A PRELIMINARY STUDY OF ACQUIRING CROSS-CULTURAL INTERACTION SKILLS THROUGH SELF-CONFRONTATION

摘要

An experiment was carried out to assess the relative effectiveness of two methods of training USAF military advisors in cross-cultural skills. A scenario was constructed requiring subjects to play the role of an American USAF Captain who had to interact, in specified ways with a "foreign counterpart," a role played by an actor. A list of 34 behaviors appropriate to the situation and fictitious culture were provided the subject. The be¬haviors required ranged from actions, gestures, etc which were similar to those in our own society, to those which were considerably different. Twenty-three male subjects were divided into control and experimental groups and taught the desired behaviors by two methods: (1) Verbal coaching after a role-playing session (2) self-confrontation by a videotape replay after a role-playing session. Considerable improvement resulted from these methods. The experiment confirmed the effectiveness of self-confrontation as a training technique for the rapid acquisition of complex and subtle skills of interaction - an area of difficulty encountered by USAF advisors on counter-insurgency training missions. Suggestions for further research on self-confrontation as a training technique are made.