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BECOMING INTERCULTURALLY COMPETENT Final Draft 1/8/04: Bennett, M. J. (2004). Becoming interculturally competent. In J.S. Wurzel (Ed.) Toward multiculturalism: A reader in multicultural education. Newton, MA: Intercultural Resource Corporation.

Milton J. Bennett, Ph.D.

Executive Director, The Intercultural Development Research Institute

Director, The Intercultural Communication Institute

Portland, Oregon USA www.intercultural.org

Discovering the Sequence of Development

After years of observing all kinds of people dealing (or not) with cross-cultural

situations, I decided to try to make sense of what was happening to them. I wanted to

explain why some people seemed to get a lot better at communicating across cultural

boundaries while other people didn’t improve at all, and I thought that if I were able to

explain why this happened, trainers and educators could do a better job of preparing

people for cross-cultural encounters.

The result of this work was the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity

(DMIS) (M. Bennett, 1986, 1993; J. Bennett & M. Bennett, 2003, 2004). As people

became more interculturally competent it seemed that there was a major change in the

quality of their experience, which I called the move from ethnocentrism to

ethnorelativism. I used the term “ethnocentrism” to refer to the experience of one’s own

culture as “central to reality.” By this I mean that the beliefs and behaviors that people

receive in their primary socialization are unquestioned; they are experienced as “just the

way things are.” I coined the term “ethnorelativism” to mean the opposite of

ethnocentrism–the experience of one’s own beliefs and behaviors as just one organization

of reality among many viable possibilities.

There also seemed be six distinct kinds of experience spread across the continuum

from ethnocentrism and ethnorelativism. The most ethnocentric experience was named

the Denial of cultural difference, followed by the Defense against cultural difference. In

the middle of the continuum the Minimization of cultural difference seemed to be a

transition from the more virulent forms of ethnocentrism to a more benign form, leading

to the ethnorelative Acceptance of cultural difference. At the heart of ethnorelativism was

Adaptation to cultural difference, followed in some cases by the Integration of cultural

difference into identity. The sequence of these experiences became the “stages” of the

DMIS.

In general, the more ethnocentric orientations can be seen as ways of avoiding

cultural difference, either by denying its existence, by raising defenses against it, or by

minimizing its importance. The more ethnorelative worldviews are ways of seeking

cultural difference, either by accepting its importance, by adapting perspective to take it

into account, or by integrating the whole concept into a definition of identity.

The Stages of Development

Figure 1

Denial Defense Minimization Acceptance Adaptation Integration

ETHNOCENTRISM ETHNORELATIVISM

The Ethnocentric Stages of Development

As illustrated in Figure 1, the first three DMIS orientations are conceptualized as

more ethnocentric, meaning that the tenants of one’s own culture are experienced as

central to reality in some way. The default condition of a typical, monocultural primary

socialization is Denial of cultural difference. This is the state in which one’s own culture

is experienced as the only real one–that is, that the patterns of beliefs, behaviors, and

values that constitute a culture are experienced as unquestionably real or true. Other

cultures are either not noticed at all, or they are construed in rather vague ways. As a

result, cultural difference is either not experienced at all, or it is experienced as associated

with a kind of undifferentiated other such as “foreigner” or “immigrant.” In extreme

cases, the people of one’s own culture may be perceived to be the only real “humans” and

other people viewed as simpler forms in the environment to be tolerated, exploited, or

eliminated as necessary.

People with a Denial worldview generally are disinterested in cultural difference

even when it is brought to their attention, although they may act aggressively to avoid or

eliminate a difference if it impinges on them. For example, many dominant-culture U.S.

Americans were not aware of the large numbers of Latinos who shared their communities

until the last census figures were released. In some cases in which I have consulted, a

sudden increase in the Latino population has been met with angry bewilderment from

Anglos, who ask, “How could such a thing have happened to our community?” And of

course, U.S. Americans are familiar with the phenomenon of “white flight”–the

avoidance reaction of dominant-culture European Americans to the introduction of

African Americans or other people of color to previously all-white neighborhoods.

