Cross-cultural immersion can produce broad psychological and professional benefits

Evidence

If profound cultural experiences produce deep psychological changes even at the neurological level, such fundamental structural change in the brain could then have general and wide-ranging benefits. Indeed, our findings on the impact of multicultural experiences on professional performance suggest that other issues like the improved ability to navigate interpersonal relationships, manage group conflicts, make judicious decisions in terms of long-term organizational planning and strategy, and other mental and social processes could result from transformational cross-cultural experiences that produce more integratively complex individuals. Thus, it may not be such a gigantic leap from solving candle problems or word association tasks in the laboratory-what some researchers have referred to as “little c” creativity-to producing great works of literature or starting successful new companies, that is, the so-called “big C” creativity (see Maddux, Leung, Chiu, & Galinsky, 2009, for a discussion; Rich, 2009). — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2270