Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 1
RUNNING HEAD: CULTURAL BARRIERS AND MENTAL BORDERS
Cultural barriers and mental borders:
Living in and adapting to foreign cultures facilitates creativity
William W. Maddux
INSEAD
Adam D. Galinsky
Northwestern University
(currently under review, please do not cite without author permission)
Abstract
Despite abundant anecdotal evidence that creativity is associated with experience in or
exposure to different cultures, there is currently little empirical evidence for this relationship.
The authors systematically explored this foreign culture Æ creativity link using a multi-method
approach across five studies. Studies 1 and 2 provided initial demonstrations, on both
individual and dyadic creativity tasks, that individuals who had spent time spent living abroad
were more creative than those who had not. Study 3 demonstrated the causal effect of foreign
living experience in a priming paradigm involving participants who had previously lived
abroad. Study 4 demonstrated that the degree to which individuals had adapted to different
cultures while living abroad mediated the link between foreign living experience and creativity.
Finally, Study 5 verified the causal role of adaptation in producing increased creativity. Overall,
we find that living in and adapting to different cultures produces the serendipitous benefit of
enhanced creative abilities. Implications for our understanding of creative cognition and
cultural psychology are discussed.
Keywords: Creativity, culture, living abroad, cognition, problem solving, negotiations
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 3
Writers have to have two countries, the one where they belong and the one where they really live.
--Gertrude Stein
Creativity, which is typically defined as the process of bringing into being something
that is both novel and useful (Sawyer, 2006; Sternberg & O’Hara, 1999; c.f. Amabile, 1996), is
one of the most intriguing phenomena in the human world. The definition of the word “create”
– to cause to exist; to bring into being – implies something profound, almost godlike, which is
perhaps the origin of the phrase “divine inspiration.” Indeed, those who create the most vivid
paintings, emotive music, or eloquent literature are typically among the most admired and
revered individuals in a society. Although hard-work, effort, and training are a significant part
of the creative process (e.g. Amabile, 1996; Simonton, 1997; Sawyer, 2006), there is also an
insight component that is critical as well, one that seems to work at an unconscious and
inaccessible level (Schooler & Mechler, 1995). This moment of discovery is the magical “aha”
moment, the point at which an idea seems to leap into consciousness, a moment that is sudden,
abstract, and seemingly without logic.
Despite the mysterious nature of creative insight, over the past several decades
researchers have managed to shed light on many of the psychological factors that are vital to
the creative process. Despite this considerable progress, however, one of the most common lay
assumptions regarding creativity – the beneficial impact of experiences in foreign countries,
such as living abroad – remains largely unstudied. To take one example, living abroad is often
seen as a necessary experience for aspiring artists, and there is certainly abundant anecdotal
evidence for the idea that creative individuals produce their best known masterworks during or
following a stint abroad. This is best exemplified by the thriving community of expatriate
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 4
American writers in Paris in the early 20th century, including Earnest Hemingway, F. Scott
Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Ezra Pound. In addition to writers, many famous painters, (e.g.,
Pablo Picasso and Paul Gauguin), and composers (e.g., Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Stravinsky,
and Schoenberg) created many of their most admired works while abroad. The novelist Richard
Stern notes the importance of living abroad for a creative mindset: “Once I went (abroad) it
was extremely exciting for me to become a new personality, to be detached from everything
that bound me, noticing everything that was different. That noticing of difference was very
important. The languages, even though I was no good at them, were very important. How
things were said that were different, the different formulas….So being abroad has been very
important.” (quoted in Csikszentmihalyi, 1996).
In the current paper, we provide some of the first empirical evidence (c.f., Gurman,
1989) for the idea that experiences in foreign cultures can in fact enhance creative ability. We
present a series of five studies involving a multi-method approach to obtain support for the
foreign culture Æ creativity link, including correlational and experimental designs, multiple
types of creativity tasks, and participant samples of undergraduate and MBA participant
samples in the United States and Europe.
Psychological variables associated with enhanced creativity
To date, research has identified a number of personality and contextual factors related
to the creative process. For example, studies on creative personalities have demonstrated that
creative people tend to be nonconforming, independent, intrinsically motivated, open to new
experiences, and risk-seeking (for reviews, see Simonton, 2000; 2003). Large-scale studies of
creative individuals and meta-analyses have found that above-average intelligence, tolerance of
ambiguity, energy, self-confidence, and cognitive flexibility are also traits that tend to be found
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 5
in creative people (MacKinnon, 1978; Feist, 1998).
In addition to personality factors, a number of contextual factors have been shown to
facilitate creativity, and these include motivational, cognitive, and affective variables. Most
notably, there is now an abundant literature supporting the notion that individuals who pursue
tasks for intrinsic rather than extrinsic purposes show enhanced creativity (Amabile & Gitomer,
1984; Amabile, 1985; Amabile, Hennessey, Grossman, 1986; Conti, Amabile, & Pollack,
1995; Eisenberger and Cameron, 1996; for reviews, see Hennessey & Amabile, 1998; Amabile,
1996). For example, providing external incentives for completing a task, such as monetary
compensation, can actually lead not only to decreased motivation to pursue the task, but also to
decreased creativity (Amabile, Hennessey, & Grossman, 1986). In addition, research has
shown that having a more promotion-oriented regulatory focus rather than a more preventionoriented regulatory focus can lead to enhanced creativity, and these effects have been
demonstrated both when regulatory focus is measured or experimentally manipulated
(Friedman & Forster, 2001). Moreover, creativity is somewhat self-fulfilling: When individuals
or teams are given high task-independence and high levels of creativity are expected within the
task, then creative products and solutions tend to result (Gibson & Shalley, 2004).
Certain types of cognitive and affective processes can also influence creativity.
Visual imagery and creativity training have both been shown to enhance creative thinking
(Finke, Ward, & Smith, 1992; Simonton, 1991). The presence of a distant future focus,
compared to near future focus, has been shown to lead to more creative negotiation outcomes
(Okhuysen, Galinsky, & Uptigrove, 2003) and to enhanced creative insight on individual
problem-solving tasks (Förster, Friedman, & Liberman, 2004). Inducing a counterfactual
mindset can also enhance insight (Higgins & Chaires, 1980; Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000;
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 6
Markman, Lindberg, Kray, & Galinsky, 2007). Finally, at the affective level, creativity seems
to flourish when people are in positive or ambiguous affective states rather than negative
affective states (Fredrickson, 2001; Amabile, Barsade, Mueller, & Staw, 2005; Ting, 2006), a
finding that belies the stereotype of the “starving artist.”
