Cross-cultural training effects on cultural essentialism beliefs and cultural intelligence

Abstract

The study reports on the implementation of a brief intercultural training intervention as part of a university course. The intervention consisted of a series of six lectures, one simulation game and one behaviour modification session, administered over a period of four weeks. Measures of cultural essentialism and cultural intelligence (CQ) were obtained prior to the first lecture and one week after the completion of the last training session. A total of 107 students participated and pre-post test scores were matched for 49 participants. The findings show that cultural essentialism increased, but cognitive and meta-cognitive scores decreased following the intervention. Personality moderated the trainings’ effectiveness: more open-minded students at Time 1 were more likely to report increases in motivational CQ at Time 2. Challenging claims about negative effects of psychological essentialism, cultural essentialism beliefs were positively related to both open-mindedness and cognitive CQ over Time. Implications for brief intercultural training interventions are discussed.