Cultural distance, not national borders, drives transformative experience

Evidence

Indeed, we do not necessarily believe that something magical happens on crossing a national border; for example, a Chicago native may have a much more profound cultural experience by moving to rural Georgia than by moving to Toronto. Extant research supports this idea: in a study assessing different kinds of multicultural experiences within the United States—such as living outside one’s home state, number of foreign friends, foreign language ability, familiarity with foreign music and food, and parents’ foreign nationality—such multicultural experiences, even if they occurred within a single country, predicted creative outcomes (Leung & Chiu, 2010). — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2253

Categorization

• CANDY: The rural Georgia vs. Toronto line is an immediately tweetable, self-contained twist on what counts as a ‘cross-cultural’ experience.
• XREF: Ties to the Allport thread: ‘cultural distance’ rather than formal identity lines predicts cognitive effects, echoing Allport’s point that perceived difference — not nominal group membership — drives intergroup cognition. — connects to: When levels of temporal experience desynchronize, recovery requires cultural or structural revolution — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 150
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2253