The role of cross-cultural experiences and cognitions
Directly relevant to the present investigation, empirical evidence also suggests a general
relationship between diverse experiences and enhanced creativity. For example, the process of
learning multiple languages increases the number of associations between ideas (since the
concept-language connections must be made multiple times and in multiple ways), and indeed
research has shown that bilinguals tend to be more creative than monolinguals (Nemeth &
Kwan, 1987; Simonton, 1999). At the group level, creativity is facilitated within collaborative
groups that contain diverse members (Levine & Moreland, 2004; Guimera, Uzzi, Spiro, Nunes
Amaral, 2005), and in groups where heterogeneous opinions are allowed expression (Nemeth
& Wachtler, 1983; Simonton, 2003). At the sociological level, creativity is found at relatively
high rates for individuals who are first- or second-generation immigrants, and for individuals
who are ethnically diverse or marginalized (Lambert, Tucker, & d’Anglejan, 1973, Simonton,
1994; 1997; 1999). More broadly, creativity even seems to increase after civilizations open
themselves to outside influences, and when geographic areas are politically fragmented and
relatively diverse (Simonton, 1994; 1997). Finally, there is also evidence that personality traits
that are associated with creativity, such as openness to experience and cognitive flexibility, are
related to more positive expatriate adjustment (e.g., Shaffer, Harrison, & Gregersen., 2006;
Lievens, Harris, & Van Keer, 2003).
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 7
Given the above work on the relationship between diverse experiences and subsequent
creativity, as well as suggestive anecdotal evidence regarding experiences living abroad, we
propose that cross-cultural experiences – such as living abroad – may also contribute to
enhanced creativity. Because one function of culture is to provide routinized scripts or sets of
norms for behaviors that can be used to simplify one’s environment, allowing one to predict,
understand, and control events, new cultural experiences expose individuals to a broader range
of behavioral and cognitive norms for situations and scripts for solving problems, leading to
greater cognitive complexity than those who have had exposure to only one culture and
knowledge of a limited set of cultural norms (Tadmor & Tetlock, 2006). In other words,
cognitive orientations may become more open and complex when individuals process and
integrate new methods of thinking and behaving. Therefore, an individual who has had
reflective and transformational foreign cultural experiences should be better able to integrate
discrepant ideas in novel ways (Leung, Maddux, Galinsky, Chiu, & Law, 2006). In addition,
being abroad may allow people to recognize that the same surface behaviors can have different
meanings and thus different implications for social behavior. For example, in some cultures
(e.g., China, Jordan), leaving food on one’s plate at a host’s house is an implicit but clear sign
of appreciation, implying that the host has provided enough to eat. In other countries (e.g.,
Indonesia, the United States), the same behavior may often be taken as an insult, a
condemnation of the meal. Thus, those with experience living in foreign countries should be
more likely to see the same surface behavior (food on the plate, a frown, a bow) as having
dynamic functions and multiple possible meanings depending on the cultural context. Overall,
then, experiences and ideas that promote the active comparison between one’s home culture
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 8
and the foreign one, and the concomitant behavioral adaptation to new cultural norms, should
produce the enduring creative effects of foreign experiences (Leung & Chiu, 2006).
Thus, the major aim of the present research was to systematically test the hypothesis
that experience in and cognitions about foreign cultures can enhance creativity. We tested this
idea in a series of five studies. In Study 1 and Study 2 we measured cross-cultural experience
as an individual difference variable and examined whether individuals with experiences living
and/or traveling in foreign countries were more creative than those without these experiences.
In Study 3 we examined whether the effect of priming (or temporarily activating) cognitions
associated with being abroad can also have facilitative effects on subsequent creativity for a
sample of individuals who had previously lived abroad. In Study 4 we explored whether
adapting to foreign cultures while living abroad mediates the link between experience in
foreign cultures and creativity. Finally, in Study 5, we explored the causal role of this
important mediating variable – the degree one adapts to a new culture – in the lab. Across these
studies, we consistently find that experiences with and contemplations about foreign cultures
that involved living in and adapting to other cultures led to greater creativity.
Study 1
Study 1 was an initial, correlational study designed as an initial test of our hypothesis. In
this study, we measured experience living and traveling abroad as an individual difference and
then examined how such experiences were related to participants’ creative abilities.
Method
Creativity task. The creative task in Study 1 was the Duncker candle problem (see
Figure 1). In this scenario, individuals are presented with a picture containing several objects
on a table: a candle, a pack of matches, and a box of tacks, all of which are next to a cardboard
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 9
wall. The task is to figure out, using only the objects on the table, how to attach the candle to
the wall so that the candle burns properly and does not drip wax on the table or the floor. The
correct solution involves the use of the box of tacks as a candleholder – one should empty the
box of tacks and then tack it to the wall placing the candle inside. The solution to this problem
is considered a measure of insight creativity because it involves the ability to see objects as
performing different functions than what is typical (i.e. the box is not just a repository for tacks
but can also be used as a stand). In other words, there is a hidden solution to the problem that is
inconsistent with pre-existing associations and expectations (Duncker, 1945; Glucksberg &
Weisberg, 1966).
Participants. Participants were 205 full-time M.B.A. students at a large business school
in the United States (127 males, 78 females) who participated as part of an exercise completed
prior to a lecture on culture and communication.
Procedure. The day before the lecture, participants were emailed and asked to complete
an exercise ostensibly related to the lecture the following evening. Participants were instructed
to follow a link to a website where a color picture of the Duncker candle problem was
presented. The instructions indicated that the task was to try to figure out how to attach the
candle to the wall so that no wax would drip on the table or floor when the candle was lit. The
instructions explicitly indicated that only the objects on the table could be used to solve the
problem. Participants were instructed to type their answer in a text box place below the picture.
After participants had written their solution to the problem, participants answered subsequent
background questions that assessed their gender, and 1) whether they had lived in a foreign
country (i.e. not their native country) previously, and if so, for how long, and, 2) whether they
had traveled in a foreign country before, and if so, for how long. These measures of cross-
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 10
cultural experience were our main independent measures.
