What are the Key Ingredients to Effective Intercultural Interactions?

Dr. David Matsumoto, Director of Humintell, recently led a free webinar where he provided participants with an overview of major research findings concerning keys to effective intercultural communication, as well as practical tips to interact with others from different cultures.

Most of us live in a multi-cultural society where effective intercultural communication is crucial. This is as a result of technology and other advancements. The world is getting smaller every day!

The Difference Between Cross-Cultural Adaptation vs Adjustment

Dr. Matsumoto believes at the heart of all intercultural communication and interactions is a process of adaptation and adjustment. Many scholars do not delineate between these two concepts.

Adaptation refers to the process of altering one’s behavior to fit in with a changed environment or circumstances.

Adjustment refers to the subjective experiences that are associated with, result from, or are consequences of, adaptation, and that motivate further adaptation. Dr. Matsumoto explains adjustment in laymen’s terms as “how we feel about what we’re doing”.

Living in any society in any culture requires a constant process of adaptation and adjustment, as noted in the above graphic. This process also encapsulates the underlying process of growth.

Defining Successful Intercultural Communication

How does Dr. Matsumoto define successful intercultural communication?

He outlines 4 factors that play a part, as seen in the graphic below.

1. Having successful relationships with people from other cultures.
2. Feeling that interactions are warm, cordial, respectful, and cooperative.
3. Accomplishing tasks in an effective and efficient manner.
4. All of the above, and the ability to manage psychological stress effectively.

Research has shown there are a lot of different types of people in terms of how they adapt and adjust in different cultures.

There’s many people who adapt (change their behaviors) but don’t adjust well. Adjustment problems may manifest itself in depression or anxiety or substance abuse problems.

Then there’s people who feel things are perfectly fine but they’re not adapting well.

Adaptation and adjustment go hand in hand when discussing intercultural interactions and intercultural communications.

The Contact Hypothesis (Allport, 1954)

So what does the science say about intercultural adjustment and communication?

One very important concept is called the Contact Hypothesis which is the proposition that contact between groups is effective in reducing prejudice.

One study that tested the contact hypothesis was known as The Robbers Cave Experiment where two group of boys were invited to participate in a summer camp (which in reality was part of a study in intergroup relationships).

The boys were separated into two groups (Rattlers and Eagles) and when the groups were unaware of each other, group activities were directed at building unity and cohesion.

During the second week, the two groups were brought together in a competitive environment where the other group became an obstacle to resources.

It was during this competitive period that the groups became hostile toward one another, calling each other names and even engaging in physical fights.

After a period of conflict, the groups participated in a superordinate goal and hostile feelings between groups were reduced after researchers allowed the groups to work cooperatively.

The Robbers Cave Experiment showed that when two groups feel mutually interdependent, hostility between groups subsides.

Key Psychological Ingredients to Effective Intercultural Competence

There’s also a large body of research that have examined what key psychological ingredients (skills, traits, abilities) can help intercultural competence effectiveness.

The instruments that have been developed examine traits have been shown across the last 50 years to be indicative of effective cross-cultural communication.

These tests include the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire (MPQ), Cultural Intelligence Scale (CQS), and Intercultural Adjustment Potential Scale (ICAPS).

A 2013 study entitled Assessing Cross-Cultural Competence: A Review of Available Tests by Matsumoto and Hwang reviewed the validity of all existing instruments.

They found that the most important predictor of successful cross-cultural adaptation was emotional robustness aka emotion regulation.

Learn More About The Basics of Emotional Intelligence by Clicking Here.

Negative emotional reactions from cultural differences are inevitable. Adapting to these differences well require people to regulate their emotions well so they can acquire new skills and behaviors.

Final Tips and Advice for Next Steps

Dr. Matsumoto concluded his webinar by offering some helpful tips.

1. Get exposure to different people and cultures

2. Engage in activities or training to improve your own emotion regulation skills

He ended the webinar by playing the video below about Tarra and Bella- The elephant and dog who became best friends.

The post The Key Ingredients to Effective Intercultural Interactions first appeared on Humintell.

