Date of Award

1986

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychology

Abstract

This study investigated the use of the first Culture-General Assimilator for intercultural training. The purpose of the study was to determine if the instrument under study based on a culture-general rather than culture-specific approach could actually facilitate more effective interaction with the culturally different. To test the effectiveness of the experimental training, 102 undergraduates from a socialPsychology class at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, were assigned to either a treatment or control group on the basis of a coin flip. The training was extended over seven one-hour-and-twenty-minute sessions and included practice on nine less difficult critical incidents and the related essays from the Culture-General Assimilator. Assessment was conducted using five dependent variables selected to reflect sensitivity and sophistication of thinking towards cross-cultural issues and themes. While the study results revealed slightly higher means on all the dependent variables in the direction of more sophistication for the trained group, the results from t test comparisons of treatment and control groups revealed no significant difference in mean performance on four of five dependent variables. The one significant outcome was on the task of selecting the best choice of explanation on each of 15 difficult critical incidents from the Culture-General Assimilator package. On the basis of these results, it was concluded that greater sophistication and more cross-cultural sensitivity on the part of trained individuals was initiated, but that constraints such as brevity of training period, motivational deficit of trainees, and differences in the demand characteristics of the dependent variables all entered into the predominate non significant outcomes. Recommendations that might address some of the shortcomings of this study were offered.

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