Results and Discussion
Percentage of participants with cross-cultural experience. One hundred thirty-five of
the 205 participants (66%) indicated they had experience living in a foreign country (M = 39.2
months). Two hundred and two out of the 205 participants (98.5%) said they had traveled in
foreign countries previously (M = 13.1 weeks).
Creative problem-solving and relationship to cross-cultural experience. Solutions were
coded as correct or incorrect. To be considered correct, responses had to include the use of the
box of tacks as a candleholder. Overall, 111 of the 205 participants solved the problem
correctly (54.1%). A binary linear regression with both experience living and traveling abroad
simultaneously entered into the equation demonstrated that the amount of time individuals had
spent living abroad significantly predicted creative solutions, β = .073, Wald = 4.24, Exp(B) =
1.076, p = .035. Interestingly, however, time spent traveling abroad showed a marginal, but
negative, relationship to creative solutions, β = -.003, Wald = 3.21, p = .073. Thus, the more
time individuals had spent living abroad, the more likely they were to come up with a creative
solution to the Duncker candle problem; however, this relationship did not hold for time spent
traveling abroad, indicating that living abroad may provide a particularly important experience
impacting individuals’ chronic creative abilities.
Study 2
The goals for Study 2 were twofold. First, we wished to extend the findings from Study
1 by using a very different type of creative context. To this end, we used an interpersonal
creativity task – a one-on-one negotiation – where a creative solution was necessary to achieve
an acceptable deal. Second, we wanted to control for important personality variables to
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 11
minimize self-selection concerns as much as possible. Self-selection is always a potential
alternative explanation for effects based on past experiences and in studies involving
correlational designs; for example, personality differences could lead people to both live
abroad and be more creative. Thus, in Study 2 we controlled for a variety of personality
variables, including the Big Five personality variables (e.g., McCrae & Costa, 1987), gender,
and academic performance in order to demonstrate that experience living abroad has a
significant and unique impact on creativity over and above important personality variables that
might also impact creative tendencies.
Method
Overview. Study 2 involved a dyadic negotiation exercise regarding the sale of a gas
station. In this negotiation, a deal based solely on the price of the gas station (the only issue
explicitly up for negotiation) was impossible: According to the information in the roles, the
buyer’s reservation price (the maximum he/she was authorized to pay) of $500,000 was
substantially lower than the seller’s reservation price (the minimum he/she was willing to
accept) of $553,000 (the seller needed this amount of money both to finance a two-year boating
trip around the world and to have financial security when returning from this journey). In other
words, there was a “negative bargaining zone” with regard to finances.
However, the underlying interests of the parties were compatible: The buyer was
interested in hiring managers to run the station in the future, whereas the seller (whom the
buyer was told had been an excellent manager of the station over the past five years) needed to
obtain employment after returning from the vacation. Thus, a deal was possible if parties
recognized these common underlying interests, and structured a creative solution that
circumvented the negative bargaining zone on the sale price of the station. For example, parties
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 12
could agree to a sale price below the seller’s reservation price (e.g. $495,000), but with a
stipulation that the seller would work as a manager upon returning from the trip, with the value
of the future salary giving sellers a deal that would meet or exceed the interests that motivated
his/her reservation price.
In this exercise, dyads often reach impasses because they tend to focus only on the sale
price of the station. Indeed for most inexperienced negotiators, as well as for many negotiators
with even extensive experience, seeking overlap on monetary terms is often seen as the only
way to achieve a deal in negotiations. However, in this exercise negotiators can reach an
acceptable deal only if they are able to construct a creative solution that looks beyond the sale
price of the station. Given that there is a hidden solution in this task that is inconsistent with
previous associations and expectations (i.e., negotiators cannot achieve a deal via sale price
alone) this task, like the Duncker candle problem in Study 1, is structured as an insight
creativity task but within a negotiation context.
It is also important to note that such creative solutions were not explicitly suggested in
the materials for this particular negotiation exercise: The sale price of the stations was
presented as the only issue up for negotiation. Thus, participants had to discover such
alternative solutions spontaneously during the course of the negotiation.
Participants. Participants were 108 full-time M.B.A. students at a large business school
in the United States (72 males, 36 females) who were enrolled in a negotiations class.1
Participants performed the experiment as part of an in-class exercise at the beginning of the
academic quarter.
Procedure. Participants were randomly assigned to dyads playing the role of either
buyer or seller. One week prior to the negotiation, participants were given confidential role
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 13
instructions for the Texoil negotiation (Goldberg, 2000), told to prepare for their roles by
themselves, and not to exchange any information with their partner or classmates prior to the
negotiation. During the regular class period, participants performed the face-to-face negotiation
in separate and isolated rooms, and were given 50 minutes to negotiate a deal.
In this study, our main dependent measure of creativity was whether participants were
able to negotiate a deal based on the parties’ interests that was allowable within the parameters
of each party’s reservation price. An outcome was considered an acceptable and creative deal if
the terms involved 1) a sale price not greater than the buyer’s reservation price or less than the
seller’s reservation price, and 2) the addition to some type of extra issue(s), such as a job,
where the value of the issue(s) could also help the seller meet or exceed his/her reservation
price. Outcomes were considered unsuccessful if they 1) involved only the sale price of the
station (which indicated a disregard for one of the parties’ reservation prices), or 2) if parties
reached an impasse.2
Control and independent variables. In order to control for a number of important
individual-difference variables, as a separate exercise one week after the negotiation exercise,
participants were given a background information questionnaire that contained questions
assessing the major aspects of personality: the “Big Five” personality traits (Costa & McCrae,
1985). The five-factor structure of personality has been replicated in a number of studies (for a
review, see Goldberg, 1993) and represents personality at the broadest level of abstraction.
Each factor (e.g., extroversion) captures several more specific facets (e.g., sociability), which,
in turn, subsume a number of more specific traits and behaviors (e.g., talkative, outgoing). The
Big Five include, 1) extroversion (associated with sociability and the tendency to be
gregarious); 2) agreeableness (associated with cooperation, trust, and tolerance); 3) emotional
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 14
stability (associated with calmness and lack of worry and insecurity); 4) contientiousness
(associated with dependability and responsibility); and 5) openness to experience (associated
with creativity and curiosity). By controlling for these personality factors, especially openness
to experience which has been shown to be associated with creativity (e.g., McCrae & Costa,
1987; Simonton, 2000; 2003), we wished to demonstrate that experience living abroad
experience exerts its own, unique impact on creativity independent of the major personality
variables. At the end of the quarter we also collected final class grades as a control for
academic and negotiation ability, and recorded each participants’ gender. Finally, we assessed
whether participants had lived and traveled abroad (i.e. not in their native country) before, and
if so, for how long. These last two variables constituted our main independent variables.
