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Why journalists and writers have to be cautious while giving advices and tips to people here

I have been saying this for the past several years. News papers, magazines, journals and TV channels in this part of the world give tips and advices to people here based on Western studies. In fact I am getting bored to read all those 'junk' churning out from the media here. When I could see  so clearly that those advices and tips are highly irrelevant  for people in this part of the world, I wonder why the media here can't! Maybe because they don't come across the studies done here as frequently as they bump into the ones from the West and they refuse to use their grey matter to think whether they could really be useful for people here.

Now I found supporting proof for my thinking from one of the research papers.

You can find it here: http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/02/05/0956797613517239.ab...

Universally understood expressions of Emotion are mainly specific to Western Culture

Abstract of the paper:

A central question in the study of human behavior is whether certain emotions, such as anger, fear, and sadness, are recognized in nonverbal cues across cultures. We predicted and found that in a concept-free experimental task, participants from an isolated cultural context (the Himba ethnic group from northwestern Namibia) did not freely label Western vocalizations with expected emotion terms. Responses indicate that Himba participants perceived more basic affective properties of valence (positivity or negativity) and to some extent arousal (high or low activation). In a second, concept-embedded task, we manipulated whether the target and foil on a given trial matched in both valence and arousal, neither valence nor arousal, valence only, or arousal only. Himba participants achieved above-chance accuracy only when foils differed from targets in valence only. Our results indicate that the voice can reliably convey affective meaning across cultures, but that perceptions of emotion from the voice are culturally variable.

Another example:

Here’s how often you should actually shower

Deccan Chronicle, dated 12th April, 2016 ( http://www.deccanchronicle.com/lifestyle/viral-and-trending/120416/... )

The article says... a recent survey showed that some Britons go as many as three days without a proper wash.

 How often does one really need to shower? In fact, according to Dr Elaine Larson, an infectious disease expert at Columbia University School of Nursing, in terms of hygiene at least — you only really need to shower once or twice a week.

She told Time: “People think they’re showering for hygiene or to be cleaner, but bacteriologically, that’s not the case.” Most experts seem to agree that over-bathing can actually open you up to more problems —things like cracked skin that allows germs to get in, the stripping away of healthy oils and the washing away of good bacteria.

Dr C. Brandon Mitchell, assistant professor of dermatology at George Washington University, believes that from a purely health-based point of view, showering once or twice a week is sufficient.

Your body is naturally a well-oiled machine. If you want to keep odour away, however, then you might want to do it a little more often than that.

My take on this...

Even a child knows if you don't bathe in the hot summer months at least once in a day in India, you smell like hell. That opinion posted by the news paper can be good in colder parts of the world, not in our region.

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This applies to almost everything. Our genetic makeup is different. Our body frames are different.   Our environment is different.  Our cultures are different.

Therefore, what could be true elsewhere need not be true here too! So before giving advice on how to behave, how to take care of health etc. to people in this part of the world, I request the journalists and writers to be cautious. Don't just copy things from the Western media and put them in your domain here. You might go wrong!

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