Glossary of terms

Ethnocentrism is the view of things in which one’s own primary culture is the centre of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it. Ethnocentrism is also understood as a prejudice expressed by thinking one’s own group’s ways are superior to others. Three forms of ethnocentrism may be distinguished:

• denial: the inability or refusal to cognitively understand cultural difference, which leads to ignorant or naive observations about other cultures.

• defence: recognition of cultural difference coupled to a negative evaluation of variations from one’s own culture, with the greater the difference, the more negative the evaluation, and characterised by dualistic “us versus them” thinking.

• minimisation of difference: recognition and acceptance of superficial cultural differences while holding that all human beings are essentially the same, placing an emphasis on the similarity of people and commonality of basic values but defining the basis of that commonality in ethnocentric terms (everyone is essentially like “us”).

Milton Bennett’s Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity, sometimes called the “Bennett Scale,” describes the standard ways in which people experience, interpret, and interact across cultural differences. There are 6 main stages:

It is a representation that progresses from ethnocentric (denial, defensiveness, and minimization) to ethnorelative worldviews (acceptance, adaptation, and integration), the model has been widely used as an educational tool to help people progress toward a deeper understanding of cross-cultural difference. 

Source: Intercultural Development Research Institute https://www.idrinstitute.org/