The post The Key Ingredients to Effective Intercultural Interactions appeared first on Social Engineering Blogs.

Most people know the power of music and the emotions music can invoke. Listen to a happy song with an upbeat tone and you may find yourself tapping your feet. Listen to a sad song and it may bring tears to your eyes.

In fact, research has shown that music can activate our autonomic nervous system and even cause shivers down the spine.

A fascinating new study also suggests that music’s power to unify emotions and movements may have played a role in human evolution, fostering social bonds and community.

Music and Emotion Research

The recent music and emotion research study out of Turku PET Center in Finland reveals that music’s emotional impact transcends cultures, evoking similar bodily sensations around the world.

Researchers found that happy music energizes arms and legs, while sad tunes resonate in the chest.

The results of the study entitled “Bodily maps of musical sensations across cultures” were on 25 January 2024 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

This cross-cultural study had a total of 1,500 participants who completed an online survey.

Western and Asian participants rated the emotions and bodily sensations evoked by Western and Asian songs.

The emotions and bodily sensations evoked by music were similar across Western and Asian listeners. The bodily sensations were also linked with the music-induced emotions.

“Certain acoustic features of music were associated with similar emotions in both Western and Asian listeners. Music with a clear beat was found happy and danceable while dissonance in music was associated with aggressiveness. Since these sensations are similar across different cultures, music-induced emotions are likely independent of culture and learning and based on inherited biological mechanisms,” says Professor Lauri Nummenmaa.

Similar to universal facial expressions of emotion, this recent musical study suggests that music’s influence on the body is universal across cultures. It also suggests people moving to music in all cultures and synchronized postures, movements and vocalizations is a universal sign for affiliation.

The researchers suggest that music may have emerged during the evolution of human species to promote social interaction and sense of community by synchronizing the bodies and emotions of the listeners.

Universal Emotions in Music

The idea that music produces universal emotional responses has been studied before.

Research led by Eline Adrianne Smit and colleagues from the MARCS Institute for Brain suggests certain elements of music are hard-wired into the human central nervous system.

Smit and colleagues asked musicians and non-musicians in Sydney, Australia as well as different communities from Papua New Guinea with varying degrees of exposure to Western music, to associate major and minor melodies with either happiness or sadness.

The researchers found that the degree of familiarity with Western music corresponded with the association between major melodies with happiness, and minor melodies with sadness.

This study suggests that familiarity through cultural exposure plays and important factor when associating major and minor melodies with happiness and sadness respectively.

Interestingly, major chords tend to appear more frequently than minor chords in popular music and research shows that humans are likely to attribute positive emotions to things that we are familiar with.

The post How Does Music Affect Our Emotions? A Cross-Cultural Study first appeared on Humintell.

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Dr. David Matsumoto, Director of Humintell, led a free webinar on The Basics of Social Influence where he provided participants with an introduction to evidenced-based topics of social influence.

These included the topics of:

• Conformity, Compliance, and Obedience
• Cooperation
• Emotion Contagion
• Social Loafing and Social Striving
• Leadership
• Persuasion and Influence

Conformity, Compliance, and Obedience

In social science and social psychology these topics (conformity, compliance and obedience) are generally considered together within the larger rubric of social influence.

They are all important constructs in any social system as ways of reinforcing behaviors.

Some of these words may have a negative connotation, but in reality they are important concepts for any group or society as ways of reinforcing behaviors.

Definitions of conformity, compliance and obedience can be found in the graphic to the left.

In this area of psychology there are a few studies that form the backbone of what we know about these three topics. Let’s explore them!

The Ash Experiments

A researcher named Solomon Ash conducted a very well-known set of experiments that are some of the first and classic studies on conformity and compliance.

In one of his most famous studies, a participant went into a room with seven confederates who were part of the experimental team.

The participants were given lines (see example). You can see there is a target line and other lines on the right hand side.

Every person in the room was asked which line on the right hand side matches the target line on the left. There was an obvious correct and incorrect answer.

The results of the study showed that when the participant is the last to answer and everyone before them has given the incorrect answer, it increases the likelihood that the participant will also give the incorrect answer.