Results and Discussion
Cross-cultural experience and percentage of deals. Overall, 81 out of 108 participants
(75%) indicated they had experience living in a foreign country (M = 38.8 months). In addition,
106 out of 108 participants (98.1%) indicated having traveled in a foreign country or foreign
countries (M = 6.14 weeks). Overall, 30 of the 54 dyads (55.6%) discovered a creative and
acceptable solution within the parameters of this exercise.3
Variables predicting whether a deal was reached. We then examined which of our
independent and control variables predicted whether a successful deal had been struck. Our
main analysis consisted of a simultaneous binary logistic regression with the following
predictor variables calculated/coded at the dyadic level: participant gender, final class grades,
levels of extroversion, emotional stability, agreeableness, contientiousness, and openness to
experience, plus total time spent traveling abroad and total amount of time living abroad. Our
main dependent variable was whether or not an acceptable deal had been reached.
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 15
Results were consistent with those in Study 1, and are presented in Table 1. The amount
of time spent living abroad again significantly predicted whether a deal was reached, even
when controlling for a variety of important personality and demographic factors, although as in
Study 1 experience traveling abroad did not. Other variables that predicted a deal were
openness to experience, which is consistent with previous research (McCrae & Costa, 1987), as
did extroversion, which makes sense in the context of this particular negotiation exercise since
sharing information about the seller’s planned trip around the world is crucial in structuring an
acceptable deal. Interestingly, agreeableness was significantly related to deal-making but in a
negative direction, probably because negotiators who care too much about getting along with
the other party can lose sight of their own interests and may obtain less beneficial deals than
negotiators who keep their own interests in mind. However, although other personality factors
predicted the presence of a creative deal, experience living abroad once again had a significant
impact on whether a successful creative outcome was reached in this negotiation, and this
effect emerged even when controlling for important personality variables. Although this study
does not rule out self-selection, it does allow us to have more confidence in the relationship
between living abroad and creativity at the chronic, individual-difference level.
Study 3
Results from Studies 1-2 demonstrated that experience living abroad reliably predicts
creativity on both individual and dyadic creativity tasks. However, because both studies were
correlational, rather than experimental in nature, results should be interpreted with caution as
they do not allow firm causal conclusions to be drawn from the data. Although we controlled
for a number of important personality factors in Study 2, it is still necessary to provide
compelling experimental support for the idea that the experience of living abroad actually
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 16
causes subsequent increases in creativity. To this end, in Study 3 we sought to replicate these
effects as closely as possible within an experimental context to provide evidence for the causal
effect of living abroad.
Specifically, in Study 3 we examined a sample of participants – all of whom had the
experience of living abroad – and primed them to think and write about one of several
experiences: either, 1) living abroad, 2) traveling abroad, or 3) one of two types of non-foreign
experiences. We then assessed the impact of such cognitions on subsequent creativity. We
expected that if living abroad actually causes subsequent increases in creativity, then the
temporary activation of cognitions and experiences associated with living abroad should
temporarily facilitate creative tendencies. We sampled only participants who had lived abroad
before to insure that all participants had such experiences available to mentally activate,
providing the most direct analog to the actual experiences, and insuring the most possible
consistency with Studies 1-2 in which such experience abroad was measured as a chronic,
individual difference variable.
It is important to note that an abundance of research in cognitive and social psychology
has conclusively demonstrated that temporarily activating (or priming) a psychological
construct or mindset has the same effects as when the construct is measured as a chronically
accessible individual difference (e.g., Bruner, 1957; Higgins, King, & Maven, 1982; Bargh,
Lombardi, & Higgins, 1988; Higgins, 1996; see Higgins, 1990, for an empirical and conceptual
review). Specifically, Higgins (1990, p. 306) noted that, “chronic individual differences in
construct accessibility function like temporary individual differences in construct
accessibility.” These temporary accessibility effects have also been found to specifically
impact creativity. Directly relevant to the current investigation, Friedman and Forester (2001, p.
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 17
1001) demonstrated that “individual differences in regulatory focus influence creative problem
solving in a manner analogous to that of incidental promotion and prevention cues.” In other
words, although chronic individual differences in creative ability certainly exist, with some
individuals being generally more creative than others, experimental manipulations that
approximate these individual differences have also been shown to provide temporary boosts to
creativity as well.
Given the abundance of previous work on the overlap and similarities between
temporary and chronic activation and accessibility of cognitions and mind-sets, we reasoned
that activating a mindset involving the active and explicit consideration of the experience of
living abroad (versus traveling abroad or other types of experiences) could also enhance
subsequent creativity, providing concrete experimental evidence for such cognitions as causing
subsequent creativity.
Method
Participants. Sixty-five undergraduates at a large university in France (29 males, 34
females, 2 gender undisclosed) participated in exchange for a coupon for a free coffee.
Participants voluntarily signed up for the study on a website associated with an independent
research lab just off the university’s campus. All participants were French nationals and native
French speakers. Importantly, the information about the experiment indicated that for
participants to be eligible, they needed to have lived abroad (i.e., outside of France) previously.
All participants in the final sample had such experience (M = 38.0 months).
Experimental conditions. Participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 experimental
conditions in a between-subjects design. The cover story indicated that the first experiment was
a cognitive generation experiment, and that we were interested in participants’ ability to
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 18
mentally simulate certain events. In the living abroad condition, participants were asked to
imagine living in a foreign country, and in particular the types of things that happen, how they
feel and behave, and what they think during a particular day living abroad. They were then
asked to think and write about this experience for several minutes. In the traveling abroad
condition, participants received a similar prime; however, these participants were asked to
imagine and write about a day traveling in a foreign country. A third condition involved
priming participants with cognitions associated with a non-foreign experience, in particular a
day in their life in their hometown. Finally, a control condition involved a prime in which
participants were asked to recall and write about what happened the last time they went to the
supermarket.
Given that results from Studies 1-2, we expected that participants in the living abroad
prime condition would show more subsequent creativity than participants in the other three
conditions.
