How might experiences overseas change you? In today’s era of increased globalization, we often focus on the benefits of foreign experiences; after all, going abroad has been shown to make people more creative and less biased towards other groups. A recent study, however, has set out to explore whether a wide range of experiences overseas might also have a potentially dark side. A recent study found that experiences in multiple foreign countries can lead people to engage in immoral behavior such as lying and cheating. Using eight different study designs, researchers found that people were more likely to lie, cheat, or misrepresent the truth for their own gain if they had multiple experiences abroad. While the amount of countries visited impacted how likely people were to behave immorally, the specific countries visited did not. Additionally, having deep foreign experiences (i.e. living for an extended period of time in just one other culture) had no relation to rule-breaking.
Past research has shown that significant time abroad leads to cognitive flexibility: the ability to restructure knowledge according to shifting situational demands. The data from this study suggests that broad foreign experiences might also lead to moral flexibility. People with broad cultural experiences may be more likely to view morality as a function of culture, and feel that what is right and what is wrong might vary in different contexts. This view of morality as something which is culturally relative might ultimately lead people with broad overseas experience to bend moral rules (Lu et al., 2017).
While it is important to recognize the positive effects of going abroad, like less bias towards different groups and more creativity in science and art, it is also important to be aware of potential pitfalls of broad cultural experiences. This study provokes us to examine how exactly people change as they become exposed to a broader range of cultures. If you have spent a significant amount of time globe-trotting, you might want to ask yourself, has your experience abroad made you look at morality as flexible?
References:
Franzoni, C., Scellato, G., & Stephan, P. (2014). The mover’s advantage: The superior performance of migrant scientists. Economics Letters, 122, 89 –93. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2013.10.040 Hellmanzik, C. (2013). Does travel inspire? Evidence from the superstars of modern art. Empirical Economics, 45, 281–303. http://dx.doi.org/10 .1007/s00181-012-0617-x
Lu, J. G. (2017-01-01). The dark side of going abroad: How broad foreign experiences increase immoral behavior. Journal of personality and social psychology, 112(1), 1-16.doi:10.1037/pspa0000068
Tadmor, C. T., Hong, Y. Y., Chao, M. M., Wiruchnipawan, F., & Wang, W. (2012). Multicultural experiences reduce intergroup bias through epistemic unfreezing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103, 750 –772. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0029719
Image credit: Joris Louwes
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