Lifestyle vs. Culture

The main difference between lifestyle and culture is that lifestyle focus on both tangible and intangible factors while culture mainly focuses on tangible factors.

What is Lifestyle?

Lifestyle refers to the interests, opinions, behaviours, attitudes, etc. of a specific individual, group, or society. It mostly tends to the standard of living of people. It may vary from person to person. In the same place, two persons may live a different lifestyle. One is fond of rural life and others like to live an urban style. Lifestyle is more personal rather than common. The term was first used by an Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler. It is a combination of both tangible and intangible factors. Intangible factors, demographic factors are included and in intangible factors, personal values, preferences, and outlooks are included.

What is Culture?

Culture is the shared values of knowledge, belief, thoughts, customs, ideas, habits, and many other relevant things that are common among the members of a specific society. Culture is also used to define the complex networks of practices and accumulated knowledge and ideas that is transmitted via social interaction and exist in specific human groups or cultures. Some aspects of human behaviours like language, social practices like kinship, gender and marriage, expressive forms like music, dance, ritual, religion, and technologies like cooking, shelter, clothing are called to be cultural universals, usually found in all human societies. Culture is different from community to community, region to region, or country to country.

Key Differences between Lifestyle and Culture

  1. Both lifestyle and culture are processes of evolution. However, lifestyle changes more frequently as compared to culture.
  2. Lifestyle mostly focused on personal style while culture refers to collective style.
  3. Lifestyle can be expressed in tangible and intangible factors while culture mainly focuses on tangible factors.

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