On average 32% conformed to the incorrect answer. In over 12 trials, 75% conformed at least once.

The Milgram Experiments

Like the Ash experiments, any people have heard about the Milgram experiments led by Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram.

In one of his most famous studies (that could not be conducted today due to ethical reasons), Milgram recruited 40 men to come to a laboratory with equipment that was labeled with shock danger warnings.

The participant was told that they are the teacher who is going to deliver a shock to a student in a neighboring room. They couldn’t see the student (and who was not actually being shocked contrary to what the participant is told).

Every time the student answered a question wrong, the participant was instructed to deliver a shock to them of increasing intensity. The student in the other room banged on the wall, made other sounds, then eventually went silent.

The participants asked the experimenter if they should continue (to which they are told yes). In the study with 40 men, 26 delivered the maximum shock and 14 stopped before reaching the highest levels.

Like the Ash study, the Milgram studies demonstrates an amazing amount of conformity and obedience.

Over the years, these findings have been replicated many times all around the world in various countries suggesting that conformity, compliance and obedience may be universal human phenomenons.

Cooperation

Cooperation refers to people’s ability to work together towards common goals. Cooperation is necessary in every society and based on unique cognitive abilities, especially a concept called shared intentionality.

Dr. Matsumoto believes that shared intentionality is at the root of human cultures. He also believes that the main purpose and function of human communication including language and non-verbal behavior is to share intentions.

Cooperation is a universal phenomenon that is part of the basis of social influence. It has been studied extensively in social psychology.

However, there is some research that suggest there are cultural and individual differences in cooperation.

Some research suggests that the rates of cooperation tends to be higher in collectivistic societies (e.g. East Asia, SE Asia, Latin/South America) compared to individualistic societies (e.g. USA, Canada).

Additional research suggests that individual differences in cooperation exist due to levels of trustworthiness (high trusters vs low trusters).

Research on cooperation has also been conducted regarding the sanctioning systems across various cultures as well as inter and intra-cultural environments.

Dr. Matsumoto’s research suggests that when people from different cultures come together, they generally cooperate less.

Emotion Contagion

The concept of emotion contagion started with researcher Elaine Hatfield and others in 1993.

What is emotion contagion?

Emotion contagion is a phenomenon when someone’s emotions lead to or produce similar emotions in others.

What Hatfield and colleagues have demonstrated is when there’s a group of people, one person or several people’s emotions can affect the emotions of the rest of the people.

Why does emotion contagion occur?

The truth is that science has not gotten to the point where we know exactly why emotion contagion occurs.

However, there’s interesting literature within the emotion contagion literature that pertain to what’s called mirror neurons.

Mirror neurons are essentially special types of brain cells that are triggered when viewing the actions of other individuals. For example, when we see another person fall and hurt themselves, our mirror neurons trigger the part of our own brain that would be activated if we had fallen.

Facial feedback is another concept that suggests that when we have an expression on our face our brains tell us we’re having that emotion and thus turns our emotional system on inside of us.

This may be the reason why some research suggests that smiling can improve your mood. 

Social Loafing and Social Striving

When people are in a group and they have a task to do, sometimes individual productivity and motivation is reduced. This concept is called social loafing.

Social loafing has led to the concept of freeriders- members of a group who are not producing as much as others

On the other hand, there’s the opposite effect called social striving. Sometimes working in a group enhances individual performance rather than diminish it so then the product of the group is greater than the sum of the individual members.

One factor that has been shown to influence whether members of a group either loaf or strive is leadership.

Research has put issues faced by leaders into two buckets: 1) task performance and 2) group maintenance.

There has been extensive studies about the characteristics of leaders that are universally endorsed all around the world and the most influential set of researchers are known as the GLOBE project.

The GLOBE project has produced a number of amazing findings that are universally endorsed as good leaders are:

• Charisma: ability to connect and persuade others
• Team Orientation: focus on the team as a whole
• Empathy: the degree to which leaders are perceived as being empathetic

Persuasion and Influence

Without a doubt, the most influential psychologist in the area of persuasion and influence is Robert Cialdini.