Creativity task. After participants completed the priming task, instructions indicated
that participants should begin the second task. This second task was the Remote Associates
Task (Mednick, 1962), a creative test of insight and convergent thinking in which examinees
are presented with three words and are asked to come up with an additional word that can
logically associate the three words together. (All materials were translated into French from the
English originals and back-translated to check for accuracy and logic, however, we provide
examples below in the English language equivalent.)
As part of the cover story, participants were told that this was a second, separate
experiment on cognitive ability. Participants were given two examples: For the triad of words
‘manners-round-tennis’ participants were told that the correct answer was “table” (i.e., table
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 19
manners, round table, table tennis). For the triad of words “playing-credit-report” the correct
answer was “card” (i.e., playing card, credit card, report card). Participants were presented with
an additional list of 12 more triads, and were instructed to solve as many of these 12 triads as
possible. The number of correct responses served as our main dependent measure of creativity.
Following the completion of the experiment participants were debriefed, given their
coffee coupon, and thanked for their time.
Results. A one-way between-subjects Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was conducted
as our main analysis, with priming condition as our independent variable and number of correct
RAT items as our dependent variable. This analysis revealed a significant effect for priming
condition, F(3,64) = 3.15, p = .031, η2 = .134. Pair-wise mean comparisons indicated that
participants in the living abroad condition (M = 7.07, SD = 2.84) solved significantly more
RAT problems correctly than participants in the other three conditions: the traveling abroad
condition, (M = 4.69, SD = 3.46), F(1,30) = 4.35, p = .046, η2 = .130, the hometown condition,
(M = 4.79, SD = 2.68), F(1,30) = 5.79, p = .022, η2 = .153, and the control condition, (M = 4.07,
SD = 2.09), F(1,30) = 9.46, p = .005, η2 = .252. No other mean differences were significant,
p’s > .42 (see Figure 2). Thus, for a sample of individuals who had all lived abroad previously,
priming or temporarily making salient the experiences associated with living abroad produced
a significant enhancement in subsequent creativity, whereas cognitions associated with other
foreign or non-foreign experiences did not temporarily facilitate creativity. Thus, this study
provides evidence for the causal effect of experiences living abroad on enhanced creativity.
Study 4
Results from Studies 1-3 were consistent in demonstrating that experiences and
cognitions associated with living abroad produce enhanced creative abilities. This is likely due
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 20
to the qualitatively and quantitatively different experience that occurs when living abroad
versus other types of more cursory foreign or domestic experiences. When living abroad, there
are numerous incentives and opportunities for cognitive and behavioral adaptation and change.
Accompanying such an experience, it is often necessary to modify one’s thoughts and behavior
to fit into and thrive in a new culture; when living abroad there can be little choice for
expatriates but to adapt themselves in order to get by. Although obviously individual
experiences will vary tremendously, for many tourists, travelers, or temporary visitors,
changing one’s actual thinking and behaviors to fit into the new culture is rarely necessary to
navigate through a new country; cognitively and behaviorally adapting is much more likely to
be necessary if one is actually living abroad. For example, for an American to live effectively
in a foreign country like Japan, not only must she master rudimentary customs like bowing,
eating with chopsticks, and sleeping on a mat rather than in a bed, she must also understand
and use vastly different social norms effectively, such as being modest and self-critical (rather
than self-enhancing) when referring to herself, speaking and behaving especially politely to
elders and those higher up in societal or organizational hierarchies, and giving priority to the
desires of social or organizational groups rather her own individual interests.
Thus, we reasoned that adaptation may be the key psychological element that
distinguishes the experience of living abroad in terms of its ability to influence creative
enhancement. As noted in the introduction, our hypothesis about exposure to foreign cultures
enhancing creativity is predicated on the idea that creativity is enhanced when individuals
absorb and psychologically integrate new methods of thinking and behaving, and such
psychological transformation is unlikely if individuals are insulated from a new culture and
need not or cannot adapt themselves. In fact, research has indeed shown that just exposing
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 21
individuals to a new culture is not enough to lead to enhanced creativity: At a minimum,
individuals must actively compare multiple cultures and do some cognitive work comparing
and exploring cultural differences to get enhanced creativity (Leung & Chiu, 2006.)
Thus, the main goal for Study 4 was to obtain evidence for the underlying
psychological mechanism responsible for how experience living abroad produces enhanced
creativity. To this end, we asked a sample of very diverse sample of individuals to fill out a
broad survey assessing their experiences in foreign countries as well as the questions assessing
the degree to which they adapted themselves to these new cultures while living abroad. A week
later we had them complete the Duncker candle problem, allowing us to examine whether
adaptation acts as a mediating variable explaining the link between living abroad and creativity.
Method
Participants. One hundred thirty-three MBA students (94 males, 39 females) enrolled
in an introductory leadership class at a large European business school participated as part of a
class exercise during the first week of the academic period. Students in the sample represented
40 different nationalities, and 13 students indicated that they held dual nationalities. The most
commonly represented countries were France (16), India (15), the USA (8), the UK (7), Italy
(6), and Canada (6), with multiple students coming from China, Greece, Australia, Germany,
Japan, Korea, Lebanon, the Netherlands, Spain, Taiwan, Brazil, Russia, Israel, and the Ukraine.
Procedure. Prior to the first class of the academic period, participants were asked to
complete an online survey concerning their “background experiences” as part of a class
exercise. Students were first asked their nationality and the total amount of time they had spent
living abroad (i.e. outside their native country), followed by a question assessing which specific
countries they had lived in previously; students were provided with a maximum of three
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 22
countries they could list (participants who had never lived abroad before were told to skip this
set of questions). Participants were then asked, vis-à-vis each of the foreign countries in which
they had lived, the extent to which they adapted themselves to the culture in each foreign
country while living there. These responses were then summed to create an index of adaptation
which took into account the extent and number of different times participants had adapted to a
foreign culture.
Subsequent questions assessed the Big Five personality traits, whether or not they were
native English speakers (since the majority of participants were not native English speakers),
whether or not they were bilingual, and finally their age and gender. At the end of the academic
period grades were recorded and used as an additional control variable.
One week after the background questionnaire was presented, participants were asked to
do a second (ostensibly unrelated) task as part of another class exercise. As in Study 1, students
were provided with a link to a website where the Duncker candle problem was presented;
students were asked to take a few minutes to try to solve the problem, and a text box was
provided for them to type their answers. Answers were scored in the same manner as in Study
1.
