I ended my last post with this quote from intercultural guru Milton Bennett: Intercultural sensitivity is not natural. It is not part of our primate past, nor has it characterized most of human history. Cross-cultural contact usually has been accompanied by bloodshed, oppression, or genocide. (Milton Bennett, “Towards Ethnorelativism: A developmental model of intercultural sensitivity.” [...]

I’m about a third of the way through a fascinating book that has a lot to teach us about why mindset mismatch between cultures is such a pervasive — and pernicious — fact of life. It’s called Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, and it’s by David M. Eagleman of Baylor College of Medicine. [...]

My favorite cultural research result of all time comes from psychology. The study was conducted by Li-Jun Ji, Kaiping Peng and Richard E. Nisbett (Culture, Control and Perception of Relationships in the Environment, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2000, vol. 78, No. 5, 943-955). For anyone who might have thought that culture is some [...]