Concerns the background particularities (national/ geographic culture, social environment, ethnic/ racial/ group behaviour): Perception; Belief, value, attitude systems; World view; Social organization; Verbal processes; Patterns of thoughts; Nonverbal processes; Behaviour; Concept of time and space.
When we talk or write about something, what we describe is the interactions that happened inside of us – not just what happened outside of us
- What we talk or write about is only a very small part of all that is going on ‘out there’
- Experiences ‘teach’ us to perceive the world, to understand similarities and differences, to link together the pieces and see the world as a continuous panorama
- Many of our problems in communication arise because we forget to remember that individual experiences are never identical
- Private interests makes us unintentionally ‘select’ what we perceive and may guide the way we ‘react’
- E.g.: ink blot pictures demonstrate that people respond differently to the same image, according to their experience and interests
- Images we see in the clouds, associations we make, similarities we see in things are proofs of our knowledge about the world