The article describes studies showing how multicultural communities and cultural mixing foster the formation of a multicultural mind and a multicultural person.
Intercultural Encounters and Cultural Mixing
Inter-cultural connections and cultural mixing in multicultural countries, states, and residential areas are conducive to the development of multicultural minds and personalities. These can be multi-national, multi-racial, multi-ethnic, and multi-faith neighborhood communities. People of different cultural groups live together and interact on a regular basis. The more they see each other, the more they like each other, unless some aversive circumstances appear.
Modern urban and metropolitan neighborhoods and the cultural borderlands (communities living near national borders) are often culturally mixed and multicultural. In such residential and workplace areas, the rate of intercultural encounters and relationships is often high. People of different races, nationalities, ethnicities, and faiths meet each other, date, marry, and raise their multicultural children.
Multicultural Communities that Are Conducive to Polycultural Development
In some residential or workplace communities, several cultures are concurrently circulated in the social lives of people. These conditions tacitly shape the culture of polyculturalism. Such polyculturalism implies that “individuals take influence from multiple cultures” (Morris, Chiu, & Liu, 2015, p. 631). The people in those communities naturally develop their polycultural personalities.
The culturally mixed and multicultural circumstances of living and working allow people to become bicultural and even multicultural. They develop their cultural competencies. Their minds and personalities become open and capable of perceiving and acting beyond cultural borders. They see in each other a person, not a member of a cultural group (race, ethnicity, or nationality).
What Does the Metaphor “Melting Pot” Mean?
The metaphor of the “melting pot” is widely used in the USA in reference to America’s status as a country of immigrants where all cultures merge. Although it has not always been and is not everywhere perfectly this way, nevertheless, this idea has always been an American cultural value and inspiration. The metaphor of the “melting pot” means that the cultural differences in the United States melt and blend together, like metals being melted down to become an alloy.
The Western states of the USA, and especially Hawaii, are excellent examples of such multicultural societies with many multicultural minds. Multicultural encounters in the lives of people living there are common. They do not pay much attention to the social and cultural attributes of others around them. They treat each other just as humans with their individual differences and personalities, rather than as members of social and cultural groups.
Who Are the Multicultural Minds?
Multicultural people are those who have good knowledge and understanding of two or more cultures. They have internalized two or more cultures in their self-awareness. These people identify themselves with two or more cultures. They can’t tell if they’re Americans, Mexicans, or Japanese. These people are somebody else. They are Mexican-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Arab-Americans, Chinese-Canadians, or Turkish-Germans. They have an identity mix of two or more cultures.
Due to the multicultural construction of their minds, such individuals are capable of functioning effectively in more than one culture. They know more than one language and develop multicultural competencies. They can think in ways that reflect multiple cultures.
There is strong evidence that being bicultural and having bicultural integration can have positive consequences for personal development. Multicultural individuals often develop multifaceted and complex emotions, cognitions, and personalities (Benet-Martinez & Haritatos, 2005; Hong, Morris, Chiu, & Benet-Martinez, 2000; Phinney & Alipuria, 2006; see for review, Karandashev, 2021).
Characteristics of a Multicultural Person
A multicultural personality is a set of attitudes, traits, and behaviors that predispose a person to adapt well to culturally different contexts, communicate effectively, and act adequately. Multicultural individuals are secure in their multiple identities, such as gender, race, ethnicity, and religion. They are intellectually curious regarding novel cultures, cognitively flexible, emotionally stable, culturally empathic, committed to social justice, and feel centered about spirituality. The traits of a multicultural personality are open-mindedness, social initiative, flexibility, emotional stability, and cultural empathy (Ponterotto et al., 2011; Van Der Zee & Van Oudenhoven, 2000).
Being open-minded
Being open-minded means having open and unprejudiced attitudes toward different cultural groups. Multicultural people are open-minded regarding cultural diversity. They do not care much about nationality, race, ethnicity, or religious faith. These people care more about what kind of person another individual is, what qualities she or he has, and what he or she is capable of. They do not have or, at least, suppress their explicit cultural stereotypes and prejudices. And anyway, they do not exhibit them.
Social initiative
Social initiative is a person’s trait expressed in the tendency to take initiative and approach social situations actively. Due to this disposition, multicultural people interact easily with people of other cultures. They are capable of making friends with other cultural groups.
Flexibility
Flexibility is a person’s ability to adjust their behavior to new and unknown situations. Such a person can change their communication and behavior according to a new cultural context. Multicultural individuals perceive new and unknown situations with flexibility. They consider them challenges rather than threats. They change their behavioral patterns in response to unexpected and limited situations that happen in another cultural context.
Emotional stability
Emotional stability is a personality trait of multicultural individuals that allows them to remain calm in stressful situations. Such emotional states are possible when a person encounters culturally different contexts and behaviors, when things do not go the way they do in one’s own culture. Because of this, a person may experience tension, social detachment, fear, frustration, and interpersonal conflict. Therefore, the disposition of emotional stability is useful for interaction with people from other cultures. It helps to cope well with such feelings of emotional discomfort and distress.
Cultural empathy
Cultural empathy is a personality trait of multicultural people that gives them the ability to emotionally understand and relate to the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors of others whose cultural background is different from their own. Multicultural individuals function effectively with people of other cultures because they have an adequate understanding of those cultures. Cultural empathy is an important capacity that allows us to “read” other cultures.