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High contact and low contact cultures

Hall shows how people from different cultures combine information from several senses to orient themselves in space and then classifies some cultures as high contact and others as low contact. In high contact cultures what people sense when they are close to a person or object is most important. The information from touch, from the skin generally and from muscles as well as what people see using the inner part of the eye (the part you use to thread a needle) is used a lot. In high contact cultures people want to get close enough to one another and to objects to sense them in these ways. In a low contact cultures the middle third of the eye plays a greater role, because to see someone`s whole face without distortion, we must stand a certain distance away. At that distance we do not sense the other person`s body heat or subtle smell but we can see a frown or a smile. This far away we probably cannot see the widening of the pupil of the other person`s eyes.

These ideas may be new to you. For most of us the cultural aspects of sensory perception are part of subjective culture. It comes from that part of the cultural iceberg that is hidden below the sea of out awareness. People going from a familiar to an unfamiliar culture are not aware of the reasons, but they often have strong emotional reactions to these differences. When a person from a high contact culture goes to a low contact culture, he or she is likely to feel that people are cold, lack human warmth, and are indifferent and pay no attention to them. The person is reacting to differences in the way people in the new culture use their senses.

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