Understanding and Assessing Cultural Intelligence: Maximum-Performance and Typical-Performance Approaches

Abstract

Cultural intelligence is one’s ability to adapt when confronted with problems arising in interactions with people or artifacts of diverse cultures. In this study, we conduct an initial construct-validation and assessment of a maximum-performance test of cultural intelligence. We assess the psychometric properties of the test and also correlate the test with other measures with which it might be expected there would be some connection. We found that our test was internally consistent and correlated significantly with maximum-performance tests of abilities but generally less or not at all with typical-performance tests, including cultural intelligence and openness to experience. However, our test appears to be distinct in what it measures from the other tests of cognitive abilities. The results lead us to suggest that cultural intelligence may have both maximum-performance and typical-performance aspects.

Intelligence IS Cognitive Flexibility: Why Multilevel Models of Within-Individual Processes Are Needed to Realise This

“…In response, we would argue that broader constructs of intelligence likely have similar within-individual conceptualisations. For instance, if one were to consider intelligence constructs such as Practical Intelligence ( Sternberg et al 2000 ), Cultural Intelligence ( Sternberg et al 2021 ), or even Emotional Intelligence ( Mayer and Salovey 1993 ), the notion of within-individual, contingent adaptation is central to their conceptualisation. In fact, the cognitive notion of relational integration extends quite naturally to meaning making from adaptive contingencies (i.e., relational bindings) between goals however defined in a given context and non-cognitive content (emotions, affect), possibly filtered through individual differences in personality dispositions, self-concepts, attitudes and value, and the like (as described in Section 5.1 ).…”

The Search for the Elusive Basic Processes Underlying Human Intelligence: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

“…Most of these kinds of intelligence have not been subject to satisfactory empirical validation, although Gardner’s theory has been with less than supportive results ( Visser et al 2006 ). An older test of Sternberg’s to measure intelligence according to his earlier triarchic theory also had issues ( Brody 2003 ), but later tests appear to have been considerably more successful ( Sternberg 2010 ; Sternberg and Rainbow Project Collaborators 2006 ; Sternberg and Sternberg 2017 ; Sternberg et al 2017 , 2019 , 2020 , 2021a ). For example, tests of creative and practical skills, as well as of scientific-reasoning skills, were shown to be, at best, weakly correlated with tests of general intelligence, and in some of these cases, negative correlated (see also Sternberg et al 2001 ).…”

Cultural Intelligence: What Is It and How Can It Effectively Be Measured?

“…Cultural intelligence is one’s ability to adapt when confronted with problems arising in interactions with people or artifacts of cultures other than one’s own ( Sternberg et al 2021a ). Some might view cultural intelligence as merely a special case of general intelligence, but there is at least some evidence that cultural intelligence is a distinct construct that is related but nonidentical to general intelligence ( Ang et al 2006 , 2007 , 2015 , 2020 ; Sternberg 2008 ; Sternberg and Grigorenko 2006 ; Sternberg et al 2021a ; Van Dyne et al 2008 ).…”

“…Third, to be measured fully, one might wish to use a combination of typical-performance and maximum-performance measures. Past research suggests the two kinds of measures assess different aspects of cultural intelligence ( Sternberg et al 2021a ), much as do typical- and maximum-performance measures of emotional intelligence ( Rivers et al 2020 ). There is, of course, no perfect measure of anything: Any measure has error built into it.…”