The seven psychological principles underlying persuasion, influence, and compliance that Cialdini has compiled are:

• Reciprocity
• Consistency
• Social Proof (related to conformity)
• Liking (related to cooperation)
• Authority (related to obedience)
• Scarcity
• Unity

Cialdini has done an amazing amount of research himself but has also done a great job of integrating the knowledge in the field to come up with these various principles of persuasion and influence.

One of the points that Cialdini makes which Dr. Matsumoto finds absolutely true is that these principles exist because societies and cultures and all groups need them.

These principles work because they work to mobilize emotion, either through what’s known as cognitive dissonance or anxiety or something that motivates people to alleviate their emotion.

Other Social Influence Constructs

There are actually many other social influence constructs that have been demonstrated and documented in science including:

• Mere Exposure Effect
• Trust and Trustworthiness
• Rapport

Want to Learn More?

Our Tactical Social Influence Workshop, explores how to use various psychological techniques to discern points of views and detect nonverbal emotions, behaviors, and reactions in order to advocate, influence, and convince others.

The post Free Webinar: The Basics of Social Influence first appeared on Humintell.

The post Free Webinar: The Basics of Social Influence appeared first on Social Engineering Blogs.

There have been many articles addressing this “zoom fatigue” and the potential reasons for it. One reason often cited is the mental work and effort it takes to process nonverbal cues like facial expressions, the tone and pitch of the voice, and body language; paying more attention to these consumes a lot of energy. But can our exhaustion from remote meetings somehow be tied to our personality?

Many researchers today believe that there are five core personality traits that speak to the characteristics or qualities of an individual. These traits have been found by research to exist in humans all around the world, though the degrees to which people possess each trait differs.

One may find it helpful to use the acronym OCEAN (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism) when trying to remember the big five traits.

Extraversion is one of these cross culturally universal underlying personality traits. A person who is extroverted is generally outgoing, friendly, sociable and happier more of the time than others. In contrast, a person who is introverted may be shy, quiet, reserved, and typically don’t seek out social events.

How introverted or extroverted are you? Find out here with a FREE test!

One suggested characteristic that’s associated with extroverted individuals is that when they meet people, they receive energy. When they meet people, teach classes, or socialize with others, they become energized. Whereas an introverted person uses energy when interacting with others, which can leave them drained. So how does this all relate to zoom fatigue?

Extroverted individuals may find themselves particularly drained after a remote meeting or class. Dr. Matsumoto suggests that although they may be interacting and seeing people they normally interact with, they’re likely not receiving the energy transfer they would in real life that normally invigorates them. Thus, these digital interactions leave them more exhausted than if the same interaction happened in real life.

The remoteness eliminates the interaction quality that allows them to give and receive energy.

Interestingly, there’s cultural differences in mean levels for extroversion as well. Americans generally have high extroversion, low neuroticism, higher conscientiousness, high agreeableness and high openness. Which means as a society as a whole, Americans may be suffering more from Zoom fatigue than other countries who have lower rates of extroversion such as Malaysia (see table below)

In addition to the many emotional consequences of digital communication we’ve covered, being remote may also eliminate the possibility of energy transfer we normally get in live interactions.

What are your thoughts? As an extrovert do you find this to be true? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section!

Want to learn more about the role of culture in shaping personality? View the video below to learn more!

The post Can Zoom Fatigue Be Related To Your Personality? appeared first on Social Engineering Blogs.

While perhaps not quite as deeply ingrained as biological evolution, a new study in Science found evidence that many of our speech patterns can be linked back to changing dietary practices due to the dawn of agriculture. Specifically, our use of sounds like “F” and “V” can be linked to changing jaw and overbite structures that arose around that time.

Postdoctoral researchers Damián Blasi and Steven Moran got their idea from 34 year old linguistic analyses that found that contemporary hunter-gatherers lacked some of the linguistic types, called labiodentals, that many agricultural based people had.

When humans became accustomed to chewing foods high in fibers, the jaw bone is put under pressure and molars are worn down. This results in a more even mouth, developing away from an overbite and also making it easier to pronounce sounds like “F” and “V”.

