Culture can shape us as individuals in different ways. Things like gender and race play an important role in shaping us as individuals. Culture shapes the way we, as people, perceive the world. Webster's Dictionary defines culture as "the integrated pattern of human knowledge, beliefs, and behavior that depends on man's ability to learn and transmit his knowledge to succeeding generations." They are also the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group” (Webster). Studies show that people from different cultures perceive and view things very differently, likely due to the way their culture has shaped the way they view and behave with the world. I believe that many people sometimes overlook how different a culture can be for each person and, in turn, become pretentious by viewing it differently. Culture influences different people by the way they do things. People can take all sorts of different things and make them their own. In today's world, people are appropriating all kinds of different cultures. For example, let's take music, dances, clothes, food and a whole plethora of other things that people in society enjoy. Culture can be defined by the way we live our daily lives, including a population's art, religion, music, and a host of other things that are passed down from generation to generation. Culture has been described as “a way of life for an entire society”. As I said before, culture includes mannerisms, language, religion, the way we dress, standards of behavior such as law and morality, and belief systems including art . For example, in the Confucian tradition, a person is taught to bring out the best in others, to observe moral principles in oneself, and not to compare others lightly... middle of paper... a person cannot exist fully on their own, and that a person will only achieve their highest form of existence when they mentally divide themselves between others, themselves and the environment. Most people agree that culture has a huge effect on how we live our daily lives and how it can influence what we can wear, say, listen to, and all sorts of other things. Until recently, most researchers in psychology and neuroscience took advantage of what they found in their research to tell them about different cultures. Over the past decade, research has been conducted to unravel cultural beliefs and determine how they can shape our thoughts and behaviors. Culture can shape us as individuals in different ways. Hopefully one day all cultures can be praised and shared across the world, even though culture may separate us on how we think, we can still adopt each other's ideas and learn from them..