CQ In Cultural Intelligence: Individual Interactions Across Cultures

According to Kagan and Gall (1998), intelligence is described as “a term referring to a variety of mental capabilities, including the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience.” Meanwhile, Schmidt and Hunter (2000) defined general intelligence as “the ability to grasp and reason correctly with abstractions (concepts) and solve problems”. Although there are many kinds of intelligence, practical intelligence, social intelligence, and especially emotional intelligence have received substantial attention.

According to Sternberg (2000), practical intelligence is the “ability that individuals use to find the best fit between themselves and the demands of the environment”.

The construct of CQ was introduced by Earley (2002), and Earley and Ang (2003) to explain differences in the effectiveness of individual interactions across cultures. CQ refers to “a form of situated intelligence where intelligently adaptive behaviors are culturally bound to the values and beliefs of a given society or culture” (Earley&Ang, 2003, p. 59) as it is defined as a person’s capability to adapt effectively to new cultural contexts. Meanwhile, Mosakowski et al. (2013) defined CQ as a set of values, attitudes, and behaviors that function together in a system and facilitate working across cultural divides. Early and Peterson (2004) stated that CQ ‘‘is the ability to engage in a set of behaviors that uses skills (i.e., language or interpersonal skills) and qualities (e.g., tolerance for ambiguity, flexibility) that are tuned appropriately to the culture-based values and attitudes of the people with whom one interacts”. These definitions of CQ are consistent with Schmidt and Hunter’s (2000) definition of general intelligence. Thus, following Schmidt and Hunter’s (2000) definition of general intelligence, Ang et al. (2007) concluded that CQ could be considered as a specific form of intelligence that concentrated on capabilities to grasp, reason, and behave in situations characterized by cultural

Or in other words, people need to have a sufficient level of knowledge to understand cross-cultural differences, a mindfulness to monitor and comprehend cross-cultural situations, and the ability to adapt their behavior in appropriate way in various cross-cultural situations. People who have these three traits have a high level of CQ (Thomas &Inkson, 2003). Developing cultural intelligence takes a considerable amount of time and this process is illustrated in Figure 3 as