How Personality Can Help Build Trust Between People from Different Cultures

Uncertainty is scary. Uncertainty makes it hard to know what to expect, how to behave, and whether something good or bad is going to happen. Many people frequently face uncertainty within today’s globalized workplace when employees are expected to quickly form collaborative partnerships with new people from all over the world. Having people from different cultures work together can be good for companies because it brings together unique perspectives and ideas that can increase creativity. But cultural differences also increase uncertainty, and uncertainty may make employees hesitant to share their perspectives and ideas because they don’t know how the other person will react. What if they are critical? Or even worse, what if they take my ideas as their own?

To answer such questions, employees must rely on whatever information is available about that person, which is often limited to surface-level, or physical characteristics such as race, accent, clothing, or gender. People use this kind of information to judge how similar that person is to themselves, which gives them a basis for inferring what to expect from the person. When people are similar to us, it is easier to predict how they will behave. After all, I know how I would behave, so if someone is similar to me then I am less uncertain about how they may behave. Research in social psychology also shows that we have a natural preference for people who we think are similar to us, and this preference guides how we judge and behave towards others. This “similarity effect” happens quickly and automatically, leading us to judge people who are similar to us as more likeable, competent, and trustworthy, even when we first meet them.

Whether cultural differences ultimately help or hurt collaborations in business organizations depends on how much the employees trust one another. When we trust someone, uncertainty isn’t as scary because we believe that the person has good intentions and will treat us well, even though we are uncertain about what they will do. This willingness to trust another person can be seen in trusting behaviors that make us vulnerable to that person, such as open communication, seeking feedback from the other person, and sharing information with him or her, all of which are essential to developing working relationships in which people from different backgrounds can combine their unique perspectives. So the question becomes: How do we enhance trust between people from different cultures?

In a recent study, we tested whether certain personality traits may be useful for identifying people who are more trusting towards people from different cultures (Saef et al., 2019). The study focused on the personality characteristic called Openness to Experience, which is often called just Openness for short. People who are higher in Openness tend to seek out knowledge and experiences with cultures other than their own. Because people who are judged as familiar are also seen as more similar to us, Open people—who are more familiar with different cultures—may judge people from different cultures as more similar to themselves, and therefore trust them more. In addition, because open people view themselves as having more knowledge of and experiences with different cultures and identify as more worldly wise people, Open people may perceive others who also have knowledge of cultures different from their own as more similar, leading them to trust them more.

To examine how people’s level of Openness influenced the way they perceived people from different cultures, we randomly paired White, American college students (referred to as ‘participant’ below) to work with a person (referred to as ‘partner’) from either the same culture or a different (Chinese) culture. After introducing the participants to their partner, we asked participants to rate how similar they thought their partner was to them and then asked participants to play a decision-making game that measured how trusting they acted towards their partner.

Not surprisingly, participants were less trusting towards partners from a different culture because they perceived them to be less similar to themselves.  But participants who rated themselves as higher in Openness trusted partners from other cultures more than those who rated themselves as lower in Openness because they judged them to be more similar to themselves.

This finding suggests that, at the beginning of collaborations between employees from different cultures, people who are high in Openness will be more willing to cooperate and share their ideas with (or trust) people from other cultures than people who are low in Openness. And because trust is a self-reinforcing phenomenon, meaning trust leads to more trust, including someone high in Openness in collaborations between people from different cultures may encourage cooperation and information sharing from people low in Openness. Therefore, whenever people from difficult cultures work together, it may be useful to include at least one person who is high in Openness.


For Further Reading

Crisp, C. B., & Jarvenpaa, S. L. (2013). Swift trust in global virtual teams. Journal of Personnel Psychology, 12, 45-58. DOI: 10.1027/1866-5888/a000075

Saef, R., Porter, C., Woo, S. E., & Wiese, C. (2019). Getting off on the right foot: The role of Openness to Experience in fostering initial trust between culturally dissimilar partners. Journal of Research in Personality, 79, 176-187.

Williams, M. (2001). In whom we trust: Group membership as an effective context for trust development. Academy of Management Review, 26, 377–96.
 

