Why Culture Matters: An Empirically-Based Pre-Deployment Training Program

This report discusses how and why culture matters to the military by analyzing both the operational environment and culture, and recommending an empirically-based pre-deployment training program that trains military members to operate at a higher level of effectiveness required for stability operations and today’s “strategic sergeant” informational environment.

Conceptualizing Multicultural Perspective Taking Skills

Increasingly, the United States Army operates in multinational, and therefore, multicultural, environments. Teamwork within such settings requires the ability to see events as members of other cultures see them. The goal of the research was to define a set of multicultural perspective taking skills that will enable Army leaders to function effectively in multinational alliances.

Cross-Cultural Competence Assessment Instruments for the U.S. Military Academy's Semester Abroad Program

Overview  

Cross-Level Measurement of Cross-Cultural Competence

The present research endeavor was designed to assess the utility of cultural intelligence (CQ) as an emergent organizational level construct using samples of military organizations.

Cultural Assessments and Campaign Planning

This monograph proposes that a major deficiency in current Joint doctrine is the failure to conduct cultural assessment of population groups in an area of operations and to integrate these results into the campaign planning process.

Culture and Egocentric Perceptions of Fairness in Conflict and Negotiation

In this article, the authors advanced a cultural view of judgment biases in conflict and negotiation, analyzing these biases and practices in individualist versus collectivist societies.

Improving Cultural Education of Special Operations Forces

This report discusses the need for an improved SOF language training and education program consisting of improved initial language and culture training, advanced regional studies and in-country immersion.

Reasons as Carriers of Culture: Dynamic vs. Dispositional Models of Cultural Influence on Decision Making

We argue that a way culture influences decisions is through the reasons that individuals recruit when required to explain their choices. Specifically, we propose that cultures endow individuals with different rules or principles that provide guidance for making decisions, and a need to provide reasons activates such cultural knowledge.

An Initial Framework for Enhancing Cultural Competency

In order that military personnel be better armed to access this vital information and are thus able to use it to enhance their probability of mission success, we need a science of cultural readiness. In this we need to identify and distill methods of measurement and assessment which allow us to capture and disseminate culturally-contingent information.

What’s Wrong With Cross-Cultural Comparisons of Subjective Likert Scales?: The Reference-Group Effect

Social comparison theory maintains that people think about themselves compared with similar others.  Those in one culture, then, compare themselves with different others and standards than do those in another culture, thus potentially confounding cross-cultural comparisons.