Tag Archives: international education

How Morality Changes in a Foreign Language

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Language and culture are so very closely related and intertwined. Many say we can’t truly understand a culture without speaking the language. Others say we can’t effectively use a language without knowing the culture; without cultural context we are “fluent fools.”

Multilinguals know that our behaviors and ways of thinking change when we speak various languages, but do our morals also vary? A few fascinating studies have been conducted recently that shed light on how our moral compasses shift when we operate in different languages. English-French-Czech speaker Julie Sedivy summarizes the results of such research very ably in an article in Scientific American.

She reports that one study, about hypothetical responses to a trolley accident (should we sacrifice one person to save five?), shows that our moral decision-making shifts when we are speaking a language that is not a native one. A second research project, this one involving participants’ responses to morally reprehensible behavior (sex with a sibling, eating one’s pet after it has died), had similar findings: actions are judged less wrong when read in a non-native language.

Why is this? One hypothesis is that when we speak a non-native language, we are more deliberate; we circumvent our quick “gut” reaction and consider the greatest good for the greatest number. Another possibility is that our childhood language(s) are filled with more emotional connections than are academically acquired languages; thus, our responses are different, depending on the language in which we are operating.

Bilinguals, for example, are more likely to recall a memory if they are prompted in the language in which the event took place, according to one study. Yet another research project went deeper, showing that the emotional response to taboo words—and especially to reprimands (so common in childhood)—were statistically stronger in one’s native language. Study participants often reported that they “heard” the reprimands in the “voice” of a close relative.

A study published in the journal Cognition showed that people placed greater weight on outcomes and less on intentions when making moral judgments in a non-native language. Examples in this study included good intentions/bad outcomes, such as giving a homeless person a new jacket, and then the recipient gets beaten up when someone steals it from him; and good outcomes spurred by dubious motives, such as a family adopting a disabled child in order to receive money from the government. These results would seem to support the idea that people have more muted emotional responses/less empathy or sympathy in a non-native language.

None of the studies, of course, show us what a multilingual person’s “true” moral self is. Julie’s conclusion summarizes this paradox:

“Is it my moral memories, the reverberations of emotionally charged interactions that taught me what it means to be ‘good’? Or is it the reasoning I’m able to apply when free of such unconscious constraints? Or perhaps, this line of research simply illuminates what is true for all of us, regardless of how many languages we speak: that our moral compass is a combination of the earliest forces that have shaped us and the ways in which we escape them.”

Cultural Detective will not teach you a foreign language, but using it will help you to get into the mindset of those you work with, live in community with, or love. Using Cultural Detective Self Discovery will deepen your understanding of your personal values and moral guidelines, while Cultural Detective Blended Culture can help you understand how our values and moral compass shift when we define ourselves as a mix of ethnicities, races, religions, or nationalities. Exploring Cultural Detective Global Business Ethics allows us to sharpen our understanding of ethics and morals across cultures, while Cultural Detective Global Teamwork enables us to navigate and bridge the differences. All of these packages are among the 67 packages included in any subscription to Cultural Detective Online. At just $35US/user, it is an incredible value on the investment, offering personalized coaching and group collaboration. Learn more about a subscription today!

10th Anniversary of Cultural Detective!

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Cultural Detective 10th Anniversary

Do you know that 2014 is Cultural Detective‘s 10th anniversary year? It’s also the 25th anniversary of my company—Nipporica Associates, and the 35th anniversary of my work in the intercultural field! Help us celebrate! Show our authors some love! Send us a greeting and win a one-year subscription to Cultural Detective Online.

The Cultural Detective Worksheet was born back in the early 1980s in Japan, emerging out of the need for a real-time multicultural conflict resolution tool. The Values Lenses came shortly thereafter—what are today termed “negative perceptions” were then called “the dark side,” echoing the Star Wars popularity of the day.

I used Cultural Detective tools in my proprietary work for about ten years with enormous success. Then, around 2002, Shell Oil began saying that Cultural Detective gave them the most highly rated global management training they’d ever experienced—from Nigeria to Malaysia, The Hague to Houston. They told us they wanted us to develop packages for every country in which they did business. While I envisioned nothing so ambitious, I did ask ten of my most esteemed colleagues to develop five “test packages”—Cultural Detectives England, Germany, Japan, Sweden and USA. They were so enthused about this Method and material that more and more admired colleagues asked if they could author packages. Today, the Cultural Detective series includes 65 packages (with several more to be released in the next few months) and an online subscription service.