Rachel Saef is an Assistant Professor of Industrial-Organizational Psychology at Northern Illinois University who studies personality in the workplace.

 

Why We Should Listen Well When Other People Disclose Prejudice

At the same time that there is increased pressure to talk about prejudice openly and honestly, there is also an increased risk of being ostracized or “canceled” for saying the wrong thing.  We thought that talking about one’s prejudices might actually be helpful for reducing prejudice if the person listening provides full attention and conveys understanding, empathy, and non-judgment.

We tested whether speakers who receive this kind of attentive listening report more self-insight and openness to change in relation to their prejudiced attitude than speakers who converse with listeners who give little feedback that they really “hear” and understand what speakers are saying. We expected that high-quality listening might even lead to lower prejudiced attitudes compared to inattentive or judgmental listening.

Across a pilot study and three experiments, we found evidence supporting the importance of high-quality listening when discussing prejudiced attitudes. For example, in an in-person experiment conducted in the UK, we asked participants to have a face-to-face conversation with a researcher about a negative bias the participant held. In the high-quality listening condition, the listener maintained constant eye contact and used non-verbal signals such as head nodding that convey interest and curiosity. The researcher also conveyed understanding, empathy, and support to the speaker but did not express agreement or disagreement with what the participant said. In the regular listening condition, the listener was mostly silent throughout the conversation.

Participants in the high-quality listening condition reported they had more self-insight than speakers in the regular listening condition and also reported greater openness to change their attitude. Importantly, they also reported more favorable attitudes—that is, less prejudice—toward the group they talked about than those in the regular listening condition. Participants who received high-quality listening had higher self-insight and openness to change, which led to lower prejudice.

We replicated this study in Israel. Instead of having participants select the group that they would talk about, we first assessed their prejudice to different groups and then assigned them to write about a specific group that they were prejudiced against. Even in this more challenging discussion, high-quality listening led to more openness and less prejudiced attitudes compared to regular-quality listening.

Our research suggests that conversations about prejudice may be beneficial when they are held with listeners who convey empathy, understanding, and support. Future studies may want to examine whether this is also true when people express very high levels of prejudice and how long the beneficial effects of high-quality listening last.

In summary, our research highlighted the important role that high-quality listening plays in facilitating constructive conversations and suggests that listeners can help speakers feel more open and gain insights when responding in ways that convey empathy, understanding, and support.   It’s obviously hard to talk openly about prejudice, but our research suggests that these conversations can be useful if listeners respond correctly.


For Further Reading

Itzchakov, G., Weinstein, N., Legate, N., & Amar, M. (2020). Can high-quality listening predict lower speakers’ prejudiced attitudes? Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2020.104022

Itzchakov, G., DeMarree, K. G., Kluger, A. N., & Turjeman-Levi, Y. (2018). The listener sets the tone: High-quality listening increases attitude clarity and behavior-intention consequences. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin44(5), 762-778.

Itzchakov, G., & Kluger, A. N. (2018). The power of listening in helping people change. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2018/05/the-power-of-listening-in-helping-people-change

Itzchakov, G., Kluger, A. N., & Castro, D. R. (2017). I am aware of my inconsistencies but can tolerate them: The effect of high-quality listening on speakers’ attitude ambivalence. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 43(1), 105-120.

Kalla, J. L., & Broockman, D. E. (2020). Reducing exclusionary attitudes through interpersonal conversation: evidence from three field experiments. American Political Science Review, 114(2), 410-425.

Weinstein, N., Przybylski, A. K., & Ryan, R. M. (2013). The integrative process: New research and future directions. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(1), 69-74.


Guy Itzchakov is an Assistant Professor at the University of Haifa, Department of Human Services. Guy’s focal line of research examines the effects of high-quality listening on attitude structure and change.

Netta Weinstein is an Associate Professor at the University of Reading, School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences. Netta’s focus is on constructive motivational climates, emotional well-being, and interpersonal functioning.

Nicole Legate is an Associate Professor at Illinois Institute of Technology, Department of Psychology, studying prejudice, stigma, and motivation.