While this idea may have some intuitive credibility, such an attitude was not shared in linguistic communities when linguist Charles Hockett made these unusual observations. Instead, he was met with skepticism, and it was that skepticism that Blasi and Moran sought to validate by proving Hockett wrong.

But they were very surprised. In order to assess Hockett’s claim, they made use of computer models to simulate how the human mouth makes sounds with varying degrees of overbite, and they analyzed languages around the world to see which languages most frequently used labiodental sounds.

The results are incredible striking. The computer models indicate that overbites make labiodental sounds much harder, with contemporary edge-to-edge teeth reducing the necessary effort by almost 30 percent.

Similarly, they discovered that labiodentals were much less common among languages used by hunter-gatherer communities. What might be most striking about these findings is the fact that they were able to track the progress of labiodentals emerging in languages throughout history, finding a steady increase in their use as societies developed and became more focused on expansive settled agriculture.

It is not all good news for those of us who enjoy our labiodentals, as we are also more at risk of cavities and of our teeth becoming overcrowded.

However, this study makes important strides in tracking how our communicative patterns are closely tied to our evolution and to our society. This is important if you are trying to better understand people of different cultures.

For instance, this study shows certain commonalities among those who speak Indo-European languages, emphasizing cross-cultural similarities. Yet, on the other hand, the fact that these speech patterns only emerged because of certain social arrangements also shows how deep the communicative gap can be between people of different cultures.

Still, that doesn’t mean you can’t learn how to better read people and communicate across cultural divides. This is one of Humintell’s specialties, and we even offer a cross-cultural training class!

The post Farming and the Evolution of Speech appeared first on Social Engineering Blogs.

By Chris Norris, CFI

The WZ Non-Confrontational Interview method has been a part of my career for over 28 years now, and I’m happy to say that I’ve been working for WZ for 19 years. Through the years much has changed for both myself and WZ. One of the biggest changes for WZ is the huge International reach we now provide with our training classes. Did you know WZ has operations in Latin America, UK and Europe?

The International division of WZ has provided interview training courses on six continents (the penguins are next!) and to delegates from over 140 countries! I personally have taught classes translated to French, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, German, Mandarin and Arabic. Regardless of your travels, your organization’s global reach or simply the need to interview someone from another country, there is always one common thread to interviewing and teaching interview tactics around the world; the need to develop rapport.

When training Internationally, I always ask attendees, “What makes a good interviewer?” A variety of topics, traits, and characteristics often arise, but one response consistently comes forward no matter what country I’m in; the ability to build rapport. So, what is rapport? Rapport is creating a relationship in a very short period of time. How do you build rapport? Let’s take some lessons from my travels to help understand how to build rapport in a multi-national and multi-cultural environment.

Understand local culture

Understanding a bit about the culture of your subject will help you to understand the dos and don’ts of most interviews. Understanding simple characteristics like anticipated spacial proxemics, eye contact, posturing, potential fears, etc. will benefit your interview and your ability to develop rapport.

I remember my first trip to Kabul, Afghanistan. I was teaching a class of Afghan nationals working in an investigative capacity for the US Government. During the class I asked the group to shut their workbooks, as it was time for teacher to become student. I told them I wanted to talk about their culture and learn about them. We had a great discussion and it altered my training a bit, increasing our interaction and their understanding of the WZ method.

Learning everything you can about someone’s cultural norms and characteristics from on-line resources like the US Department of State can prove to be beneficial, but the best resource is simply talking to people. Getting information from someone raised in that culture can help you to prepare and be more effective in the interview room. Allow them to tell you some common characteristics to anticipate during the interview and even potential fears they may possess; which may be very different than your own.

Learn the language

Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not saying try to conduct an interview in another language you just learned from a “Russian for Dummies” book. I mean, make an effort to say simple phrases and greetings. I’ve always made a point to learn how to say ‘hello’, ‘thank you’, ‘good-bye’, etc. in the local language. This simple, effortless task has huge meaning and is a great way to begin an interaction.

