Keywords

ethnicity, similarity, trust, distrust, collaboration, performance

Abstract

Recent issues such as global economic crises, terrorism, and conservation efforts are making international collaboration a critical topic. While cultural diversity often brings with it new perspectives and innovative solutions, diversity in collaborative settings can also lead to misunderstandings and interaction problems. Therefore, there is a pressing need to understand the processes and influences of intercultural collaboration and how to manage the collaborative process to result in the most effective outcomes possible. In order to address this need, the current study examines the effect of ethnic diversity, perceived deep-level similarity, trust, and distrust on collaborative behavior and performance in decision-making dyads. Participants were assigned to either same-ethnicity or different-ethnicity dyads and worked together on a political simulation game in which they had to make complex decisions to solve societal problems and increase their popularity. The results of this study indicate that ethnically similar dyads reported higher levels of perceived deep-level similarity than ethnically dissimilar dyads, and that this perceived deep-level similarity served as the mediating mechanism between objective differences in ethnic diversity and trust and distrust, respectively. The findings also suggest that trust and distrust attitudes, when considered together as a multiple mediation model, mediate the positive relationship between perceived deep-level similarity and collaborative behavior. Finally, results show that collaborative behavior significantly predicts objective performance on the political decision-making simulation. The implications of this study for theory and practice are discussed along with the study limitations and several suggestions for future research.

Notes

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Graduation Date

2010

Advisor

Salas, Eduardo

Degree

Master of Science (M.S.)

College

College of Sciences

Department

Psychology

Degree Program

Industrial and Organizational Psychology

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0003102

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0003102

Language

English

Release Date

May 2010

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Masters Thesis (Open Access)

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