Learning why other cultures behave as they do enhances creative problem solving

Evidence

So in experiment 2, we assigned participants who had previously lived abroad to one of four conditions: In the functional multicultural learning experience condition, participants were asked to recall and write about a multicultural experience in which they learned the underlying reasons why people from a different culture behave the way they do. In the functional within-culture learning condition, participants were asked to recall and write about a time in which they learned the underlying reasons why people from their own culture behave the way they do. In these two conditions, participants were asked to write why what they learned was new to them. In the new sport–learning condition, participants were asked to recall and write about a time they learned a new sport. In a control condition, participants were asked to recall and write about the last time they visited the supermarket. After completing the priming task, participants were instructed to complete the RAT. As predicted, we found that participants primed with the functional multicultural learning experience correctly solved more RAT triads than participants in the other three conditions (Maddux et al., 2010, experiment 2). — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2242