I would like to stress that Denial is not particularly American. In my observation,

a Denial worldview in Germans, Italians, or Japanese yields a similar reaction to

immigrants. Nor is this worldview restricted to dominant-culture folks in American or

other societies. Even if they are forced by economic necessity into interaction with the

dominant culture, people of non-dominant groups with a Denial worldview remain unable

to recognize the cultural dimension of the interaction. For instance, as many African

Americans as European Americans seem to be surprised at cultural differences between

these groups in communication style and nonverbal behavior. This is because the Denial

worldview in both groups only allows for observations within the familiar categories of

“race” and associated constructs of deserved or undeserved inequities in political and

economic power. The tendency to use familiar but often simplistic or fallacious

categories of race and ethnicity seems also to characterize the Denial form of

dominant/non-dominant interaction in other societies.

Another way a Denial worldview shows up is as an inability (and disinterest) in

differentiating national cultures. For instance, U.S. Americans at this stage often cannot

tell the difference between Chinese and Japanese cultures, or to distinguish among Gulf

State Arabs (e.g. Kuwaitis), Fertile Crescent Arabs (e.g. Syrians), and Persians (in Iran).

While educated Europeans or Asians are generally more knowledgeable than U.S.

Americans about geopolitical issues, at Denial they seem just as likely to neglect these

kinds of cultural differences. For example, Asian sojourners seem to be at least as

inclined as Americans to maintain the exclusive company of their compatriots, and many

Europeans seem oblivious to the cultural factors that frequently underlie political

differences.

The main issue to be resolved at Denial is the tendency to avoid noticing or

confronting cultural difference. People here need to attend to the simple existence of

other cultures, both globally and domestically. Those who are facilitating this initial

recognition (teachers, trainers, friends) need to understand that Denial is not a refusal to

“confront the facts.” It is instead an inability to make the perceptual distinctions that

allow cultural facts to be recognized. When facilitators fail to understand the experience

of Denial, they are likely to present cultural information in too-complex ways and to

become impatient at the aggressive ignorance often displayed at this stage. The resolution

of Denial issues allows the creation of simple categories for particular cultures, which

sets up the conditions for the experience of Defense.

Defense against cultural difference is the state in which one’s own culture (or an

adopted culture) is experienced as the only viable one –the most “evolved” form of

civilization, or at least the only good way to live. People at Defense have become more

adept at discriminating difference, so they experience cultural differences as more real

than do people at Denial. But the Defense worldview structure is not sufficiently complex

to generate an equally “human” experience of the other. While the cultural differences

experienced by people with a Defense perspective are stereotypical, they nevertheless

seem real by comparison to the Denial condition. Consequently, people at Defense are

more openly threatened by cultural differences than are people in a state of Denial. The

world is organized into “us and them,” where one’s own culture is superior and other

cultures are inferior.

People of dominant cultures are likely to experience Defense as an attack on their

values (often perceived by others as privileges). They may complain that immigrants or

other minorities are “taking our jobs.” They are likely to have many negative stereotypes

of “them,” including a full stock of jokes emphasizing the assumed failings of other

cultures. In its benign form, Defense may be expressed by “helping” non-dominant group

members to succeed by bringing them into the assumedly superior dominant culture. The

politically correct descriptions of some mentoring programs in corporations may mask

this Defense orientation. In its more virulent form, Defense is likely to be expressed by

membership in groups that exclude cultural difference or in outright attacks people of

other cultures. In the U.S., the Ku Klux Klan and its imitators are obvious examples of

the latter.

People of non-dominant cultures are more likely to experience Defense as

discovering and solidifying a separate cultural identity in contrast to the dominant group

(cf., Banks, 1988; Parham, 1989). Cross (1995) argues that such a stage is necessary in

the development of non-dominant ethnic identity to counteract the efforts of the dominant

group to impose their culture on all members of a society. Like that of dominant group

members, this Defense experience is accompanied by positive stereotyping of one’s own

culture and negative stereotyping of other cultures.

In the international domain, Defense is clearly the predominant orientation of

“nation-building.” Like mentoring, such efforts are likely implicit (and sometimes even

explicit) attempts to export the builders’ assumedly superior cultural values. The

polarized worldview is also evident in the statement “you’re either with us or against us,”

uttered by a variety of world leaders. Other incidents of a culturally polarized worldview

are evident in the complaints of travelers about unfamiliar food and similar failures of

other cultures to not be “like us.”

A variation on Defense is Reversal, where an adopted culture is experienced as

superior to the culture of one’s primary socialization (“going native,” or “passing”).

