The role of association in relationships...

            Perception has always been an important factor when it comes to first impressions.  In terms of association, how we perceive people will highly influence our decision-making when it comes to associating with people. As we may know, the people that we associate with will determine what people think about you. Depending on whom we hang out with, people will determine what our beliefs and values are. How people associate with other people in Panama and in the US is very similar. Even though they are kind of similar, there will always be some differences that will rise up and make them different.

            As we discussed in class, Panamanians tend to be more open-minded when it comes to associating with people they don’t know. Also, for the Panamanians it is important whom you hang out with because it will determine an important factor to the society, which is your socio-economic class. On the other hand, North American students shared that they don’t feel comfortable at all when associating with people they don’t know. I think this happens because North Americans are very individualistic and they would rather spend time with people they know instead of expanding their network. Overall we still share similar interests when associating with people.

            Besides gathering all my information from the presentation given by my classmates, I also look some interesting information in the book. The book explained that there are different phases of intercultural relationship development. The first phase is called the initial encounter phase, which explains how people initiate intercultural relationships and how factors such as proximity and similarities in interest may influence this encounter. The second phase is called exploratory interaction phase, it describes how people after meeting each other tend to share more personal information, they have more increased level of support, and the intimacy grows. The final stage is the ongoing involvement phase, this one explains how after exploring each others life, we as humans tend to involve our friends or partners into the family.  These phases kind of explained the difference between how Panamanians and North Americans associate with other people. Panamanians don’t need to get to the ongoing involvement phase in order to have a good time with a person they don’t know, but North Americans need to go through all these phases in order to feel comfortable to spend time with someone who is unfamiliar to them.