Results and Discussion
Experience living abroad and creative solutions. Overall, 109 out of 131 (83.2%) of
students indicated they had lived abroad (i.e. outside their home country) previously. Overall,
57 out of 131 participants (43.5%) solved the Duncker problem correctly.
Replicating previous effects, time spent living abroad significantly predicted creative
solutions over and above other personality and individual difference variables: The Big Five,
gender, age, class grades, bilingualism, whether English was their native language, and number
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 23
of countries they had lived in (β = .009, Wald = 5.49, p = .019) (see Table 2 for complete
results).
Mediational role of adaptation. We then examined the potential mediating role of
adaptation on the living abroad Æ creativity link. We ran a two-step binary logistic regression
analysis with the following variables entered on the first step as control variables: The Big Five,
gender, age, grades, bilingualism, whether English was the first language, nationality, and time
spent living abroad. On the second step we added the adaptation index.
Results from this analysis revealed that, as predicted, the extent to which participants
had adapted themselves to the foreign countries did in fact emerge as a significant predictor of
creativity in this analysis, β = .310, Wald = 8.77, p = .003. In addition, the effect of time spent
living abroad became non-significant when entering the above terms (p > .18), suggesting that
adaptation did in fact mediate the effect between time abroad and creativity.
Thus, we ran additional analyses following Baron and Kenny’s (1986) steps for
establishing mediation to insure all necessary paths in the model were significant. All analyses
controlled for individual difference variables as above (Big Five, gender, languages spoken,
etc.) Figure 3 shows the individual paths in the model and the unstandardized beta weights
associated with each path. As noted above, time spent abroad was a significant predictor of
creativity. In addition, time abroad was a significant predictor of adaptation, β = .012, t (131) =
3.33, p = .001, and adaptation was a significant predictor of creativity, β = .352, Wald = 12.14,
p < .001. However, as noted above, the direct link between time lived abroad and creativity
became non-significant (β = .006, Wald = 1.90, p > .18) when entering adaptation into the
equation, though the effect of adaptation remained significant, β = .310, Wald = 8.77, p = .003.
Thus, adaptation did in fact mediate the direct path between time abroad and creativity because
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 24
the direct effect of time abroad became non-significant when controlling for adaptation, the
effect of which remained significant. In addition, a Sobel’s test (Sobel, 1982; Preacher &
Leonardelli, 2003) indicated that the mediational effect of adaptation was in fact significant, z
= 2.10, p = .035.
Study 5
Results from Study 4 suggested that adaptation to new cultures is a critical mediating
variable that can explain how experience living abroad leads to subsequent enhanced creativity:
The more people adapted to new cultures when living abroad, the more likely they were to find
the creative solution to the Duncker candle problem. Although providing evidence for an
important underlying psychological mechanism responsible for our effects, this study was
again correlational, rather than experimental in nature. Thus, we sought to demonstrate
adapting to a new culture as a cause of increased creativity. Specifically, in Study 5 we asked
participants (all of whom had lived abroad previously) to think about either adapting to a new
culture or their recent experience in a supermarket (control condition) and assessed the impact
of such cognitions on subsequent creativity. Consistent with results from earlier studies, we
predicted that activating cognitions associated with adapting to a new culture would provide a
significant temporary boost in creativity relative to a control prime.
Participants. Seventy-nine undergraduates at a large university in France (45 males, 30
females, 4 gender undisclosed) participated in exchange for a coupon for a free coffee. As in
Study 3, participants voluntarily signed up for the study on a website associated with an
independent research lab just off the university’s campus. The information about the
experiment indicated that for participants to be eligible, they needed to have lived abroad (i.e.,
outside of France) previously. All participants in the final sample had such experience (M =
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 25
66.6 months).
Procedure. As in Study 3, participants were asked to fill out two questionnaires that
were (ostensibly) part of two separate experiments: a cognitive generation experiment (which
constituted the priming task), and a cognitive ability task (which constituted our test of creative
thinking).
Experimental conditions. Participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 experimental
conditions. The cover story indicated that the first experiment was a cognitive generation
experiment, and that we were interested in participants’ ability to mentally simulate certain
events. In the adapt condition, participants were asked to imagine adapting themselves to a
foreign culture, and in particular they were asked to imagine and write about the types of things
that would happen, how they would feel and behave, and what they would think during a
particular day adapting themselves to a foreign culture. In the control condition, participants
were asked to think and write about their last trip to the supermarket. As in Study 3,
participants were then asked to complete a second, ostensibly unrelated experiment on
cognitive ability, which consisted of 12 items of the RAT. We predicted that participants in the
adapt-prime condition would show more creativity than participants in the control condition.
Following the completion of the experiment participants were debriefed, given their
coffee coupon, and thanked for their time.
Results
Correct solutions and experimental prime. As predicted, results from a one-way
ANOVA showed that participants who had lived abroad previously and were primed to think
and write about adapting to a foreign culture solved more RAT problems correctly (M = 5.95,
SD = 3.20) than participants who had lived abroad before but were primed with a control prime
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 26
(M = 3.94, SD = 3.33), F(1,78) = 4.24, p = .043, η2 = .052 (see Figure 4). Thus, for a sample of
individuals who had all lived abroad previously, priming such participants with cognitions
associated with adapting to a foreign culture produced a significant enhancement in subsequent
creativity, demonstrating the causal effect of adaptation to new cultures in producing enhanced
creativity.
General Discussion
Across five studies, the present research presented evidence that the critical experiences
of living abroad and adapting oneself to a new culture facilitate creativity. This relationship
was demonstrated in correlational and experimental studies, across multiple measures of
creativity, and across an array of participant samples, including multiple MBA and
undergraduate samples in both the United States and Europe.
In the first two studies, we demonstrated that individuals who had lived abroad were
more creative than those who had not. These studies showed that the more time participants
spent living abroad, the more likely they were to find a creative and correct solution to the
Duncker candle problem (Study 1) and the more likely they were to find a hidden but necessary
solution to an interpersonal negotiation task (Study 2). Importantly, living abroad rather than
traveling abroad proved to be the critical type of foreign experience that facilitated creativity,
and this effect occurred independently of a number of personality variables and other possible
confounding factors. A subsequent experimental study (Study 3) provided evidence that
mentally accessing the experience of living abroad in a priming paradigm acts as a causal
mechanism in producing enhanced creativity. In this study we primed individuals (all of whom
had lived abroad previously) to imagine and write about a day living abroad versus other types
of foreign and non-foreign experiences. Importantly, results indicated creativity was enhanced
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 27
only following the activation of cognitions associated with living abroad. Thus, these initial
studies demonstrated that it is something about the experience and thought processes involved
in actually living in a foreign country that is critical for the creative process.
