My GSA results gave me surprising, yet not so surprising results: I am an American and Asian hybrid. As I was running through the questions, I'd run through scenarios from work and school and recall of my behavior and reactions. Select the option. Select another another option. I would look over my results and haphazardly think: these choices look like what someone from the American culture would choose. After all, I was born in the US and lived mostly with American ideals. As a result, when the last of the many questions were completed, I predicted that most of my communication style would be predominantly American.
What a surprise.
I compared my results to the United States, United Kingdom, and then two other Asian cultures -- Vietnam and Japan. It was a 50/50 split between the American culture (independent, egalitarianism, task) versus the Asian culture (restraint, indirect, and long term).
Maybe this really shouldn't be a surprise. On the first day of class when we were discussing the advantages and disadvantages of globalization, one argument was that globalization would eventually destroy cultures and would become mostly "white." The stronger, influential culture eventually would dominate and erase other cultures. The results from the GSA survey, however, seemed to disprove this logic. I was born in the US, but I lived in a mostly Asian upbringing household. I pretty much am a hybrid: a nice mixture of both Eastern and Western cultures. This shows that when people are exposed to different environments and cultures, they can pick up different values and interests. It would be like a new culture in the making. In my case, I would be an example of the Asian American culture.
The GSA survey was definitely an eye opener and very interesting. I am looking forward to the future surveys and lessons in the upcoming classes!
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