Reversal is like Defense in that it maintains a polarized, “us and them” worldview. It is

unlike Defense in that it does not maintain the other culture as a threat. Reversal is

common among long-term sojourners such as Peace Corps Volunteers, missionaries,

corporate expatriates, and exchange students. Reversal may masquerade as cultural

sensitivity, since it provides a positive experience of a different culture along with

seemingly analytical criticisms of one’s own culture. However, the positive experience of

the other culture is at an unsophisticated stereotypical level, and the criticism of one’s

own culture is usually an internalization of others’ negative stereotypes.

Reversal in domestic multicultural relations is an interesting and complicated

phenomenon. It appears that some people of the dominant culture take on the cause of

non-dominant cultures in stereotypical ways. For instance, in the U.S. a white person of

European American ethnicity may become a rabid proponent of African American issues.

While it is not necessarily ethnocentric for someone to identify with the plight of

historically oppressed people, in this hypothetical case the European American person

sees all black people as saintly martyrs and all white people (including herself before the

conversion) as brutal oppressors. By changing the poles of the polarized worldview, this

person has not changed here essentially unsophisticated experience of cultural difference.

The resolution of Defense issues involves recognizing the common humanity of

people of other cultures. Techniques such as “ropes courses” or other experiences that

create mutual dependence independent of gender or race can be effective for this purpose.

Facilitators who try to correct the stereotypes of people in Defense are likely to fall prey

to the polarized worldview themselves, becoming yet another example of the evils of

multiculturalism or globalization. The need here is to establish commonality, not to

introduce more sophisticated understanding of difference. When this resolution is

accomplished, the stage is set for a move into Minimization.

Minimization of cultural difference is the state in which elements of one’s own

cultural worldview are experienced as universal. The threat associated with cultural

differences experienced in Defense is neutralized by subsuming the differences into

familiar categories. For instance, cultural differences may be subordinated to the

overwhelming similarity of people’s biological nature (physical universalism). The

experience of similarity of natural physical processes may then be generalized to other

assumedly natural phenomena such as needs and motivations. The assumption that

typologies (personality, learning style, etc) apply equally well in all cultures is an

example of Minimization.

The experience of similarity might also be experienced in the assumed cross-

cultural applicability of certain religious, economic, political, or philosophical concepts

(transcendent universalism). For instance, the religious assumptions that everyone in the

world is a child of God or that everyone has karma are examples of Minimization. Note

that it is not ethnocentric to have a religious belief; however, it is ethnocentric to assume

that people in other cultures either do or would if they could share your belief. Similarly,

the assumption that people of all cultures would like to live in a democratic society (or in

a benevolent dictatorship) if they only could is ethnocentric by this definition. Because

these “universal absolutes” obscure deep cultural differences, other cultures may be

trivialized or romanticized at Minimization.

People at Minimization expect similarities, and they may become insistent about

correcting others’ behavior to match their expectations. Many exchange students have

reported to me that their host families, despite their kindness, generosity, and sincere

curiosity about different customs, do not really want their students to have different basic

values from themselves. I have observed that many host families are at Minimization.

The families are motivated by sharing the host country’s way of life with the student, on

the assumption that of course the student will appreciate that way of life once he or she

sees what it is. If the student is insufficiently appreciative, it threatens the Minimization

assumption that all everyone really wants to be “like us.” This operation of Minimization

is far more dangerous, of course, when the appreciation of our way of life is being

promoted by armed “nation-builders.”

Particularly for people of dominant cultures, Minimization tends to mask

recognition of their own culture (ethnicity) and the institutional privilege it affords its

members. Because people at this stage no longer experience others in a polarized way,

they tend to overestimate their racial and ethnic appreciation. While they may be

relatively tolerant, people at Minimization are unable to appreciate other cultures because

they cannot see their own culture clearly. If, for instance, I cannot see that my

communication style is a cultural pattern, I think that everyone does (or would if they

could) use the same style. Consequently, I judge the failure to use my style as a lack of

social skill or as a choice to be “alternative.” Either of these judgments misses the point

that other people may be naturally using a culturally different style.

