Ethnocentrism and Why it is Bad

A very important cause of Intercultural Proficieny is:
Ethnocentrism:
- tendancy to assume that one's own culture is the greatest and to judge, make assumptions, and generalizations about other cultures based on this assumption

Why is Ethnocentrism Bad?
- Ethnocentrism is universal human behaviour. It can be a problem for many reasons. First of all, it causes us to believe that cultures differing from your own are divergent. It prevents us from learning about other cultures which also prevents us from wanting to communicate with people of different ethnicities. We assume that differences are a negative thing when in fact, they are not. Differences are just a way of distinguishing a cultural identity. Ethnocentrism allows us to only see the world through our perspective, the one of our own culture. We feel pride in our culture and consider it to be superior to others. We judge others based on their language, behaviour, customs, and religion. We want to interact with those and only those who share the same values, customs, and beliefs as us thus causing us to only communicate with those who share our own culture.