Cross Cultural Differences in Cultural Intelligence and Quality of Life among Adults

Abstract

Cultural Intelligence refers to an individual’s ability to successfully adapt oneself to culturally diverse environments’, the capacity to act and behave appropriately, according to one’s cultural environment. It refers to an individual’s capability to function effectively across cultures. To have high levels of cultural intelligence may be based on various aspects of intelligence like social and emotional intelligence (Earley and Ang, 2003).The idea of cultural intelligence has emerged in the last few years, owing to the process of globalization which has turned the world into a global village. There are mainly four factors affecting cultural intelligence: Motivational which refers to an individual’s drive and interest to adapt one to a cross-cultural environment; Cognitive which id the knowledge dimension of CQ; Metacognitive which includes awareness, planning and checking and Behavioral component which refers to the verbal, non verbal speech acts. The term quality of life (QOL) references the general well-being of individuals and societies. The term is used in a wide range of contexts, including the fields of international development, healthcare, and politics. This study attempts to study the effect of gender and culture on both the cultural intelligence and the quality of life of adults. The sample consisted of 120 adults aged between 18-40 years, with 60 males and 60 females belonging to Himachali and Punjabi cultures. The Cultural Intelligence scale developed by Soon et al (2007) was used to measure the cultural intelligence of the adults. This scale measures the 4 components of CQ- motivational, cognitive, meta-cognitive and behavioral. Quality of life was measured by using the Quality Of Life Scale (Burakhardt, Carol S., 1993). This questionnaire is a self – report inventory that consists of 16 items, pertaining to the various aspects of quality of life i.e. emotional, cognitive and behavioral. The hypothesis stated that males of both the cultures (Himachali and Punjabi) will have a higher cultural intelligence than females of both the cultures, there will be no significant differences in the quality of life of males and females. Punjabi adults will have a better quality of life and higher cultural intelligence than Himachali adults. Findings of the study indicated a) that male adults were found to be higher than their female counter parts on cultural intelligence, b) no significant differences were found between male and female adults on QOL, c) Punjabis were found to higher on both cultural intelligence and QOL than their Himachali counter parts; significantly proving the stated hypotheses. This is one of the first of its kind study conducted in the Indian set-up and further research is needed to substantiate the same.