Foreign Travel Experience and Cultural Intelligence: Does Country Choice Matter?

The purpose of this study was to examine the degree to which a specific time-based country experience outside of the subject's native regional cultural cluster, would be able to explain the subject's level of cultural intelligence. Using a sample of 143 subjects, the results suggest individuals who have identified the country within which they have spent the most total time to be a non-Anglo country had developed a higher level of cultural intelligence than demographically similar U.S. citizens in the sample who spent their most significant amount of time in an Anglo cluster country. In addition, it was found that those subjects within the Anglo culture cluster group who traveled internationally but spent the greater amount of time in a foreign Anglo culture country (i.e., non-USA), did not significantly differ in three of the four cultural dimensions from those who never traveled outside of the USA. These results suggest country choice can make a difference.