Relationship Between Intercultural Awareness and Personality Variables in Interracial Encounters

摘要

The present study was conducted in order to investigate the relationships between an individual's personality characteristics and his or her understanding of the dynamics involved in potential inter-racial conflicts and controversies in the Army institution. Data collected from 78 Army personnel, with about equal proportions of both blacks and whites, and of both officers and enlisted men, included the ratings on four measures: (a) a set of predeveloped intercultural awareness (IA) questions, (b) the Machiavellianism scale, (c) the Least-Preferred Coworker (LPC) scale, and (d) the group atmosphere scale. Within-measure analyses of the last three scales revealed interesting results of inter-race and/or inter-rank differences in attribution of various personality traits inherent in the measures. Between-measure analyses in using the IA Scale as a dependent variable yielded two important principles in inter-racial relations: (a) intercultural awareness is directly related to an individual's personality and cognitive style characteristics, and (b) elevation of an individual's cultural awareness level will definitely improve one's attitudes, values, and behavioral dispositions toward the members of another culture, and thus decrease the intercultural gaps and/or conflicts in interracial encounters.