Our vision was to provide theoretically sound, practical development tools, easy for the lay person to use, effective for beginners and experienced interculturalists, at accessible prices. Our goal was to help build respect, understanding, justice, collaboration and sustainability in this world of ours. Bless you for accompanying us on this journey thus far!

Thank you so much, to all our authors, our customers, certified facilitators, users, colleagues and friends! What a grand adventure it has been! Growing faster than we ever imagined possible, and building intercultural competence in areas we never dared dream of: spiritual communities, universities and study abroad programs, professional associations, NGOs, governments, and business. Over the last ten years, the Cultural Detective Method as been refined, deepened, and broadened—thanks to all of you!

A group of Cultural Detective authors will gather this month—February 2014—in Mazatlán, México to celebrate the project’s 10th anniversary. Other authors are planning events in their locations around the world to commemorate this auspicious occasion. We have started to receive greetings, and I thought you would enjoy seeing a few of them. I’ll post a selection below.

Would you like to get in on the action? Share your greetings? Thank our authoring team? Thank the person who first introduced you to CD? How about if we make it fun?!

10th ANNIVERSARY CONTEST ANNOUNCEMENT
Share your greeting with us, and the authors of our favorite submissions will receive a complimentary ONE YEAR SUBSCRIPTION to Cultural Detective Online!

As you already know, Cultural Detective Online is a terrific personal development too. But what you may not know is that the user agreement allows you to project the contents for your students, trainees or coaches—as long as you tell them Cultural Detective Online is a publicly available tool to which they can subscribe, too. As a colleague told me yesterday,

“Why would any intercultural trainer NOT pay $150 for a TWO YEAR subscription to this tool? It gives me access to over 60 packages, allowing me to conduct such a breadth of quality training!”

How to enter? Record a video and upload it to YouTube, then send the url to ten@culturaldetective.com. Alternatively, you can send a photo greeting to that same address. Here’s the first photo we’ve received. It’s a good one, don’t you think? Many thanks to our partners at the International Educators Training Program, Queens University, Canada.

Allison10thCome on, join in the celebration! Your greeting can be as short as you like, funny or serious. We’d love to hear what Cultural Detective means to you, what difference it’s made for you, what impact it’s had on the field. Perhaps you can share a funny story of cross-cultural miscommunication, or share your success—a Cultural Defective or Cultural Effective! We can’t wait! If this series has meant something to you, please take a moment to let us know.

Send your entries by March 15th, 2014. We will contact the winners by email with instructions on how to redeem their prize of a full year’s access to all the content in CD Online, to use on their own or with their students. We can’t wait to receive your message!

Following are a few of the video greetings that we’ve already received, with a bit of background about each:

Microsoft uses Cultural Detective to coach their international support engineers. The first year they used it, they attributed a 30% increase in customer satisfaction directly to Cultural Detective. The Culture and Communication Program staff is truly inspiring. In the clip below, Shalini Thomas shares her greetings with the Cultural Detective community.

AFS, the international exchange organization with operations in more than 50 countries, has long used Cultural Detective with staff, volunteers, students, and host families. Nearly everywhere I travel, anywhere on our planet, there is almost always someone from AFS in the audience. We are thrilled to know that our leaders of tomorrow are developing intercultural competence through our partnership with AFS! I first met Hazar Yildirim in Istanbul, where he and the AFS contingent there gave me a very warm welcome. Now he’s based in New York. Here is what Hazar has to say:

The Intercultural Development Research Institute (IDRI) is committed to longer-term, sustained development of intercultural competence. Their motto is “coherent theory generates powerful practice.” Thus, it means a lot to me when the co-founder of that Institute, Milton Bennett, says Cultural Detective is a tool that truly translates theory into practice and carries on the heritage of the founders of the intercultural field. I met Milton back in 1982, at the Stanford Institute for Intercultural Communication (SIIC).

The last greeting I’ll share with you here comes from another customer, Atieh International, specialists in emerging and risky markets. “The world of today comes filled with new opportunities hidden in a sea of uncertainty and risk. It is our job to assist our clients to understand and be prepared for the tides and waves, the ebbs and flows in each market, to appreciate the beauty and depth of cultures and diversity and to build sustainable strategies founded on reliable intelligence and trust.” We are privileged to be associated with them. Managing Partner Pari Namazie shares her remarks, below.

