The importance of understanding the Barriers to communication and Non-verbal communication.

My perception about the two most relevant topics exposed in the class were: the Barriers to communication and the Non-verbal communication; but why are they so important in means of intercultural relations, negotiations or communication?

Understanding the way a person behave based on the cultural traditions, beliefs, customs, or ideas, will help improving the relation with others in a positive way and therefore avoiding uncomfortable or awkward moments. It’s important to know and have very clear that there are some barriers that can complicate the interaction or the communication in means of dialogues, businesses, agreements, and so on.  These barriers are the assumption of similarities, the language differences, the nonverbal misinterpretations, the preconceptions and stereotypes, the tendency to evaluate and finally High anxiety.  But this is not the only important criteria when interacting with other cultures; the non-verbal communication plays a big role due to the possibility of misunderstanding and misinterpreting the corporal or facial expressions that are intentionally sent while communicating or expressing ideas or thinking’s; an example of these facial and corporal expressions can be Surprise (big eyes), happiness (smiling), sadness (upset looking, sigh), anger (frown), biting lip (fear, nervous, anxiety), clothing (casual, formal), shaking the legs or feet (anxiety, nervous, fear), raising the shoulders (no understanding, no interest), etc. The way a person express itself through these expressions may be seen as positive or negative, and can create a pre judgment or pre visualization (criteria, assumptions) about how the person is and the way he/she behave.

My research question for this class is “Does culture determine all of our non-trivial  behavior and characteristics?” 

In my point of view, since we are a child we adopt some values, beliefs, traditions and customs, that comes from culture and that do affect indirectly or directly the way we behave, starting for our family circle. While we are growing and becoming older (maturing), we start to adapt our behavior to the others (the culture) in means of being part of the “group” or looking for acceptance. However I don’t agree about talking in a general way, or inferring a total change or influence in the behavior or characteristics of a person.  Not all the people can be clout or impact  by the culture, for example, if everyone drink or smoke, then you have to do it?, if all the people like to party or go out, you also have to like doing that? I believe that each one decides what to adopt from the culture, based on the personal interest and the moral beliefs.