Positive Appraisal of Human Cultural Differences

“Diverse societies - when they are open and free - are breeding grounds for creativity. And perhaps even more rewarding is the benefit diversity brings to the quality of all our lives”

Ambassador William R. Timken, Jr., Berlin, Germany

In a time when workforce dehomogenization is taking place, scholars are in-creasingly investigating the effects demographical heterogeneity might have on workgroup performance. The screening of individuals’ sensitivity toward demo-graphical heterogeneity prior to workgroup interaction is not uncommon. Pucik, Tichy, and Barnett (1992) stress that the current workforce needs professionals whose modes of thinking and the way they interact with others transcend ethno-centric spheres.

Literature on interpersonal communication underlines the importance of posi-tive appraisal of human differences. For instance, Chickering and Reisser (1993) stress that in order to develop mature interpersonal relationships, humans have to work on their “ability to accept individuals for who they are, to appreciate and respect differences” (p.146). Kuh, Douglas, Lund, and Gyurnek (1994) consider the appreciation of differences as a component of cognitive complexity, a skill that enables someone to think critically and evaluate others logically.

The acquisition of intercultural competence or, more precisely, the development of intercultural sensitivity has been the primary focus of research of Bennett (1986;

1993). According to Bennett, an individual’s growth toward understanding diver-sity moves through six stages. The first stage is denial of difference, i.e., the individual is unaware of cultural differences due to his or her isolation. In the second stage calleddefense against difference, people do recognize differences across cultures, however, perceive them as threatening to their well established world view and identity. Individuals in the third stage called minimization of differencestress human commonality while trivializing cultural differences. Dur-ing the fourth stage called acceptance of difference, people begin to accept and respect cultural differences as an alternative way to their own believes. The fifth stage called adaptation to difference is characterized by individuals’ in-tentional adoption of multiple cultural frames of reference. In the sixth and last stage calledintegration of difference, the individual has internalized the world view of more than one culture and developed a dual or multiple identity. The first three stages of intercultural sensitivity seem to mirror the affective and conative non-congruence among culturally diverse workgroup members as predicted by the first school of thought. Positive appraisal of human differences and attitudinal sensibility are to be found in the three upper level stages. In order for coopera-tion to take place within demographically heterogeneous workgroups, every group member should at least achieve an “acceptance” level.

Within a new workgroup composed of individuals with different cultural back-grounds, members’ positive attitude toward diversity should facilitate information

exchange resulting in better group outcomes. Valuing cultural differences seems to be the condition for the benefits of diversity, which is advocated by the second school of thought.

Regarding the impact group members’ positive appraisal of human cultural differences may have on group outcomes, as argued above, it will be examined whether participants’ attitude toward diversity (when averaged at group level) relates to the quality of decision-making:

Prediction (13) [EXPERIM]: Positive attitude toward cultural differences will enhance decision-making quality in heterogeneous workgroups.

Cultural sensitivity tests are useful in different contexts. From a social and organizational perspective, they show however at least one pitfall. One may call it “selective sensitivity”. While cultural sensitivity models (e.g., Bennett, 1993;

Berry et al., 1992; Bochner, 1982) describe the stages one goes through when acquiring intercultural competence, they fail to tell whether someone who is, for instance, fully acculturated in terms of British culture may be willing to cooper-ate with someone who is from Bangladesh, Venezuela, or Senegal. In short, high cultural sensitivity scores might still be hiding commitment to work in any diverse workgroup.

Many scholars have conducted research on how individuals differ in their atti-tudes according to demographical variables such as gender, age, nationality (e.g., Hofstede, 2001; Pohan & Aguilar, 2001). Few have investigated how individuals differ specifically in terms of attitude toward diversity. For instance, after having surveyed 2’383 students across 11 US universities, Landrum, Dillinger and Van-dernoot (2000) found that female students tend to recognize, value and appreciate diversity on campus more than male students. Specifically on rating statements such as “diversity promotes personal growth” and “diversity strengthens commu-nities”, females showed significantly better attitudes than males. Similar results were found by Meader (1998), Sands (1998) as well as Sax and Arredondo (1999).

Another significant difference was found between majority and minority students.

European-American students assigned less value to diversity on campus and were less knowledgeable about multicultural activities supported by the universities than African-American, Indian-American, Alaska-Native and Hispanic students.

Engberg et al. (2003) found not surprising that students who live in primarily white neighborhoods and attend predominantly white high schools have mostly white friends and are less likely to interact with peers having a different cultural background. Landrum and his colleagues (2000) discovered that non-traditionally-aged students (over 25) valued diversity more than students who were 24 years old and younger. In a different study, researchers from Ohio State University (Von Hippel et al., 2000) have discovered that older adults tend to have a more nega-tive attitude toward diversity than young adults (e.g., agreeing upon a statement

“African-Americans are less intelligent than whites”).

There is empirical evidence that demographical variables have impact on atti-tude toward diversity, as illustrated above:

Prediction (14) [EXPLOR]: Participants will differ in their attitude toward di-versity according to demographical variables (e.g., gender, occupation).