Page 103 - Handbooks of Applied Linguistics Communication Competence Language and Communication Problems Practical Solutions

Emotion and intercultural adjustment 81

are laden with emotion such as anger, frustration, anxiety, or sadness. Thus how
well people deal with their negative emotions and resolve conflicts is a major
determinant of intercultural adjustment success or failure. While intercultural
adaptation inevitably involves many positive experiences as well, one of the
keys to successfully adjusting to a different culture is having the ability to re-
solve conflicts well.
When negative emotions are aroused during conflict, it is easy for people to
be overcome by those feelings because they take over one’s thinking and feel-
ing. Even people who are usually adept at thinking critically and who can act in
perfectly moral and altruistic ways may not be able to think or act in such a
manner when overcome by negative emotions. It is these critical moments in
the intercultural interaction episode – when negative emotions are aroused be-
cause of inevitable cultural differences – that define a key step in personal
growth, which is a means to both intercultural success or stagnation. Individuals
who can regulate their negative feelings, somehow put them on hold and not act
directly upon them, or allow them to overwhelm them, will be able to then en-
gage in other processes that will aid them to expand their appraisal and attribu-
tion of the causes of the differences. Once emotions are held in check, individ-
uals can engage in critical thinking about the origins of those differences and the
nature of misunderstandings, hopefully allowing themselves to go beyond their
own cultural lenses to entertain the possibility of other causes of the differences
that they may not have even been aware of. Once this type of critical thinking
can occur, these individuals will have an active choice of accepting or rejecting
alternative hypotheses concerning the causes of those differences, and can have
the openness and flexibility to accept rival hypotheses if it turns out their initial
reactions were inaccurate.
By engaging in critical thinking about cultural differences and being open
and flexible to new ways of thinking, people continually add new cognitive
schemas in their minds to represent the world. The addition of new schemas
adds complexity to the ability to interact with diversity, creating new expec-
tations and greater awareness of similarities and differences. All of this is poss-
ible only when emotions are regulated and negative emotions are not allowed to
get the best of one. This is a growth model of development.
If, however, negative emotions overcome us and dictate how we think, feel,
and act, we cannot engage in critical thinking about those differences. People re-
vert to a previous way of thinking about those differences that is rooted in their
ethnocentric and stereotypic ways of viewing the world and others. Instead of
creating rival hypotheses and new schemas that will stimulate growth in ways of
thinking, this process reinforces pre-existing, limited ways of thinking. Openness
and flexibility to new ideas and to these rival hypotheses are not even options be-
cause the new ideas do not exist. Instead there is only a regurgitation of stereo-
types and vindication of ethnocentric attitudes. This is a non-growth model.