I’ve often been asked the question, “Aren’t people in country X typically rude to Americans?” My reply, “I’ve never experienced that…” and I believe is based upon me starting any greeting with “Buenos dias / Guten-tag / Bonjour / Hi-ya”. I remember once in Koln, Germany I approached an older gentleman sitting in a chair in an open square. In German, I said, “Hi, I’m sorry but I don’t speak German well, do you speak English?” He answered in German and I repeated myself. This happened a couple times until he said in clear English with a big belly laugh, “I said, your German is so good, why must I speak to you in English!?” We laughed and he was quite helpful, and my effort to know a bit of his language helped with rapport in that interaction. In fact, he walked me to my destination and made sure the person I was looking for knew that I only spoke a bit of German.

Know a few colloquialisms

“Yes Eugene it’s a real word!” During a conversation with my brother-in-law (Eugene) I was talking about colloquial language and colloquialisms. His response was “Nice made up word bro!” He didn’t believe either word was real or that most people are able to pronounce them correctly. Colloquial expressions vary from region to region and are an important way people identify with each other. Funny, how he now fits “colloquial” into his conversations and will send me a text afterwards to let me know he used the word!

The use of normal language and understanding of local phrases and more informal speech helps to connect with your subject. If you are interviewing your subject in English, understand some local colloquial English phrases; even if English is a second language. Remember, as a point of rapport, we tend to like people like ourselves. When you are using some colloquial phrases or words you begin to build a bit of a bond and present yourself as being more like your subject.

I’ve learned that telling someone in Ireland that dinner was “grand” or replying with a “thanks a million” can go a long way. Even telling someone I was “knackered” while living in the UK showed I was willing to immerse myself into local customs. Listen carefully and think about mimicking your subject; not patronizing, just altering your presentation and word choices. Taking time to adjust your speech and use simple colloquial phrases will create a more natural communication platform with your subject.

Become more animated

The use of non-verbal communication from an interviewer’s perspective is often overlooked. Think about animating your communication with more illustrators and body posturing that is more engaging. Your use of animation can help overcome many language or communication barriers you may experience. Think about animating your voice as well, putting emphasis on good and bad points and expressing empathy through your tone. These points will add clarity to your message.
Once, on a trip to Egypt, I was trying to order dinner with someone who spoke very little English. By using simple words (not slowing my speech or talking louder) and becoming more animated I was able to describe to him what I wanted. The order was placed and it was one of the best shawarma wraps I’ve ever had…nice and spicy, just the way I like it!

Smile!

One of the most important non-verbal communication tactics you can apply to your interviews is a simple smile. Smile when you initially greet the person. Smile when you begin the interview and attempt to develop rapport. Heck, you might even smile when you ask those difficult questions. Smiling in most cultures creates a connection and reflects and openness on your part. Smiling can defuse confusion, resistance and agitation. I’ve been fortunate enough to smile in 70 different countries in my life. Trust me when I tell you, a smile goes a long way to creating a bond.

The reason these tactics work in terms of rapport-building is they help you share a bit more common bond; even though you might be from different cultures and parts of the world. You begin to develop a sense of who the individual is and you share common traits. By sharing common traits and interests, you tend to build rapport because you become much more like them than they realize. Giving someone an opportunity to discover a common interest with you helps you build that relationship in a very short period of time. It helps you build rapport.

To interact more effectively with people from different cultures, check out our IntelliCulture course!

The post Cultural Interview Lessons From the Road appeared first on Social Engineering Blogs.

Last month, we blogged about Drs. Takano and Osaka’s research challenging the “common sense” idea that Japanese are invariably and typically collectivist in their thinking, while Americans are individualists. But if this common view has been refuted, what is supposed to take its place? Humintell’s Dr. David Matsumoto has a few suggestions, elaborating on the problems with that view and offering an exciting path forward for cross-cultural communication.

To review, the common view of Japanese collectivism and American individualism refers to the alleged existence of culture-wide traits ascribing collectivism or individualism to all cultural members. However, these rely on national averages, aggregating people from diverse regions and incomes, including both the rural poor and affluent urbanites.

