How does culture drive behavior?

How culture drives behavior

    Culture is used as a lens to view the outside world. Things like personal space are a big cultural factor that varies from continent to continent. Some countries are used to having big personal spaces, but some latin countries have very small personal space. From these behaviors can come out misunderstandings between cultures, even when it is out of respect. An example used by the nordic man was how nordic bus stops can only support 2 people due to their big personal spaces. This is how culture is in Norway, but if a religious person were to attempt to sit down between the 2 nords one might get up. This is due to their colossal personal space and might be misunderstood as hate towards the religious person, when in reality it is out of respect and discomfort. The normal reactions to cultural integration are to confront, comfort or complain.

There are 3 ways you can respond to another culture, you can either: 

• Complain: to isolate yourself with other similar people, forming bubbles
• Conform: adapt into or absorb the culture into yourself
• Confront: to compare own culture with other, with your own as the "correct" one

I have the behavior of an asian person, being kind of shy with a big personal space. This behavior is born from my asian household, being educated into this type of person at home. One of these behaviors can be explained just from the presence of a brother. An older brother will seem like authority or someone superior, who might take care of the little brother leading the little one to be dependent on him and shy with others. My growing environment was in a latin american society for about my whole life. The latin american community is one of close relationships, of knowing a friend and later knowing the friend's house or parents. This relationships of friendship can last and do not rely on age or status to work, This is how it is with some good people I know and I have conformed to this cutural aspect, which is not exclusive to latin america. 

Another adapted cultural aspect from a korean I posses is the behavior against physical contact. I respect the personal space of most people and might only intrude if it were a close friend, which is a trait adapted more from the latin community. There are times of comfort when I am isolated physically, but there are also moments of desire for close contact. 

In general, I have mostly conformed by taking some aspects of the latin culture into my inherited korean culture.