Multicultural personality, cultural intelligence, everyday multicultural competence, and their relation to positive psychology factors
Abstract
Within the framework of positive psychology, the constructs of the multicultural personality, cultural intelligence, and multicultural competence are sometimes used interchangeably, however their exact relationship is unclear. By identifying these connections, researchers can better define the constructs, as well as assess how they can predict adjustment in life beyond broader measures of personality. The factor structures of all three constructs were examined as well as their predictability of positive psychological factors, including self-esteem, resilience, work hope, work engagement, and academic achievement, in both adolescent high school and college-aged students. By examining the reliability and validity of these constructs across two developmental spectrums researchers can observe personality changes that may occur between adolescence and adulthood as well as explore the research constructs from a developmental perspective. Results suggested that the multicultural factors predict positive psychological factors, with the exception of academic achievement. Additionally, the measures across the three scales were related, however could not form a unified scale; rather, a two-factor scale surfaced as the best-fit model. Assessing the psychometric properties between high school and college students, the scale reliabilities held up and both samples performed similarly, with college students trending higher and having statistically significantly higher means when it comes to self-esteem, resilience, and work engagement. Implications for future research are discussed.
Subject Area
Social psychology|Multicultural Education|Personality psychology|Cognitive psychology
Recommended Citation
Rossbach, Kathryn Helen, "Multicultural personality, cultural intelligence, everyday multicultural competence, and their relation to positive psychology factors" (2015). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI3713958.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI3713958