Please block some time now to make or record your greeting and send it to us! We are looking forward to hearing from you, and we would especially love to share a gift subscription with you! Our authors work hard, not to pursue monetary wealth, but impassioned by a commitment to the vision of everybody having a voice, sharing their gifts, and realizing their potential. Let them know they have made a difference!

We will post the video greetings we receive to the playlist below. Take a look at those we have so far, including greetings from CIEE, Korn Ferry, and EDS. They are very heartening to watch! We look forward to hearing from you!

Every Organization Needs Intercultural Competence

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Nearly every organization these days, even the smallest and most local, works with diverse customers, team members, vendors, and service providers. A corner grocery store serves people from different age groups, ethnicities, and spiritual traditions. So, which holiday greetings should the grocery store use, if any, so as not to offend or exclude? Why do some of the regular customers talk only to male employees? Could the store increase profits or attract new customers if it started offering halal meats or Latino grocery items?

What about the graphic designer who puts up a website or Facebook page designed to attract local clients, only to find that the first inquiries come in from overseas? The mere fact that you have an online presence can mean you offer your products and services worldwide. And what about the free clinic that finds itself dealing with patient care issues of recent immigrants from places halfway across the planet? Or disaster relief agencies attempting to coordinate aid from around the world, getting it to the places it needs to be, quickly?

Cross-cultural competence, the ability to communicate effectively across cultures, is a mandatory skill in today’s interconnected world. It will help you:
  • Service diverse customers in the ways they expect.
  • Attract, retain and make the most of the talented professionals your organization needs to succeed.
  • Sell more products or services, to the people who need them.
  • Achieve success in your negotiations.
  • Discern the “right” mergers and acquisitions for your purposes.
  • Get more productivity and satisfaction out of your local and virtual teams, projects, and vendors.
  • Jump start the outcomes of study abroad and international education, as well as expatriate assignments.
  • Ensure you get the most out of the time and money you invest in international, cross-country and regional business travel.
  • Develop mutually respectful relationships with clients, employees and other stakeholders.

Cross-cultural competence is a needed skill for all of us, and it helps improve our family and social lives as well as our work lives. But amidst all the competing priorities for our time and attention, how can we develop such competence? To most of us, going back to school or even taking a few days off work for a class isn’t doable. And besides, like physical fitness, cultural fitness requires ongoing, structured practice, not just one trip to a training room.

If only there were an online cross-cultural coach available to us anytime, anywhere, at low cost. One that didn’t make us memorize lists of dos and don’ts, that didn’t promote stereotypes but rather encouraged dialogue and critical thinking. An online coach that would provide a process for recognizing cultural differences, helping us to understand and leverage them as assets rather than as roadblocks. Better yet, an online coach that could help us make sense of our everyday experiences, learning how to transform obstacles into opportunities, and frustration into innovation. A tool we could navigate freely, according to our needs and interests, not some online talking heads or narrated slide show. A tool that would be available on our time — when and where we want it…

I am very excited to be able to share with you just such a solution, yours free for three days, no strings attached. It is a brand new online system based on the proven Cultural Detective Method used by governments, NGOs and for-profit organizations around the world.

Free 3-day trial to Cultural Detective Online!

“Cultural Detective is directly responsible for a 30% increase in our customer satisfaction ratings.”

“Cultural Detective sped up my learning curve; it allowed me to become a part of the team and have an impact on the business more quickly.”

“I have received kudos from my managers and the Vice President for having chosen the Cultural Detective. But the kudos should really go to you. Cultural Detective is a rock solid methodology.”

Pass this offer around; the 3-day-free trial offer is good from now through December 31, 2012.
To redeem:

  1. Log on to http://www.culturaldetective.com/cdonline/orders/trial
  2. Enter your name, email address and the code: Promo3
  3. You will receive a verification email from cdonline@culturaldetective.com. Click the link in the email, follow the instructions and you will be ready to go!

Enter your learning goals, explore 50+ fully integrated packages including full Values Lenses and 400 Critical Incidents, or upload and debrief your own real-life situations. Your customers, partners and employees, even your family members, will notice the difference!

Improve your ability to understand and collaborate across cultures, and help your friends, family members and colleagues to do the same! Let’s create a more inclusive, creative, collaborative and productive world out there! Get a clue!

Want to Get Interculturally “Fit”?

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The image above is part of the “Got Milk?” ad campaign; the copyrights belong to their owners. We reproduce the image here to equate the ideas “Got milk?” and “Got intercultural competence?”

