While none of the three protagonists intend to apply stereotypes and othering, Angela and Mary both realise that it is easier said than done to have an objective view on other people’s culture. The media and social groups can have a major impact on how we think about cultural behaviour and it is often easier to run with these ideas than to create new images from the bottom up. In order to strengthen our intercultural communication skills, though, we should aim at Kim’s bottom-up approach and try to gently train ourselves in replacing stereotypes with actual, observable behaviour.

Task: The next time you are in a café or any other public space, recreate Kim's experiment. Observe the people around you and then observe yourself: What top-down views have established in your image of a certain culture? What do your observations tell you instead? Have you ever actually witnessed the stereotypical behaviour before?