For people of non-dominant cultures, a Minimization worldview involves the

acceptance of something like the “melting pot” idea. It generally is a position that is

perceived and perhaps intended as a political statement. In any case, the experience is one

that minimizes the cultural differences between the dominant and non-dominant groups

in such a way that the same universal standard (e.g. university entrance requirements) can

be applied to all the groups without bias. When the result of such an application of

standard yields group differences, the explanation by both dominant and non-dominant

Minimizers is that the groups actually differ in their intelligence, skills, or preparation.

The idea that all standards are necessarily constrained by cultural context does not occur

in Minimization.

Current research with the Intercultural Development Inventory™, an instrument

that assesses the experience of cultural difference in terms of the DMIS, has shown that

Minimization is a kind of transition state between the constellation of Denial/Defense and

the constellation Acceptance/Adaptation (Hammer, Bennett, & Wiseman, 2003). The

experience of Minimization is theoretically ethnocentric in that it takes one’s own

cultural patterns as central to an assumed universal reality. In other words, the experience

is that all people are essentially similar in ways that explainable by my own cultural

beliefs. However, the experience also includes the ability to perceive some cultural

differences in largely non-stereotypical ways and to recognize the essential humanness of

others.

The missing piece in Minimization, and the issue that needs to be resolved to

move into ethnorelativism, is the recognition of your own culture (cultural self-

awareness). In more general terms, this is the ability to experience culture as a context.

Only when you see that all your beliefs, behaviors, and values are at least influenced by

the particular context in which you were socialized can you fully imagine alternatives to

them. Facilitators at this stage need to stress the development of cultural self-awareness

in contrast to other cultures before they move into too much detail about the other

cultures. This is the time to introduce the basic culture-general frameworks of

intercultural communication (e.g. Bennett, 1998b).

The Ethnorelative Stages of Development

The second three DMIS orientations are defined as more ethnorelative, meaning

that one’s own culture is experienced in the context of other cultures. Acceptance of

cultural difference is the state in which one’s own culture is experienced as just one of a

number of equally complex worldviews. By discriminating differences among cultures

(including one’s own), and by constructing a kind of self-reflexive perspective, people

with this worldview are able to experience others as different from themselves, but

equally human. People at Acceptance can construct culture-general categories that allow

them to generate a range of relevant cultural contrasts among many cultures. Thus, they

are not necessarily experts in one or more cultures (although they might also be that);

rather, they are adept at identifying how cultural differences in general operate in a wide

range of human interactions.

In this last regard, is important to remember that the DMIS is not a model of

knowledge, attitude, or skills. So, the fact that you are knowledgeable about a culture

may or may not be associated with the ethnorelative experience of Acceptance. I know a

lot of people who are knowledgeable about Japanese hospitality rituals or German status

relationships who do not seem to have any general feeling for those cultures. I suspect it

is because, despite their specific knowledge, these people are not able to experience the

cultural worldviews of which those behaviors are a part. I would hypothesize that people

need to have a “critical mass” of information about another culture in order to apprehend

the worldview, and that even that amount of information is useless unless basic

Minimization issues have been resolved first; that is, that they are “ready” to hear the

information.

People may have some of the linguistic or behavioral skills of another culture

without any feeling for how to use those skills in culturally appropriate ways – a

condition that I have coined being a “fluent fool.” (Bennett, 1997). Perhaps people

acquired the abilities from short sojourns or training programs. In any case, like

knowledge, the skills are not very useful unless they are accompanied by an

Acceptance/Adaptation worldview.

Most commonly, people might have positive attitudes toward another culture

without having the ability to experience the other culture with much depth. I have

observed this to be typical of efforts to appear cosmopolitan or politically correct.

Acceptance does not mean agreement. It is naïve to think that intercultural sensitivity and

competence is always associated with liking other cultures or agreeing with their values

or ways of life. In fact, the uncritical agreement with other cultures is more characteristic

of the ethnocentric condition of Reversal, particularly if it is accompanied by a critical

view of your own culture. Some cultural differences may be judged negatively –but the

judgment is not ethnocentric unless it is associated with simplification, or withholding

equal humanity.