Got intercultural competence? Want to get interculturally “fit”?

Do you want to improve the success of your international negotiations? Mergers and acquisitions? Want to get more productivity and even joy out of your virtual teams and projects? How about jump starting the outcomes of study abroad and international education?

Intercultural competence is not something you attend a workshop about and then check it off your list. Just as physical fitness requires ongoing activity, practice, commitment and discipline, so does the development of intercultural competence. You do not become physically fit by exercising and eating right one week out of 52. Nor do you become interculturally competent merely by having lived abroad or having earned road warrior status or flight rewards. Intercultural competence requires that we take the time and focused reflection to make meaning of our experience, to apply it, and then to keep refining and upgrading it.

Physical and intercultural fitness both require ongoing, structured practice. Discipline. We can’t be physically fit if we don’t exercise and move our bodies regularly. We can’t be interculturally fit if we don’t regularly reflect on our own values and behavior, that of others, and on our skills and strategies for bridging similarities and differences and making the most of diversity by creating inclusive spaces.

Terrific. So you’re committed to the journey. You want to get started. How? Well, to become physically fit you might start monitoring what you eat. You might join a gym, or commit to an exercise program. Similarly, to develop intercultural competence you could subscribe to Cultural Detective Online. You start a structured exercise program or join a gym of intercultural competence. At less than $100/year, a subscription is definitely cheaper than most gyms!

But, as we all know, joining the gym does not give us physical fitness. We have to actually GO TO the gym! We have to actually get out of the lounge chair and move our bodies, regularly and repeatedly!  So, we promise ourselves to spend an hour or two a week for the next three to six months, going into Cultural Detective Online to reflect on our experiences, dialogue with our teammates, learn about ourselves and others, upload and debrief stories from our daily lives. Perhaps we form a group of like-minded friends and colleagues, to support and encourage one another. And, as we practice, we find we enjoy it! We come to crave it! We start to look forward to the learning and insight! The cycle feeds itself, propels itself forward; each step towards intercultural fitness encourages us on to the next.

Finally, just as on our journey to improved physical fitness we might consult a nutritionist, dietician, personal trainer or coach, once we are committed to developing intercultural competence we may find it helpful to hire a personal trainer or coach. You have access to many talented professionals via the Cultural Detective authoring team, the list of certified facilitators, and the SIETAR (Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research) chapters worldwide (list of chapters with links is at lower left of the linked page), as well as various coaching associations. There are more and more classes taught worldwide that incorporate the Cultural Detective Method and CD Online. We very much encourage you to take advantage of these resources.

We would love to hear from you about your intercultural fitness regime! Please share with us so that we might learn from and be encouraged by your progress!

Cultural Detective Online is LIVE!!!!!!!!

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Cultural Detective is proud to announce the new product launch of Cultural Detective Online! This tool is like having a virtual coach in your back pocket, successfully guiding you through the all-too-common missteps of cross-cultural negotiations and communications. Please check out the four videos on the home page. Today only (15-16 October, depending where you are on the planet) there is a 25% launch discount; enter promo code:   CDO-blog25  during checkout.

Huge thanks goes out to each of you who have worked with and incorporated the Cultural Detective Method into work with your clients or employee populations globally, as over the past eight years this tool has become a significant contribution to the intercultural field. Because of our clients and team, Cultural Detective has become globally recognized as one of the premier developmental tools of our time. Now we are on the cusp of very exciting and broader use of the tool through Cultural Detective Online! This new product launch furthers our mission of encouraging communities globally to prosper through intercultural understanding and collaboration.

Cultural Detective Online is useful in a broad range of contexts including global business negotiations and multicultural team effectiveness, international assignments and study abroad, and for successfully communicating within our families and communities, and within and across faith traditions.

A subscription to Cultural Detective Online offers the opportunity to explore the concepts of “culture” and “values” and how they impact communication in everyday life. It provides access to dozens of culture-specific Values Lenses and topic-specific Challenges Lenses, hundreds of real world cross-cultural incidents, and the easy-to-use Cultural Detective process for improving the ability to collaborate successfully across cultures, both on individual and organizational levels.

We are excited to announce that subscriptions are now available for individuals or groups, and we invite you to subscribe to Cultural Detective Online today by visiting http://www.culturaldetective.com/cdonline/ ! Subscriptions start at less than US$100/year, and are less for larger groups of subscribers. You will rarely find more value for your money.