Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
The literature provides a great deal of information as to how communicative
behavior is influenced by culture and social relationships yet precise quantitative data
is virtually absent from such sources which could potentially be exploited in a
technical way to model culture computationally. As a consequence, in the present
paper, we first defined socio-cultural traits and then analyzed the human
communicative behavior of two cultures involving two different kinds of social
relationship. Following this, socio-cultural theories were integrated with both the
empirical results obtained from the analysis and the proposed socio-cultural model,
which were employed in the present study for generating culture specific to non-
verbal expressions in ECA.
3 Cultural and Social Characteristics
From a theoretical approach, we employ Hofstede theory to describe cultural
characteristics and take social psychologist description to explain social
characteristics. In this section, we described the socio-cultural characteristics in detail.
3.1 Cultural Characteristics
We start with introducing Hofstede theory [7]. Hofstede defines culture as a "the
collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or
category of people from others."The theory consists of the following five dimensions,
which are based on a broad empirical survey.
1. Hierarchy
(Small/Large)
: Hierarchy is the extent to which the members of society
accept unequal distribution of power. This affects the behavior of both less powerful
and more powerful members. The fundamental issue addressed by this dimension is
how a society handles inequalities among people. This has consequences for building
institutions and organizations.
2. Identity
(Individualism/Collectivism)
: This is the degree to which individuals are
integrated into a group. On the individualist side, ties between individuals are loose,
and everybody is expected to take care for herself/himself. On the collectivist side,
people are integrated into strong and cohesive groups.
3. Gender
(
Masculinity/Femininity)
: The gender dimension describes the distribution
of roles between the genders. In feminine cultures the roles differ less than in
masculine cultures, where competition is rather accepted and status symbols are of
importance.
4. Uncertainty
(Weak/strong):
The tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity is defined
in this dimension. It indicates to what extent the members of a culture feel either
uncomfortable or comfortable in unstructured situations which are novel, unknown,
surprising, or different from usual.
5. Orientation
(short/Long)
: This dimension distinguishes long and short-term
orientation. Short-term orientation stands for a society fostering virtues oriented
towards persistence and perseverance, thrift, ordering relationships by status and
observing this order by having a sense of shame. Long-term orientation stands for a
society fostering virtues of personal steadiness and stability, protecting face, respect
for tradition and reciprocation of greetings, favors and gifts.
