"Travel broadens the mind" goes the old adage¹（格言）, and potential employers often agree, valuing the open-mindedness and creativity fostered by such worldliness. But according to new Tel Aviv University research, not all international experiences are created equal. "Although living abroad does help to hone（用磨刀石磨） creative abilities, not all individuals who have lived abroad derive² an equal benefit from such experiences," explains Dr. Carmit Tadmor of TAU's Recanati School of Business, who conducted the study with Dr. Adam Galinsky of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and Dr. William Maddux of the international graduate business school and research institution INSEAD.

 

The researchers discovered that the simple act of living abroad was not enough to bolster³ creative and professional success. The potential benefits of extended international travel depend on the ability to simultaneously⁴ identify with both home and host cultures, which the researchers call "biculturalism（二元文化）." Identifying with two cultures simultaneously fosters a more complex thinking style that views things from multiple perspectives and forges conceptual links among them.

 

"Unlike patterns of cultural identification in which individuals endorse⁵（认可） only one of the two cultures, bicultural identification requires individuals to take into account and combine the perspectives of both old and new cultures," explains Dr. Tadmor. "Over time, this information processing capability⁶, or 'integrative complexity,' becomes a tool for making sense of the world and will help individuals perform better in both creative and professional domains⁷."

 

This study was recently published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology⁸.

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