This last point brings up the major issue to be resolved at Acceptance: “value

relativity.” To accept the relativity of values to cultural context (and thus to attain the

potential to experience the world as organized by different values), you need to figure out

how to maintain ethical commitment in the face of such relativity (cf. Perry, 1970). This

is a difficult matter, as illustrated in the following example. A student recently confided

in me her concern that she was being ethnocentric in her support of the 2003 U.S.

invasion of Iraq. I replied that it was possible that she was, but it was also possible that

she was making an ethnorelative judgment. The test is whether she was according full

humanity to the Iraqis that she felt should be forcibly dealt with. So I asked “What is

good about Sadam Hussein from some Iraqi perspectives?” She said, “nothing is good–he

is a monster and all Iraqis think so except some evil people who are profiting from his

cruelty.” Leaving aside the history of U.S. profits from Iraq, I replied that her concerns

were justified–she was being ethnocentric. She was imposing her values on others by

making the Minimization assumption that her values were the most real. Further, she was

denying equal humanity to Sadam Hussein and Iraqis who supported him by labeling

them “monsters” and “evil.”

A more ethnorelative approach to the Iraq situation would have been to recognize

that Sadam Hussein is a complex human being whose behavior, while “good” in some

Arab contexts because it stands up to the Americans or expresses Arab pride, is

nevertheless “bad” in the context of the current world consensus about the use of violence

and intimidation in domestic governance. The question then is are you committed to

stopping the bad behavior? Is Sadam’s behavior sufficiently different from other world

leaders’ to allow a non-hypocritical intervention? Is the need for intervention important

enough to outweigh the principle of national sovereignty? Are the consequences of

interference better than the consequences of not interfering? The answer to all these

questions could be “yes.” I believe that had my student considered these and other such

questions, and had she then accorded Hussein and other Iraqis a complexity of motive

similar to her own, then she could have supported the U.S. invasion in an ethnorelative

way. Of course, a different person might make the same considerations and conclude that

the invasion was not supportable. But both positions would be ethnorelative.

Resolution of the issue of value relativity and commitment allows you to take the

perspective of another culture without losing your own perspective. This is the crux of

the next stage.

Adaptation to cultural difference is the state in which the experience of another

culture yields perception and behavior appropriate to that culture. One’s worldview is

expanded to include relevant constructs from other cultural worldviews. People at

Adaptation can engage in empathy –the ability to take perspective or shift frame of

reference vis-à-vis other cultures. This shift is not merely cognitive; it is a change in the

organization of lived experience, which necessarily includes affect and behavior. Thus,

people at Adaptation are able to express their alternative cultural experience in culturally

appropriate feelings and behavior. If the process of frame shifting is deepened and

habitualized, it becomes the basis of biculturality or multiculturality.

Adaptation is not assimilation. The term “assimilation” is understood by many

immigrants and people of non-dominant groups to refer to something like the “melting

pot.” This idea of assimilation is that you should give up who you were before and take

on the worldview of your host, or dominant culture. The concept of adaptation offers an

alternative to assimilation. Adaptation involves the extension of your repertoire of beliefs

and behavior, not a substitution of one set for another. So you don’t need to lose your

primary cultural identity to operate effectively in a different cultural context.

In domestic multicultural contexts, adaptation leads to mutual adjustment. In other

words, people of both dominant and non-dominant groups are equally inclined to adapt

their behavior to one another. Of course, the dominant group has the power to demand

that only the non-dominant group adjust. But dominant-culture people who experience

cultural difference in this more ethnorelative way are less likely to invoke that power.

Instead, they are curious about cultural difference and actually eager to experience other

cultures. For those reasons, never mind fairness, they seek the other cultural perspectives

represented in groups and attempt to learn how to act in ways that are to some extent

appropriate in those cultural contexts. They may also be motivated by fairness, but unlike

some others who may sincerely believe in equity while lacking the ability to act

equitably, these people have the worldview structure to support the kind of mutual

cultural adaptation that actually implements equity.

Adaptation as defined here has long been the goal of intercultural communication

training for international sojourners. Programs for exchange students, development

workers, expatriates, and others have stressed the acquisition of culturally appropriate

behavior. As we have seen, however, such behavior may only be “foolish” in its

implementation without an appropriate worldview structure to support it. The DMIS

suggests that a lot of attention should go to preparing trainees to experience another

culture before trying to train any particular behavior.

The major issue to be resolved at Adaptation is that of “authenticity.” How is it

possible to perceive and behave in culturally different ways and still “be yourself?” The

answer seems to lie in defining yourself more broadly – in expanding the repertoire of

perception and behavior that is “yours.” So, you might be to some extent German critical,

Japanese indirect, Italian ironic and African American personal, in addition to your

primary European American male explicit style. Insofar as each of these behaviors

emerged from a feeling for the various cultures, they would all be authentically you

(Bennett & Castiglioni, 2004).

