Intercultural exposure and global citizenship attitudes among affluent late adolescents: cultural intelligence as mediator

Abstract

ABSTRACT Existent research on intercultural exposure and cultural intelligence has been largely conducted in management and management education, the latter with business student subjects. Aiming to attain a more holistic view in this regard, we attend to a civic-related outcome, namely, the emergence of (cosmopolitan-based) global citizenship attitudes, which can be regarded as a socio-political pre-condition for membership in an inclusive global world. We examined a mediation model among Israeli late-adolescents in which cultural intelligence reflects a causal mechanism in which intercultural exposure affects global citizenship attitudes. The survey included a sample of 954 affluent Israeli-Jewish late adolescents attending 12 high schools. Hypotheses were tested with Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Findings concerning the measurement models of the multifaceted constructs (i.e., intercultural exposure, cultural intelligence, and global citizenship attitudes) pointed to a good fit; hence were validated. Moreover, the study findings supported a full mediation model, augmenting the accumulated evidence on cultural intelligence's significant role in developing a wide range of multicultural perspectives.