Moty Amar is an Associate Professor at the Ono Academic College, School of Business. He also serves there as the chair of the department of advertising and marketing communications and as the principal of the behavioral research laboratory. 

Who Is Wise?

Navigating through life is difficult and complicated. Problems often lack simple, well-defined solutions and instead require balancing myriad interests and caveats. To solve problems in real life, people call upon wisdom and seek those who are wise. Unlike someone who is just smart, a wise person is experienced in life and understands the human condition, knows how to balance multiple perspectives and interests, and is motivated to pursue truth and the common good. But who is wise? Does the proverbial "old sage" hold some truth to it? Do intelligent people have an edge in becoming wise? Most importantly, does wisdom really help people live a good life? Are wise people indeed happier?

These questions have been studied by many researchers. However, because different studies define and measure wisdom in different ways, and because any single study is limited, findings vary across studies. As a way to go beyond individual studies and to look at the big picture, we used a statistical technique called meta-analysis. It allowed us to summarize thirty years of empirical research on wisdom to answer important questions like those posed above. Here's what we found.

Must One Wait Until Old Age to Be Wise?

Old age itself does not bring wisdom. Wisdom increases very little (almost negligibly) with increasing age. On the contrary, wisdom declines in old age, which might be due to a general decline in cognitive abilities. Experts who study wisdom agree that life experiences and how one makes sense of them, rather than age itself, lead to the development of wisdom. For this reason, although some people may grow wiser with age, wisdom requires cultivation and is not an automatic benefit of advancing years.

Are Smarter People Wiser?

Intelligence is not related to how wisely people report they typically think, feel, and act in daily life. However, intelligent people tend to give wiser advice for especially challenging dilemmas (however, we don't know if they actually act as wisely when facing such dilemmas themselves). Even so, our previous work suggests that wisdom requires only average intelligence--beyond that intelligence ceases to matter. The type of intelligence also matters for wisdom. Crystallized intelligence, which relies on knowledge gained in the real world, is more strongly associated with wisdom than fluid intelligence, which is the ability to solve problems without previous knowledge.

Who Then is Wise?

If age and intelligence, two obvious candidates for characteristics of wise people, do not consistently predict wisdom, what does? The personality trait of openness is related to wisdom across studies. In other words, wisdom entails flexibility in thinking, the tendency and willingness to take on different ideas and perspectives, and an exploratory orientation in life. The association between wisdom and openness is one of the most consistent findings in the literature. Many experts think that openness fosters wisdom.

Are Wiser People Happier?

Finally, wise people lead lives that are both happy and meaningful. People who report thinking, feeling, and acting wisely in daily life feel more positive emotions, less negative emotions, and more satisfaction with their lives. In addition, they are more autonomous (that is, they rely on their personal standards and do not look to others for approval), feel more masterful of their environment, have more positive interpersonal relationships, are more self-accepting, are more oriented towards growth, and feel more purpose and meaning in life. Being growth oriented and feeling more purpose and meaning in life also predict the ability to think of wise solutions to real or hypothetical dilemmas. Contrary to the idiom 'ignorance is bliss', wisdom is its own path to happiness.


For Further Reading

Dong, M., Weststrate, N. M., & Fournier, M. A. (2023). Thirty years of psychological wisdom research: What we know about the correlates of an ancient concept. Perspectives on Psychological Science18(4), 778-811. doi: 10.1177/17456916221114096

Dong, M., & Fournier, M. A. (2022). What are the necessary conditions for wisdom? Examining intelligence, creativity, meaning-making, and the Big Five traits. Collabra: Psychology8(1), 33145. doi: 10.1525/collabra.33145


Mengxi Dong is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Psychology at Beijing Normal University. Her research focuses on wisdom and understanding the discrepancies among measurements of the same constructs.

Nic M. Weststrate is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois Chicago. His research focuses on the development, manifestation, and transmission of wisdom across the lifespan and between generations.

Marc A. Fournier is a Full Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto Scarborough. His research focuses on personality integration, person × situation interactions, and interpersonal processes and dynamics.