The resolution of authenticity at Adaptation may establish the condition of the last

stage of development. However, movement to the last stage does not represent a

significant improvement in intercultural competence. Rather, it describes a fundamental

shift in one’s definition of cultural identity.

Integration of cultural difference is the state in which one’s experience of self is

expanded to include the movement in and out of different cultural worldviews. Here,

people are dealing with issues related to their own “cultural marginality”; they construe

their identities at the margins of two or more cultures and central to none. As suggested

by J. Bennett (1993), cultural marginality may have two forms: an encapsulated form,

where the separation from culture is experienced as alienation; and a constructive form,

in which movements in and out of cultures are a necessary and positive part of one’s

identity. Integration is not necessarily better than Adaptation in situations demanding

intercultural competence, but it is descriptive of a growing number of people, including

many members of non-dominant cultures, long-term expatriates, and “global nomads.”

A certain amount of encapsulated marginality seems to accompany the

ethnorelative experience of non-dominant group members, who may find themselves

“caught” between their own minority ethnic group and the majority ethnic group. Their

ethnic compatriots may perceive them as "selling out" to the dominant group, even

though they are not fully accepted by the dominant group. Also, exchange students who

have advanced well beyond Reversal or Defense may again experience debilitating self-

criticism or judgmentalism of others as their cultural identification vacillates. While

people in this condition are quite interculturally sensitive, they lack the ability to

implement that sensitivity in consistently competent ways.

Constructive marginality represents the resolution of the identity issue of

Integration. Here people are able to experience themselves as multicultural beings who

are constantly choosing the most appropriate cultural context for their behavior. This

living on the edge of cultures may occasionally be stressful and alienating, but it is more

often exhilarating and fulfilling. Because they so easily shift cultural perspectives,

constructive marginals are likely to take the role of cultural bridge-builders in

intercultural situations. They can do this without “losing themselves” because they self-

reflexively define their identities in terms of perspective-shifting and bridge-building.

While it is important to recognize the experience of a multicultural identity, there

is no implication here that this last stage is preferable to the previous one in terms of

intercultural adaptation. Actually, it might be better if we kept our primary cultural

identities and simply adapted to other cultures. If everyone became culturally marginal,

what would they be marginal to?

To extend this last point, I would also like to disavow any idea that more

interculturally sensitive people are generally better people. To say so would imply that

there was one universally good kind of person and that this particular model just

happened to describe that goodness. On the contrary, this model describes what it means

to be good at intercultural relations. All we can say about more ethnorelative people is

that they are better at experiencing cultural differences than are more ethnocentric people,

and therefore they are probably better at adapting to those differences in interaction.

Perhaps you believe, as I do, that the world would be a better place if more people were

ethnorelative. I hope that we will continue to act on this commitment, and that we will

do so with intercultural sensitivity.

Explaining Intercultural Development

The Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS) was developed

with a grounded theory approach (e.g., Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Strauss & Corbin, 1990),

which involves using theoretical concepts to explain a pattern that emerges from

systematic observations. The pattern that emerged from my observations is described

above as the “stages” of the DMIS. Below is a summary of the theoretical concepts I used

to explain why the pattern occurred and which inform the description of each stage.

The most basic theoretical concept in the DMIS is that experience (including

cross-cultural experience) is constructed. This is the central tenant of cognitive

constructivism (e.g. Brown, 1972; Kelly, 1963; von Foester, 1984), which holds that we

do not perceive events directly. Rather, our experience or events is built up through

templates, or sets of categories, that we use to organize our perception of phenomena. So,

for instance, an American person who happens to be in the vicinity of a Japanese event

may not have anything like a Japanese experience of that event, if he or she does not have

any Japanese categories with which to construct that experience. Instead, he or she will

have an ethnocentric experience, meaning that one’s own culture is the only basis for

perceiving events.

