Innocence Abroad

Virtual Assignment #1

“Innocence abroad”: A pocket guide to psychological research on tourism

Summary

The article express tourism in relation with the psychological studies; and came to the conclusion that many relations between the two subjects have been neglected; seeking many opportunities for future researches and unrevealed applications.

Although anthropologists have addressed the concept of stress to account for behavior, they have been many studies that differentiate in the way that stressful situations are appraised. Some situations may be stress in specifics societies, others may be culturally relative. A method for quantifying the perceived magnitudes of events leading to culture shock is described and the results from a study of three sample populations are analyzed. This method has other applications which may increase the seriousness of comparative studies. There has been much debate and discussion about the definition of tourism, and the different types of tourists and tourism. Researchers have been less comprehensive in their consideration of how society conceptualizes tourism. This article explains the findings of cross-cultural psychological research. It is argued that differences in the ways that hosts and guests conceptualize tourism are related to the sociocultural and psychological impacts of this industry.

Acculturation refers to the resulting from continues first hand intercultural contact. Tourism provides the most common setting for face to face intercultural contact. For psychologist, tourism offers a living experience and a range of natural settings for theory development and refinement. This article emphasis in the extent, that tourism permits stringent testing of the external validity of models and theories. Date also that there is recognition that extend psychological theory to tourism research into practical benefits for the enhancement of the tourist experience, the planning and development of the industry, and even the promotion of increased intercultural understanding. The article represents a pocket guide to the major theoretical approaches to acculturation and considers their relevance to the study of tourism. Both domestic and international tourism offer the opportunity for intercultural contact, the tourist-host relationship is further differentiated from other forms of cultural contact by an asymmetric relationship. Tourist often possess greater material wealth the host generally have more information about culture, resources, and prices. Despite the distinctive, supportive context of tourism, tourist fined themselves in unfamiliar cultural circumstances that require adaptation, and often represent a cultural shock. This suggests that tourism