Navigating diverse cultural environments requires a specific set of skills known as cultural intelligence. A recent study of adults in the United States, China, and Greece reveals that tests measuring how people actually solve cross-cultural problems capture different mental abilities than surveys asking people to rate their own intercultural skills. The research, published in Intelligence, suggests that these two approaches function similarly across entirely different cultures while assessing distinct psychological traits.
As globalization increasingly brings people of varying backgrounds into close contact, individuals often find themselves in unfamiliar social terrain. A lack of awareness in these situations can lead to misunderstandings or interpersonal friction. Cultural intelligence involves the informal, learned knowledge required to act appropriately around people who hold different beliefs, customs, or ideologies.
Educational researcher Rui Wang of Nanyang Technological University and psychologist Robert J. Sternberg of Cornell University led an investigation to understand how to best measure this capability. For years, researchers have evaluated cultural intelligence using self-report questionnaires. These surveys ask individuals to rate their own attitudes and motivations during cultural interactions. Such tests measure “typical performance,” which refers to how people believe they usually act on a daily basis.
Self-reports can be subject to self-perception biases. People might overestimate their abilities, a phenomenon psychologists refer to as the Dunning-Kruger effect. They might also provide answers they think the researchers want to hear. To address this gap, Sternberg previously developed a “maximum performance” test for cultural intelligence.
Instead of asking people how they might act, a maximum performance test presents them with hypothetical challenges and scores their actual problem-solving responses. The assessment asks individuals to navigate imagined situations, such as figuring out local norms while traveling for leisure or negotiating a business deal in an unfamiliar country.
Until now, this scenario-based test had only been evaluated in Western, industrialized nations. Wang, Sternberg, and their team wanted to see if the test worked reliably in other parts of the world. They also wanted to determine if the two types of tests consistently measured different aspects of the mind.
The research team recruited 454 university students from three distinct regions. The sample included 157 students from the United States, 140 from China, and 157 from Greece. Each participant completed an online assessment that included both types of cultural intelligence measures. All materials were translated into the local languages by native speakers to ensure accuracy.
For the self-report measure, participants rated 20 statements about their own cross-cultural awareness and behavior. For the scenario-based test, they typed out open-ended solutions to 24 hypothetical challenges. Independent raters from each respective country then scored these written answers on a scale from zero to five, looking for thoughtful, unique, and culturally appropriate solutions.
In addition to the cultural assessments, the participants took standardized tests of abstract reasoning and fluid intelligence. Fluid intelligence is the ability to think logically and solve novel problems without relying on prior knowledge. To measure this, participants completed a number series test and a matrix reasoning task, which required them to identify underlying patterns in geometric shapes.
The students also completed a personality inventory. This survey measured traits like extraversion, openness to experience, and conscientiousness. Finally, the participants answered questions about their personal views on the value of learning foreign languages, living abroad, and encountering people with vastly different opinions.
When the researchers analyzed the results, they found that the scenario-based test and the self-report survey were largely unrelated to each other. This separation occurred consistently in all three countries. The two tests appeared to tap into completely different psychological domains.
Scores on the scenario-based test were closely linked to abstract reasoning abilities and positive views on cultural exchange. Participants who performed well on the pattern-recognition tasks also tended to give more nuanced, culturally sensitive answers to the hypothetical scenarios. This pattern suggests that actual cross-cultural problem solving relies heavily on general cognitive skills.
Conversely, scores on the self-report survey were closely tied to personality traits. Participants who described themselves as highly extraverted, open-minded, and conscientious also rated their own cultural intelligence highly. Their actual problem-solving abilities on the abstract tasks did not predict their self-reported cultural scores.
The underlying psychological structure of these tests was nearly identical in the American and Chinese samples. In both groups, cultural problem-solving grouped together with general intelligence, while self-reported cultural skills grouped together with personality traits.
The Greek sample displayed a slightly altered pattern. Among the Greek participants, high scores on the scenario-based test were linked to both general intelligence and certain personality traits, such as high extraversion.
The researchers noted that national college entrance exams in Greece emphasize argumentative essay writing. This educational background might have influenced how the Greek students approached the open-ended scenarios, blending their cognitive skills with their expressive personality traits.
These results do not imply that one test is fundamentally superior to the other. Rather, the two assessments capture complementary halves of a broader psychological picture. Self-reports measure a person’s willingness and attitude toward diverse interactions. Scenario tests measure their cognitive capacity to handle the actual logistics of those interactions.
The study relied exclusively on university-aged adults. The results might not reflect the developmental arc of older individuals who have spent decades living and working abroad. Cultural intelligence is shaped through extended, real-world experience. A younger demographic might approach the open-ended questions differently than seasoned professionals who possess extensive practical knowledge.
Additionally, taking a time-limited, open-ended written test requires specific academic skills. Participants who are more willing to write lengthy, elaborate answers might achieve higher scores on the scenario test simply because of their test-taking stamina. Future investigations will need to examine how varied educational practices and language processing demands influence how people demonstrate their cultural adaptability.
The study, “Cultural intelligence in context: Examining the generalizability of a cultural intelligence measure across three countries,” was authored by Rui Wang, Arezoo Soleimani Dashtaki, Xueni Zhang, Konstantinos G. Tsigaridis, and Robert J. Sternberg.