Final answer:
Ethnocentrism is the practice of evaluating and judging another culture based on the standards of one's own culture, often leading to the belief that one's culture is superior. This notion contrasts with cultural relativism, which advocates for assessing cultures by their own standards. Xenocentrism, on the other hand, is the belief that another culture is superior to one's own.
Step-by-step explanation:
The concept described in the question is ethnocentrism, which is the practice of judging another culture primarily by the standards of one's own culture. This often involves the belief that one's own culture is superior to other cultures. As William Graham Sumner coined the term in 1906, ethnocentrism can take on a benign form where you might simply find another culture's practices odd or hard to understand, such as driving on a different side of the road or dietary habits. However, it can also be more problematic, leading to the belief that other cultures are deficient and need to adopt one's own culture's ways to be correct. This contrasts with cultural relativism, which asserts that one should evaluate and understand a culture based on its own criteria and context, rather than against an external standard.
In its most extreme form, ethnocentrism can propagate the idea that one's culture is so superior that it should be imposed on others. The opposite of ethnocentrism is xenocentrism, which means believing another culture is superior to one's own. Ethnocentric attitudes are not always overtly hostile or derogatory; sometimes they are simply manifest as a lack of understanding of cultural differences.