The Psychological Structure and Foundations of Intercultural Interaction

Yusufi, Hamid Reza

The Psychological Structure and Foundations of Intercultural Interaction

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Hamid Reza Yusufi

Professor Potsdam and Saarland Universities, Germany

Abstract

The article at hand discusses psychology of intercultural interaction which has highly important multifarious dimensions. The reason for this complexity comes from thinking, type of perception, individual goals, criteria and multiple definitions of culture which can lead to individual and collective conflicts in various social, political and scientific arenas. The cultural environment, the type of motive and the conditions that contribute to formation of the personality structure of people, the worldview, and religious perceptions are considered to be among the major components of these factors. The interconnection of "sensation, feeling, thinking, and intuition" in individuals, forms the basis of the possibility and lack of realization of interaction, and can change the collective interpersonal, interreligious, intra-religious, intercultural and intra-cultural interactions into a battleground for views and worldviews. Interactions take place in areas of mutual understanding, interpretations and readings. With this perspective in mind, the goal of this article is study how to overcome authoritarianism and the kind of mechanisms existing for a reasoning-based dialogue. The way of interaction becomes smooth when we accept the "principle of change" and consider intra-cultural and intercultural discourse as a way of creating mutual understanding.

Keywords