A related assumption made in the DMIS is that people can be more or less

“sensitive” to cultural difference. This idea is based on the constructivist idea of cognitive

complexity (e.g. Delia, Crockett, & Gonyea, 1970; Goertzel, n.d.; Loevinger, 1970,

Loevinger & Wessler, 1979). More cognitively complex individuals are able to organize

their perceptions of events into more differentiated categories. Or, stated differently,

more cognitively complex people can make finer discriminations among phenomena in a

particular domain. For instance, a wine connoisseur may be able to taste the difference

between two vintages of the same variety of red wine, while a lay drinker may only be

able to differentiate red wine from white wine. Similarly, people who are more

interculturally sensitive have a more developed set of categories for making

discriminations among cultures. So a sophisticated sojourner can observe subtle

differences in nonverbal behavior or communication style, while a naïve traveler may

only notice differences in the money, the food, or the toilets. As categories for cultural

difference become more complex and sophisticated, perception becomes more

interculturally sensitive.

How is the complexity of perception described by intercultural sensitivity related

to the effective or successful behavior associated with intercultural competence? Studies

in communicative constructivism (e.g. Applegate & Sypher, 1988; Delia 1987) show that

people who are more cognitively complex are also more able to be “person-centered” and

“perspective-taking” in their communication (although they may not always exercise the

ability). These qualities are associated with more successful interpersonal

communication. More successful intercultural communication similarly involves being

able to see a culturally different person as equally complex to one’s self (person-

centered) and being able to take a culturally different perspective. Thus, greater

intercultural sensitivity creates the potential for increased intercultural competence.

One more dimension of constructivism that is important to the model can be

called experiential constructivism. This dimension includes ideas from the anthropologist

Gregory Bateson (1972, 1979), the biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela

(e.g. Maturana & Varela, 1987; Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1991), the psycholinguist

Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf (1956) and more recently George Lakoff and

Mark Johnson (Lakoff, 1987; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, 1999), the neuroanatomist

Antonio Damasio (1999), the communicologist Dean Barnlund (1998), and my own work

(Bennett, 1977; Bennett, 1998a; Bennett & Castiglioni, 2004). All these theoreticians

refer to how we “co-create” our experience through our corporal, linguistic, and

emotional interaction with natural and human (including conceptual) environments. This

assumption allows the DMIS to model a mechanism of intercultural adaptation.

The crux of intercultural adaptation is the ability to have an alternative cultural

experience. Individuals who have received largely monocultural socialization normally

have access only to their own cultural worldview, so they are unable to experience the

difference between their own perception and that of people who are culturally different.

The development of intercultural sensitivity describes how we gain the ability to create

an alternative experience that more or less matches that of people in another culture.

People who can do this have an intercultural worldview.

The DMIS supposes that contact with cultural difference generates pressure for

change in one’s worldview. This happens because the “default” ethnocentric worldview,

while sufficient for managing relations within one’s own culture, is inadequate to the task

of developing and maintaining social relations across cultural boundaries. Assuming that

there is a need for such cross-cultural relations (as typically is the case, for instance, for

long-term international sojourners, members of multinational teams, and for educators,

healthcare workers, and other service providers in multicultural communities), then there

is pressure to develop greater competence in intercultural matters. This pressure may be

ignored, so change as a function of contact is not inevitable (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2000).

Each change in worldview structure generates new and more sophisticated issues

to be resolved in intercultural encounters. The resolution of the relevant issues activates

the emergence of the next orientation. Since issues may not be totally resolved,

movement may be incomplete and one’s experience of difference diffused across more

than one worldview. However, movement through the orientations is posited to be

unidirectional, with only occasional “retreats.” In other words, people do not generally

regress from more complex to less complex experiences of cultural difference.

Each orientation of the DMIS is indicative of a particular worldview structure,

with certain kinds of cognition, affect, and behavior vis-à-vis cultural difference typically

associated with each configuration. It is important to note that the DMIS is not

predominately a description of cognition, affect, or behavior. Rather, it is a model of how

the assumed underlying worldview moves from an ethnocentric to a more ethnorelative

condition, thus generating greater intercultural sensitivity and the potential for more

intercultural competence. Changes in knowledge, attitudes, or skills are taken as

manifestations of changes in the underlying worldview. This distinction is important

because developmental interventions such as training programs are appropriately aimed

at the worldview, not at any particular knowledge (such as in area studies programs), any

particular attitude change (such as in prejudice reduction programs) or any particular skill

acquisition (such as role-plays or cultural assimilators).

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