What is culture and the role it plays is a debated subject. One aspect of culture that is not explored in equal depth is the role culture plays in developing our Situational Awareness. In this article we’ll look at the functional role culture plays in how we perceive situations and how this shapes actions.
Situational Awareness is being aware of where you are, what is around you, making sense of what is around you, and how to get an optimal grip on a situation to achieve goals andor avoid harm (see Endsley, 2003, Merlot Ponty, 1945 on Optimal Grip, Klein et al, 2006). Once Situational Awareness has been established, you act, and then make sense of how your actions have impacted upon the situation (Klein et al, 2006). An everyday example illustrates.
You walk into a meeting room, look around for people you know will also be attending (to double check that you are in the right situation), identify a colleague you want to speak to, and then walk over to them. Based on how this conversation goes, you prolong it, or shorten it. Put quite simply, that is Situational Awareness-locating yourself within an environment for optimal effect, then adapting as the situation changes.
There are always multiple interpretations of situations, and always multiple options. If we do not have some form of constraint acting upon our interpretation of events, we will encounter combinatorial explosion, overwhelmed with options and paralyzed (Newell and Simon, 1954). Culture is one such constraint that helps us quickly arrive at Situational Awareness. Another everyday example illustrates.
You walk into a meeting, and you sit in your usual seat. The lights are on, the room is tidy, and the environment peaceful and quiet. The meeting follows the expected protocol. People make points and respond to each other in a manner and a level of courtesy you expect. This is culture in function, a set of expectations you can take for granted so your attention can focus on other, more challenging things. The cultures which some people inhabit are not as orderly as the one described, and this means attention is focused on features which others might take for granted (Weick and Sutcliffe, 2007).
Culture allows us to put certain features of situations on auto pilot. Without a degree of culture, we would be faced with having to renegotiate every social situation from zero. This would place a lot of time and effort on the basics, such a s greeting someone appropriately, and leave far less room for progress. An example is where you visit another country, or even a new place. You’ll notice that you are more hyper alert to smaller things, such as how to order food or crossing a road. If you visit another culture and take these things for granted, your Situational Awareness quickly runs into problems as you lose an optimal grip.
From this perspective we can also see how too tight a culture could blind us to slowly emerging threats, overly constrain our ability to think creatively and express ourselves, while too little culture could result in chaos and anxiety. Culture provides constraints which contribute to the shaping of Situational Awareness and shapes what is noticed and what is ignored. There are pros and cons to every culture, but to prevent combinatorial explosion, we need a degree of it to function and develop Situational Awareness.
Reading
Endsley, M. R. (2000). Theoretical underpinnings of situation awareness: A critical review. In Endsley, M. R., Garland, D. J. (Eds.), Situation awareness analysis and measurement (pp. 3-32). Mahwah, NJ: LEA
Merlot Ponty, M. (1945) Phenomenology of Perception. Routledge
Klein, G. A., Moon, B., Hoffman, R. T. (2006). Making sense of sensemaking 1: Alternative perspectives. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 21(4), 70-73
Newell, A., Simon, H. (1956). The logic theory machine: A complex information processing system. IRE Transactions on Information Theory, 2, 61–79.
Weick, K. E., & Sutcliffe, K. M. (2007). Managing the unexpected: Assuring high performance in an age of complexity. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
