Judging facial emotion expressions in context: The
influence of culture and self-construal orientation. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 40(1),
55-64.
Purnell, L. D., & Fenkl, E. A. (2019). Transcultural diversity and health care. In Handbook for
Culturally Competent Care (pp. 1-6). Springer, Cham.
Suchday, S., Santoro, A. F., Ramanayake, N., Lewin, H., & Almeida, M. (2018). Religion,
spirituality, globalization reflected in life beliefs among urban Asian Indian youth.
Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 10(2), 146.