Study 4 investigated adaptation as a possible mediating mechanism of this phenomenon,
and demonstrated that the degree to which individuals indicated they had adapted themselves
to the local culture while living abroad was a critical variable mediating the foreign culture
living Æ creativity link. This finding is consistent with previous work on diverse experiences
facilitating creativity, and suggests that a certain amount of mental and behavioral
transformation on the part of expatriates is necessary to derive the benefit of enhanced
creativity. It also suggests one reason why living abroad seems to be a particularly critical type
of foreign experience: If adapting oneself to take on new behaviors and thoughts is critical for
creativity to be significantly enhanced, such experiences are much more likely to have the
opportunity to occur when individuals are living but not merely traveling in or visiting a new
country. When actually living abroad, people have the time and depth of exposure to a new
culture to produce adaptation and psychological integration and assimilation. Thus, more
cursory exposures to foreign cultures, in the absence of understanding and integrating newness
into one’s self, should provide less creative benefit than more transformational cross-cultural
experiences. Finally, Study 5 primed cognitions associated with adapting to a new culture, and
found that such a mindset produced reliable enhancements in creative tendencies.
It is important to emphasize that the consistency of our results across a variety of
methodologies speaks to the robust nature how experiences in and exposure to foreign cultures
can enhance creativity. Across all studies, consistent effects were observed regardless of
whether such experiences living abroad were chronically accessible (when measured as
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 28
individual differences in living experiences) or when made temporarily accessible (via
experimental manipulations). The current research also employed multiple operationalizations
of creativity, including both intrapersonal and interpersonal tasks, as well as both insight and
convergent creative tasks, demonstrating the robustness of the culture-creativity association.
Regardless of how these variables were instantiated, experiences and cognitions associated
with living abroad or adapting to new cultures led to more creativity.
Overall, our results suggest that that to gain a tangible creative benefit, it is important
not only to live abroad, but also to make concrete adaptations to such new cultures; our data
suggest that cursory exposures via traveling or living in the absence of real cognitive and
behavioral change are less likely to impact creativity. Thus, our data suggest that it is the
specific approach individuals take during their foreign culture experiences that matter. A
person who lives abroad but remains separate from its citizens and sheltered from its customs
will likely not experience a boost in creativity. Similarly, travelers who actively reflect on the
differences and similarities between their own and the foreign culture, perhaps by engaging
local people and participating in activities that give an insider experience of the culture, will be
more likely to walk away more creative. Although future research is needed to fully explore
these possibilities, we believe it is clear that reflection about and adaptation to a foreign culture
is critical.
However, we do not mean our results to suggest that more cursory cross-cultural
experiences are without value. By contrast, we believe that such experiences are very often
important and of high value, particularly depending on the experiences individuals have and/or
the degree to which they experience behavioral or cognitive change. For example, interpersonal
contact with individuals from different ethnic or cultural backgrounds has long been known to
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 29
decrease racial prejudice (e.g., Allport, 1954). In addition, there are numerous examples of
high-profile individuals having life-changing experiences while traveling or during short visits
in a foreign country. The late Boris Yeltsin indicated that his beliefs in the value of the
communist system died forever following a visit to a Houston supermarket, where he was
astounded at the wide selection of foods available to any American, and appalled that the
Soviets had no such access to basic necessities. Malcolm X similarly had his views on racial
prejudice in the United States transformed during a pilgrimage to Mecca, where he was
stunned to see Muslims of all nationalities and ethnic backgrounds living and worshipping in
harmony. Thus, we believe that our results simply point to the conclusion that opportunities
and incentives matter: The more opportunity and incentives people have for and adapting their
thinking and behavior to a new culture, the more likely creativity is to be enhanced, and such
experiences are likely to occur more consistently when individuals have the time and depth of
exposure that comes with deeper and more immersive experiences such as living abroad.
Overall, our results are highly consistent with the idea that certain types of exposure to
heterogeneous environments can train individuals to recognize that there are multiple
perspectives from which to think about or approach various behaviors and tasks. Living abroad
and adapting oneself to new cultures may thus be one type of important heterogeneous
experience that can spark cognitive complexity, conceptual expansion, broadening of attention,
accessibility of alternative mindsets, and creativity (Leung et al., 2006; Tadnor & Tetlock,
2006). Realizing that there are alternative methods of approaching tasks and situations in
different cultures may ultimately foster creative thinking in the same way that exposure to
other heterogeneous environments fosters creativity. Our findings may also be part of a larger
process of becoming culturally intelligent, i.e. the ability to make sense of and blend into
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 30
unfamiliar cultural contexts (Earley & Ang, 2003; Earley & Mosakowski, 2004). Although
some individuals may be naturally more adept at blending in to new cultural environments, the
ability to adapt oneself to new environments may not only help people to become increasingly
culturally intelligent, but the mental processes involved in becoming more multiculturally
proficient may have the beneficial side effect of enhancing creativity as well. Future research
should explicitly explore this possibility of a link between cultural intelligence and creative
abilities.
The current data have clear ramifications for individuals and organizations that value
creativity. Given that living abroad seems to enhance individuals chronic ability to find
creative solutions to problems, it may behoove organizations to hire individuals with
experience living abroad, or to send employees on transfers or sabbaticals to foreign branches
if creativity is particularly valued in a given firm. For individuals who wish to enhance their
own creativity, particularly at the chronic level, our results suggest it would be advantageous to
consider study-abroad programs in school, or to seek job assignments in foreign countries if the
opportunities present themselves.
