Cross-Cultural Psychology

1. Tourists
Largest group of people with between-culture experiences

2. Advent of mass tourism in
the 1970s
• Rapid growth of recreational travel
• Cheaper to travel
• Increased wealth
• More leisure time
• Longer paid holidays
• Early retirement
• Longer life expectancy in industrialized countries

3. Dependent Economies in many
regions of the world
• In Costa Rica, foreign exchange receipts from
tourism exceed those earned from exports such
as coffee and bananas.

4. Increased interest in
psychological aspects
• Motives for travel
• Perceptions that tourists have of their destinations
• Extent to which they are satisfied with their
experiences

5. Developments in psychological
aspects of tourism
• Increased work on intercultural interactions
between tourists and hosts and the psychological
impact of tourism on local residents
• More sophisticated measurements that describe
tourist characteristics and their effects on the
sociocultural and economic aspects of the host
country

6. Developments in
psychological inquiry (cont.)
• Whether contact between tourists and hosts is
stressful or satisfying
• Whether motives for travel include learning
• How are affects, behavior and cognitions (ABCs)
affected by contact
• What interventions are available to reduce stress
and increase positive outcomes

7. Impact on world peace and
intergroup relations
Optimists: international travel promotes tolerance
and understanding
Travel is the language of peace (Gandhi)
Travel is one of the greatest forces for peace and
understanding (Robert F. Kennedy)
Travel for pleasure between countries promotes
cooperation (Ronald Reagan)

8. Impact on world peace and
intergroup relations
• Pessimists: tourist experience is shallow and
unlikely to leave any lasting impressions on the
traveller (Barthes, Huxley, Turner & Ash)
• Research has found little evidence that tourism
promotes peace

9. What constitutes culture
contact for tourists?
• Is there a particular category of tourists who are
exposed to genuine second-culture influences?
• What tourist related contacts influence mutual
understanding either positively or negatively?

10. WTO definition
• A visitor whose length of stay reaches or exceeds
24 hours, thus spending at least one night in the
visited country, and whose main purpose is other
than being compensated for work purposes.
• Most tourists have minimal contact with their hosts
• Many tourists travel in groups in packaged tours
• Sizable minority exposed to significant second-
culture influences

11. Perspective of hosts
• All interactions with tourists constitute culture-
contact episodes

12. Tourist or Traveller? Visitor or
Guest?
• Before mass tourism, travel abroad took the form
of the ‘Grand Tour,’ with wealthy individuals
spending months and sometimes years in foreign
places (particularly the British and Americans who
travelled to Europe for art and culture, Asia and
Africa also attracted western travellers)
• These travellers were no doubt changed by their
experiences with second-culture contact and
influence (modern day: travels
memoirs/guidebooks)

13. The Tourist Experience
• Often regarded as pleasurable, relaxing and
worthwhile (major reason for saving money)
• Boredom, bewilderment, rage, disgust, illness, de
pression, excessive alcohol consumption etc. are
just as evident as recreation and satisfaction

14. Tourist stress linked to risk
perception
• Research confirms that being a tourist can be a
stressful experience
• Research considers Culture Shock’s impact on
intercultural relations
• Crime affects perceptions of safety (affected
numbers of tourists to New Orleans)
• Direct and indirect targets of international
terrorism

15. Tourist stress and Culture
Shock
• Focus of contemporary research that tried to
identify emotions, cognitions and behavioral
responses of tourists
• ‘Tourist Ratio’ determines amount of ‘shock’
experienced (proportion of tourists to locals)
• Particularly disliked in small, simple and isolated
communities yet residents in large cities like Paris
have become less welcoming as well

16. Tourist motives and
behaviors
• Researchers examine ‘niche’ travel markets to
determine motives (specific
destinations/attractions based on travellers’
special interests)
• Provides more direct index of whether tourists
have leanings toward culture learning

17. Visitor categories where
culture learning is minimal
• Sex tourism
• Scenic spots such as waterfalls
• Movie-induced tourism to film locations
• Overseas sporting events (World Cup)
• Wildlife attractions (salt-water crocodiles, animals
in captivity)
• Bicycle tourism

18. Heritage Tour Industry
• Culture plays at least a modest role in attracting
visitors
• Cultures tourists want to visit are not the present
societies are located but their historical
representations such as sites associated with
death and disaster like Auschwitz and Pompei,
battlefields, memorials, catacombs.

