What is culture? The concept is sometimes easier to grasp by description than definition. Culture is universal. All human groups create a design for living that includes both material and nonmaterial culture. Ideal culture, a group's ideal norms and values, exists alongside its real culture, the actual behavior which often falls short of the cultural ideals.

All people perceive and evaluate the world through the lens of their own culture. People are naturally ethnocentric, that is, they use their own culture as a standard against which to judge other cultures. Sociologists refer to this innate tendency to take culture for granted as “the culture within us.” In comparison, cultural relativism tries to understand other peoples within the framework of their own culture.

The central component of nonmaterial culture is symbols. These include gestures, language, values, norms, sanctions, folkways, and mores. Language is essential for culture because it allows us to move beyond the present, sharing with others our past experiences and our future plans. According to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, language not only expresses our thinking and perceptions but actually shapes them.

All groups have values and norms. Values underlie our preferences, guide our choices, and indicate what we hold worthwhile in life. Norms are the expectations that develop to reflect and enforce values. Positive and negative sanctions are used to show approval or disapproval of those who do or don't follow the norms.

A subculture is a group whose values and behaviors set it apart from the general culture. Subcultures develop based on a wide variety of factors. These include race, ethnicity, religion, occupation, geographic location, and status. A counterculture holds values that stand in opposition to the dominant culture.

Although the U.S. is a pluralistic society made up of many groups, each with its own set of values, certain core values dominate. Some values cluster together to form a larger whole. Core values that contradict one another indicate areas of social tension and are likely points of social change.

Cultural universals are values, norms or other cultural traits that are found in all cultures.