ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the ways common errors in transcultural observation and interpretation can be anticipated and how sensitivity concerning them can be acquired. The source of data for this discussion is a sensitization technique first administered in the winter of 1968 to Stanford undergraduate students at one of the university’s overseas centers, Stanford in Germany. The same technique has been used in advanced education classes at Stanford University on the home campus during most years since 1970. I am not concerned in this chapter with the differences between groups, but rather with the educational purpose of the technique and the kinds of perceptual distortions consistently revealed by it. Whether applied at Stanford in Germany or Stanford in California, the technique has been used in my classes as a way of sensitizing students to the kinds of errors one is likely to make when perceiving and interpreting behavior in cultural contexts other than one’s own. Some 800 students have responded to the technique to date. The perceptual/interpretive errors they make are remarkably consistent from group to group.
