Discussion Board
You will be required to participate in the eight discussion prompts posted on the Canvas Discussion Board throughout the course of the semester. These will relate to assigned course materials. Your responses should incorporate course content assigned during that week and should be approximately 250 words (total, for both prompts).
Please select and reply to two of the prompts below, additionally respond to two of your colleague’s comments:
1. At the customs gate of your country’s busiest international airport, two people are arriving as landed immigrants. As an immigrant support worker, you are tasked with determining how best to allocate resources in helping different immigrants. To do that, you must first determine how successfully each person will be at acculturating. Looking at the files for the landed immigrants, you see that Grace is coming from the United States, a country that is very similar to your country. On the other hand, Cecilia is coming from Mongolia, a country that is very dissimilar to your country. Based on the concept of cultural distance, draw the expected acculturation pattern (feelings toward host culture over time) for each person, assuming that both people do acculturate. For the purpose of this question, the heterogeneity/homogeneity of the host culture is irrelevant.
2. Mike and Steph are a married couple who will soon be moving to a new country. This new country has a culture in which the population is generally pretty low on extraversion. Mike is very high on extraversion; Steph is very low in extraversion. Based on the concept of cultural fit, draw the expected acculturation pattern (feelings toward host culture over time) associated with each person, assuming that both people do acculturate. For the purpose of this question, the heterogeneity/homogeneity of the host culture is irrelevant.
3. Your new research project is studying cultural differences between European-Canadians and Japanese-Canadians in terms of self-awareness. Your research partner decides to give all your participants an English questionnaire, thinking that the language of the questionnaire does not affect how the Japanese-Canadians would think. According to research about frame-switching, do you agree with your research partner’s perspective? Why or why not?
4. As a CEO of a multinational graphics design company, you are tasked with looking for the most creative applicant. Before you are three equally qualified applicants with one important difference regarding their travel history: Michael has lived for several years in each of two different countries; Stephanie has lived in one country and has only visited four others as a tourist (each visit was for one week); and Robert has only ever lived in one country. You give them a creative task by giving the following instructions: “Here is a brick. Write down as many uses for this brick as you can think of.” Higher numbers of responses mean greater creativity. Draw a graph to depict what results you would expect from each applicant.
5. Your father wants to encourage you to travel to as many places as possible and stay in each place as long as possible. It does not matter what cultures you live in—it will all benefit your creativity. Based on research on culture and creativity, do you agree with his assertions? Why or why not?
