These fundamental building blocks are encircled by specific beliefs, attitudes, and conventions.īeliefs are like assumptions but more specific: ‘If I achieve material success, I will have greater social status’. Attitudes involve a positive or negative evaluation of an object or idea: ‘The best decisions are made rationally’. Conventions are acceptable behaviours: ‘I eat rice with my hand’. Beliefs, attitudes, and conventions drive cultural systems and institutions. In this model, culture is the deep inner core of abstract ideas that manifest as increasingly tangible outer layers. The inner core equates to the submerged base of the iceberg: values and assumptions. Others prefer to explain culture by using the onion analogy. Values are the worth we attach to something or a broad tendency to prefer one state of affairs to another-for example, freedom of speech, group harmony, or gender equality. Assumptions are ideas that are accepted as truths to even when there is no proof-for example, ‘I control my own destiny’.
Hidden differences include cultural values and assumptions.
The 90% of the iceberg that remains unseen below the surface represents the hidden cultural differences. The iceberg provides a useful analogy. The small ‘tip of the iceberg’ that can be seen above the water level represents visible cultural elements. Visible cultural elements include artefacts, symbols, and practices such as: art and architecture language, colour, and dress social etiquette and traditions. Although they are the most obvious, visible cultural differences make up only ten percent of our cultural identities.
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