ADAPTATION TO DIFFERENCE
The experience of Adaptation is one of consciously shifting perspective and intentionally altering behavior. Adaptation is the application of Acceptance, and it is likely to become the predominant experience when there is a need to actually interact effectively with people of another culture. With the acceptance of another culture’s organization of reality, Adaptation can proceed by allowing one to reorganize experience in a way more like that of the other culture. This is intercultural empathy. The ability to empathize with another worldview in turn allows modified
behavior to flow naturally from that experience. It is this natural flow of behavior that keeps code-shifting from being fake or inauthentic.
Adaptation/Cognitive Frame-Shifting: The conscious shift of perspective into an alternative cultural world view, thus creating access to a facsimile of the alternative cultural experience. Cognitive empathy.
Adaptation/Behavioral Code-Shifting: Acting in culturally appropriate ways based on an intuitive feel for the alternative worldview. Intuitive empathy. The most effective code-shifting occurs in conjunction with conscious frame-shifting. In other words, it’s best to first know how things generally work in another culture, and then to allow your behavior to shift into those patterns when appropriate.