19. ‘Mythical’ Heritage
• Forms a large part of the heritage industry in
Britain
• Based on archaeological sites like Stonehenge
and places linked to ancient events in Britain’s
history
• Attracted to Britain’s mythical past
• Contrived experiences are unlikely to put tourists
into contact with mainstream cultural
manifestations of visited society but nonetheless
tourists are interested in culture learning, even if
only historically

20. Heritage tourism is part of
cultural tourism
• ‘ethnic’ events like festivals, music and food
• cultural attractions like the
theatre, concerts, opera, ballet, museums and
galleries
• Observations of native peoples like the Amish and
Australian Aborigines, Native American
• Historical and archeological sites, commerations

21. Ecotourism
• Fastest growing tourist segment, involves culture
learning
• travel to enjoy the world’s diverse natural life and
human culture without causing damage to either
• Travel to undisturbed areas with specific study
objectives (scenery, plants and animals, cultural
manifestations)
• Ecologically sustainable tourism

22. Backpackers
• Group most likely to come into genuine contact with
ordinary members of host society
• Modern version of the Grand Tour
• Locations off the beaten track, often on a tight
budget, use local transport, eat indigenous food, cheap
accomodation
(see Ward, pg 134, table 6.1 for type/cultural adaption of
tourists by Smith, 1989)

23. Tourism and Intercultural
Contact
• Tourists have different motives for travel than
sojourners, immigrants and refugees
• Stay for a short time in an overseas location
• Relatively affluent compared to local residents
• Placed in the unusual position within the host
society that allows them to observe and examine
the culture without necessarily adapting to it

24. Most common contact
• Occurs when tourists purchase goods or services
by members of host community
• Not necessarily ‘equal-status’ encounters as
tourists have economic and material advantages
(works against Contact Theory)
• Uneven with regard to knowledge
• Characterized by brevity and superficiality

25. Most common contact (cont.)
• Tourists may consider their intercultural
encounters interesting and unique, while hosts
view them as fleeting and mundane. This results
in an orientation for immediate gratification on the
part of both hosts and tourists and in commercial
interactions rather than those that could be more
spontaneous and natural.

26. Conflict Theory, Similarity-
Attraction, Selective Perception
• Social psychology’s Conflict Theory applies
intergroup relations to host-tourist interactions to
account for residents’ attitudes toward the social
impact of tourism
• S-A and selective perception hypotheses explain
tourists’ attitudes toward hosts
• Attribution errors: tourists rely on internal
explanations for their positive travel experiences
and external for negative experiences

27. Tourist-host
perceptions/interactions
• Visitor frequencies lead to negative attitudes
toward tourism by the residents affected (Allen et
al, 1990)
• ‘tourism dependence’ hypothesizes that
increasing levels of tourism development generate
more negative attitudes among local residents
(Smith & Krannich, 1988)
• Residents with higher levels of visitors expressed
more negative attitudes and perceptions towards
tourism than those with lower tourist
concentrations

28. Effects of tourism on host
cultures
• Tourists have a profound impact on
cultures, communities, cities, regions and
individuals of the visited countries (Smith, 1992)

29. Tourism changes the
economy of receiving
societies
• Affects employment and encourages investment
• Stimulates infrastructure development such as
airports, shipping terminals and highways
• Broadens economic base and replaces declining
industries (coconut trade in Thailand)
• Subsidizes visual and performance arts
• Restores and maintains feudal castles
• Finances nature and conservation projects

30. Economic impact of tourism
impacts local population
• Affects culture, physical surroundings and way of
life, not always for the better
• Jobs created tend to be menial, in hospitality industry
• Expatriate managers of multinational hotels/resorts
• Profit goes to shareholders in N.Y., London or Tokyo
• Low wages may not compensate for destroyed barter
economies, employed but live in worse conditions

31. Tourism generated problems
• Prostitution
• Alcohol and substance abuse
• May lead to the erosion of traditional value
systems, family relationships and collective
lifestyles

32. Tourism generated problems
(cont.)
• Tourist-related building boom may have diverse
effects on the environment, destroy local
amenities such as open spaces, free beach
access and fishing/hunting grounds
• Airports and golf courses utilize scarce agricultural
land
• Number of visitors may exceed local population
putting pressure on the water supply and sewage
supply, creating aircraft noise, increasing traffic,
and reducing air quality

33. When number of visitors
exceeds local population
• Puts pressure on the water supply and sewage
disposal
• Creates aircraft noise
• Increasing traffic
• Reduces air quality

34. Tourist demands on the arts
• Increases fake, mass reproduction of souvenirs
and objects of religious significance
• The sacred rituals of many traditional peoples are
stages in a sanitized version to cater to the tastes
of international visitors looking for a superficial,
quick demonstration or photo opportunity
• Great churches and cathedrals have become
thoroughfares for non-believing tourists

35. Effects on heritage sites
• Both outdoor places like Stonehenge and great
houses and castles in Europe are under threat of
destruction from the vast hordes of tourists during
the season
• High volume tourist destinations makes life
inconvenient for the local population