As Matsumoto points out, this sort of ecological inference has been challenged for years, but Takano and Osaka’s work acts as a final blow to the validity of this “common sense” approach. Instead, it is necessary to focus on the individual and their differences from others, not simply assuming their perspective based on the aggregated culture they live in.

Such stereotyping should be deeply troubling, especially among psychologists. For Matsumoto, “psychology is the very discipline that should celebrate the uniqueness of each individual in each culture.” Not only is this common view methodologically flawed, but it is also deeply problematic ethically.

The traditional reliance of this view does a disservice to our ability to rigorously study cultural norms. American culture may be individualistic on the whole, but many individuals can be seen as deviating from that norm. Still, determining cultural level effects cannot be done by aggregating individuals but instead ought to rely on appropriately group-level data, such as by studying mass media or institutional practices.

Dr. Matsumoto envisions an approach where researchers focus on individual-level effects as a separate but related phenomena as group-level effects. Not only does this help resolve the problems of the common view but, by disentangling the two, psychology can delve into a new wealth of questions about the relation between individual and group level psychologies in different cultures.

This is not just an abstract moral or methodological point, as these cultural stereotypes are widespread in everyday parlance. Dr. Matsumoto points out that “American individualism is an ideological concept that is used in everyday language and discourse among U.S. Americans to explain and justify behavior. Likewise, Japanese collectivism is an ideological concept that is used in everyday language and discourse among Japanese to explain and justify behavior.”

Thus, it seems necessary for researchers and laypeople alike to challenge this approach. Not only can this help us better pursue research, but it can also help you better understand and communicate with people from other cultures, including Japan. A great place to start is to see more of what Dr. Matsumoto has to say on developing great cross-cultural communication skills.

The post Embracing Nuances Across Cultures appeared first on Social Engineering Blogs.

This is essentially what Humintell’s Dr. David Matsumoto and his team find in a recent publication. Dr. Matsumoto studied the role that one’s own cultural norms and sense of emotional regulation have in evaluating the expressions of other people. Excitingly, they found a close link between our cultural norms of emotional displays and our own sense of emotional regulation, as they relate to evaluations of other people’s emotional states.

Their study sought to address the challenges in recognizing the often muted expressions of those from more subdued emotional cultures, but it also hoped to disentangle the perceiver’s own expectations and judgments from their evaluations.

In order to accomplish these aims, Dr. Matsumoto and his team conducted two studies. Both of these asking participants to identify the expression displayed in a series of images of faces, in addition to rating the intensity of the expression. Notably, the judges were split between English speakers raised in the United States and native-born Japanese participants, and the pictures included both American and Japanese faces.

In the first of these studies, judges were also asked to report their own emotional state’s intensity while judging images of faces, and they completed a measure intended to capture “cultural display rules” or the extent to which a culture encourages intense emotional expressions.

They found that cultural differences accounted for significant variations in how the judges evaluated the intensity of expressions, with Japanese judges tending to infer that an expression showcased more emotion than American judges.

The second study built on this work by replicating the same experiment only this time asking judges to evaluate their own emotional responsiveness. Dr. Matsumoto connects this to cultural display rules, because both have to do with the “management and modification of emotional expressions and reactions.”

After being shown expressive images, the judges would again make judgments as to the intensity of the emotion displayed, but this time they would also complete self-reported measures of emotional regulation. The results suggested that emotional regulation was at least as strong in mediating judgments as cultural norms.

The fact that cultural display norms and one’s own emotional regulation both mediate our perception of others’ emotions has profound implications for anyone attempting to better learn to read people. It is not enough for us to learn other people’s cultures, but we also have to critically reflect on our own norms, both personal and cultural.

This makes the process of emotional recognition just that much harder, which is why Humintell is trying to help by training you in the skill of reading people and understanding cultural differences.

The post Expressing Control or Displaying Expression? appeared first on Social Engineering Blogs.

This seemingly innocuous question actually delves into major questions both with regard to communication but interviewing techniques more specifically. By looking at this basic question in a recent study, Humintell’s Drs. David Matsumoto and Hyisung Hwang were attempting to look at the notion of reciprocity and whether more reciprocal interviewing tactics contribute to boosting rapport and information gathering.

