Learned and Transmitted Customs

• The customs surrounding weddings vary among different cultures.Creatas/Creatas/Getty Images
  
  Learned customs are those values and habits we acquire through observation and interaction. By observing and being immersed in a culture, we begin to imitate certain practices and habits and take on certain beliefs of that culture. Transmitted customs are those that are passed down among generations and are perpetually practiced. These go hand-in-hand with learned customs because both are acquired through storytelling, participating in daily repetitive rituals and through instruction. Learned and transmitted customs are not innate. Examples of these are language, child rearing and domestic practices such as cooking and grooming.
  
  

Integrated Customs

• Protests are a source of integrated customs, bringing people together from different cultures.Mario Tama/Getty Images News/Getty Images
  
  Integrated customs are those that ultimately end up including more and different types of people who had not been in the same cultural group before. This type of custom begins as a more generalized set of beliefs that branches out with more people being able to identify with it. A good example of this is the Civil Rights Movement. This began as a protest for voting rights in general but ended up drawing minorities together that might not have previously had much in common, such as African-American men and women of different ethnicities.
  
  

Customs Are Dynamic

• Cultures are affected by technology, which can in turn affect generational customs.Jupiterimages/Brand X Pictures/Getty Images
  
  Customs change and adapt in reaction to our ever-changing world. This happens through three methods: innovation, diffusion and acculturation. Innovation changes culture through technology; the media choices available today are vastly different from generations ago and have therefore affected the customs related to media. Diffusion is the spreading of cultures and their customs to other cultures. Innovation and diffusion result in acculturation, which is the acceptance and implementation of new customs into our lives.
  
  

Subcultures

• Cultures and customs are also different between generations, genders, races and lifestyles; these differences can exist all within the same family. These are called subcultures. Subcultures are similar to a mainstream culture, but they have their own customs that are still different enough to set them apart from the mainstream culture. Subcultures can be different from their parent culture ethnically, regionally, economically and socially. An example of this would be the different economic classes in the United States; while all of these people can identify as "Americans," those in lower economic brackets have different customs than those in upper economic brackets in the areas of educational choices, marriage, cooking, crime levels and more.