Limitations and Directions for Future Research
Although the current results were consistent across several studies, a number of open
questions remain to be explored. First, it would be interesting to look at creative enhancement
for individuals who had lived in different cultural areas but within the same country. Within a
country like the United States, for example, very different cultural norms exist within different
regions, such as the Midwest, the Deep South, and the East and West coasts. It is possible that
individuals who were raised in the southern United States within a ‘culture of honor’ (Cohen &
Nisbett, 1996) but who later live in more northern areas of the US may also benefit creatively
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 31
from being exposed to different cultural traditions, even if they have never left their native
country. It would also behoove future research to examine the specific elements involved in
adaptation to new cultures, such as learning of cultural norms and values, amount of social
interaction, language acquisition, and media exposure, to name a few, to see which of these
variable might be critical to the adaptation, and by extension, creativity process. In addition,
future research should consider employing a longitudinal study in which individuals’ creative
tendencies are assessed before and after a stint living abroad; such a design would provide
particularly compelling evidence the relationship between living abroad and creativity.
In addition, the current results suggest that certain types of transformational
experiences, such as living abroad, may have a strong or profound enough affect on individuals
to impact variables – such as creativity – that are typically thought of as relatively stable
personality traits. In fact, our results imply that researchers interested in personality and
individual differences should consider the possibility that living abroad and other types of
transformational experiences might, at some level, be able to impact even relatively stable
individual difference variables. For example, might living abroad also cause individuals to
subsequently become more open to new experiences? Might putting an introvert into an
extrovert-dominated industry (i.e., sales) cause him/her to become more extroverted over time?
Although results from the present research are only suggestive as to the extent to which
personality traits may be altered via unique experiences, it may behoove future research to
consider such possibilities more explicitly going forward.
Finally, the current research suggests that a relatively deep and immersive foreign
experience might actually serve to change not only one’s cognitive orientation towards the
social world in general, but perhaps even toward one’s own sense of self. Anecdotally at least,
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 32
people returning from a foreign sojourn often speak of the experience as “life-changing” and
such individuals claim to have a fundamentally different, deeper, and clearer understanding of
themselves following such an experience. It is possible that individuals’ self-concepts and core
values and attitudes may be fundamentally altered following a stint abroad. Thus, it would be
interesting for future research to explore this possibility empirically to determine whether, in
addition to one’s psychological orientation toward the outside world changing following
foreign experiences, one’s orientation towards and concept of the self is altered as well.
Conclusion
Although travel may indeed broaden the mind, the current studies suggest that deeper
experiences such as living abroad are critical for producing enduring cognitive changes, such
as enhanced creativity. Living in a different country may lead to the realization that every form
– from gestures to vocal tones to a simple smile – can convey different meanings and have
different functions depending on the cultural context. Those critical months or years of turning
bewilderment into understanding may instill not only the ability “think outside the box”, but
also the capacity to realize that the box is more than a simple square, more than its simple form,
but is a repository of many functions and creative possibilities.
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 33
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Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 38
Authors’ Note
This research was supported by a grant from the INSEAD Research and Development
committee to William W. Maddux., and portions of this research were conducted at the
INSEAD Social Science Research Center in Paris, France. This research was also supported by
grants from the Dispute Resolution Research Center at the Kellogg School of Management,
Northwestern University. We thank Bernadette Park, CY Chiu, Marilynn Brewer, Angela
Leung, Dan Ames, Serena Chen, and Don Moore for their helpful comments on earlier
versions of this article. Thanks also to Liselott Petersen, Hajo Adam, Vanessa Hsieh, Cecile
Adam, and Katie Dover-Taylor for their help with data collection, and Caroline Leygue for
translation assistance.
Address correspondence on this article to: William W. Maddux, INSEAD, Organisational
Behaviour Area, Boulevard de Constance, 77305 Fontainebleau, France. E-mail:
william.maddux@insead.edu.
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 39
Table 1: Personality/demographic predictors of whether a deal was reached in negotiation, Study 2.
Variables are coded/calculated at the dyadic level.
Personality/
Demographic
Variables
β
SE
Wald
Statistic
p value
Gender
0.077
0.727
0.011
.915
Class Grades
-0.281
0.704
0.159
.690
Agreeableness
-0.963
0.363
7.061
.008
Openness to
Experience
0.217
0.105
4.292
.038
Contientiousness
-0.146
0.180
0.655
.418
Emotional
Stability
Extraversion
0.167
0.236
0.499
.480
0.538
0.200
7.222
.007
Time spent
traveling abroad
0.037
0.053
0.484
.486
Time spent living
abroad
0.012
0.006
3.967
.046
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 40
Table 2: Personality/demographic predictors of correct solution to Duncker candle problem,
Study 4.
Personality/
Demographic
Variables
Gender
-0.046
0.482
0.009
0.923
Age
0.060
0.091
0.433
0.510
0.042
0.110
0.144
0.705
-0.028
0.107
0.068
0.795
-0.178
0.151
1.387
0.239
0.188
0.178
1.108
0.292
-0.080
0.112
0.501
0.479
-1.304
0.713
3.344
0.067
0.165
0.541
0.093
0.760
0.150
0.130
1.330
0.249
0.099
0.216
0.210
0.647
0.009
0.004
5.491
0.019
Extroversion
Emotional Stability
Openness to Experience
Agreeableness
Contientiousness
Bilingual
β
SE
Wald
Statistic
P value
st
English 1 Language
Number Countries
Lived
Grades
Time Lived Abroad
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 41
Figure Captions
Figure 1: Duncker candle problem, Studies 1 & 4.
Figure 2. Mean number of correct responses on the Remote Associates Test (out of 12 total) as
a function of experimental condition, Study 3.
Figure 3: Mediational analyses, Study 4. Numbers represent unstandardized beta weights.
(* Analysis is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed); **Analysis is significant at the 0.01 level
(2-tailed); ***Analysis is significant at the 0.001 level (2-tailed).)
Figure 4: Correct responses on the RAT as a function of experimental condition, Study 5.
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 42
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 43
RAT Correct Responses
8
7
6
5
4
3
living abroad prime
travel abroad prime
hometown prime
control prime
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 44
.009*/.006(ns)
Time Lived
Abroad
Creativity
.012**
.352***/.310**
Degree to
Which Adapted
While Abroad
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 45
RAT correct answers
7
6
5
4
3
adapt prime
control prime
Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders 46
Footnotes
1
There was no overlap in participant samples in Study 1 and Study 2.
2
We considered the actual terms of the deal of less importance than the presence of a creative
deal itself.
3
Out of the 24 dyads that did not reach a successful and acceptable deal, 10 dyads reached an
agreement on only the sale price of the station, while 14 reached an impasse.