Newswise — In an increasingly global economy, finding ways to improve people’s ability to work across the ideological and emotional boundaries that culture represents is critical. Dealing with people who are culturally different can be challenging for many. It can test one’s sense of right and wrong and at times even trigger disgust. In situations that cannot just be walked away from; such as work situations that demand interaction and even collaboration, individuals who can think fast and put their emotions in check excel.
For the most part, research on this topic has relied for decades on survey and interview methods as the primary sources of data. Now, in a recently launched interdisciplinary collaborative project, cognitive scientists will begin using brain imaging techniques to address the cultural adaptability issue.
In a recently launched study, Global Cognition scientists Drs. Winston Sieck and Louise Rasmussen are collaborating on an interdisciplinary and multinational research team led by Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, looking to determine if people who are culturally adept are wired for diversity. The project is funded by the Office of Naval Research, and Dr. Jonathon Kopecky of the JHU/APL is serving as the overall project PI. Dr. Aysecan Boduroglu is the lead for Bogazici University in Istanbul.
Exposing the neural signature of cultural adaptability is one step on the way to be able to pinpoint the types of educational and real-world experiences that help people be more effective in intercultural situations. In the long term, this basic research program may lay the foundation for developing procedures that allow employers to recognize people who already have these unique skills and thus aid in the selection of people who act as the ambassadors for U.S. interests abroad.
The researchers are testing several hypotheses about the relationship between neural activation and cultural adaptability. One hypothesis involves the potential connections between cultural learning, crystallization and plasticity in the brain, and cross-culture adjustment.
The general idea is that growing up within a particular culture results in the deep-rooted acquisition of culturally-relevant skills. For example, these could include facial expressions and other aspects of non-verbal communications. As the cultural skills are continuously practiced and refined, they tend to develop localized “circuits” in the brain that are then dedicated to performance of the skill.
In other cultures, differences in the specific ways of executing skills can result in anatomical differences in the localized, dedicated circuits. It may be that some people tend to learn the skills required by their own culture extremely well, and so exhibit the greatest extent of localization. If so, the cognitive functioning in these folks may be overoptimized for certain skills with respect to adjusting the execution to new cultural environments.
The research team will compare and contrast the patterns of neural activation for participants who perform poorly and those who perform well on a set of tests to measure cultural adaptability.
In doing so, the researchers aim to establish the extent to which the variability in how people perform in culturally challenging situations corresponds to differences in the brain.
To study people who excel at interacting with people who are different from themselves, the researchers will recruit highly experienced and accomplished, globetrotting professionals. “This makes the current study very unique” Dr. Sieck says. “We aim to uncover a possible neural profile for cross-cultural competence using highly skilled populations.”
Dealing with people who are culturally different can be particularly challenging for many. Most past research into the possible neural underpinnings of human social behavior has focused on more straightforward interactions between people who have similar socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. The current study will shed light on how the brain responds to the special challenges that cultural differences can present.
Global Cognition is a cognitive science research organization located in Yellow Springs, OH. GC conducts basic and applied research with the aim of aiding individuals and organizations understand and interact with the diverse ideas and people they encounter across the world. GC scientists also write about cognitive research addressing how to be smart for general audiences.
RSS