The subject of reciprocity essentially looks at the idea that people want to return or reciprocate favors offered to them. So, if an interviewee is offered the simple kindness of bottled water, they would be more likely to feel obliged to provide additional information during the course of the interview.

Reciprocity is just one form of what is known as “social influence.” The theoretical literature identifies six principles of social influence that hold across cultures, but this study focuses on reciprocity which had been identified as one of the more powerful and pervasive aspects of social influence.

The study in question divided experimental groups around this simple treatment, offering water to half the participants. They hypothesized that this would boost rapport between interviewer and interviewee and would result in more relevant and plausible information.

These experimental groups were also divided internally between those who were asked to lie and those asked to tell the truth about whether they had stolen a $200 check. The experiment was set up to incentivize participants to lie to their best ability, as they were told that being suspected of deception would result in an extra-long questionnaire after the interview.

Drs. Matsumoto and Hwang found general support for their hypotheses. Liars tended to give more relevant and plausible details after being offered water. Interestingly, neither ethnicity nor culture had an impact. Rapport was also boosted by the reciprocal treatment.

This has significant ramifications for both interviewing tactics and efforts to boost rapport in social situations. When rapport was high, the interrogation proved more fruitful, and reciprocity helped accomplish that! This means that when interviewing an individual, efforts intended to elicit reciprocity may be helpful, even though an actual interview situation is generally a bit higher stakes.

But what does this mean for those of us who are just trying to get better at reading people? Sure, we can offer people we meet bottles of water, but that might be socially out of place! However, the basic principle of reciprocity will hold.

By offering something, be it a compliment, personal information about ourselves, or a gift, we can help create a sense of reciprocity, boosting rapport and better enabling us to know about other people. This is not just some manipulative tactic but also a way of developing better interactions and getting to know people!

The post Framing a Reciprocal Interview appeared first on Social Engineering Blogs.

Last week’s Olympics blog discussed the universal gesture of triumph and touched on Humintell’s research into the universal nature of many gestures. However, just knowing that many gestures are universal is not enough to effectively read people. Instead, it is important to connect them to verbal messages.

This is exactly what Humintell’s Dr. David Matsumoto and Dr. Hyi Sung Hwang attempted to do in a 2013 study. This research catalogued various gestures, including both culturally similar ones as well as gestures that vary drastically between cultures.

They asked participants from all over the world to list out gestures based on a comprehensive list of possible verbal messages. These gestures were then shown to participants from the same region in order to maintain validity in the experiment. This process allowed Drs. Matsumoto and Hwang to determine which gestures were recognizable as the verbal cue in question.

Interestingly, they found that universal and varying gestures tended to convey categorically different emotions. While many culturally-specific gestures had complex associated messages, universal gestures tended to convey pretty elemental or basic emotions.

Still, they did notice differences. Some verbal messages, such as an insulting one, occurred in every culture but with different associated gestures. Other gestures occurred universally but with different meanings, including the “A-Ok” symbol in Western cultures which conveyed a variety of meanings, including a reference to “money.”

Finally, there were some gestures which were culturally specific and who’s verbal message existed nowhere else. For instance, the gesture for “apology” only occurred in South Asia, and the signal for “hunger” was not present outside of East Asia. No other regions used these gestures or used gestures to convey these concepts.

This sort of research is critically important for those of us who want to better read people. Many gestures convey verbal messages, clarify speech, or amplify certain meanings, all of which add nuance to complex social interactions.

If we simply exclude gestures from communication, we miss a whole sphere of human interaction. Moreover, when trying to interact across cultures, especially if we do not speak a common language, a focus on universal gestures can go a long way towards bridging otherwise intractable differences.

The trick, of course, is knowing which gestures mean the same thing in different cultures. While this blog tries to help you build this knowledge, it can only do so much. Instead, we encourage you to take advantage of Humintell’s specialized cross-cultural training programs to make you a better people reader, regardless of where in the world you happen to be.

The post Cultural Gestures and Verbal Cues appeared first on Social Engineering Blogs.