Does Experiencing Different Cultures Enhance Creativity?

 

You are probably aware of the benefits of incentive travel programs, such as relaxing and reenergizing employees and workers who have earned the right to acquire the incentive travel based on hard work, performance, and output. Recent research also indicates that additional benefits are provided when awarding employees with incentive travel as it relates to traveling to a destination with a different culture to one’s own. You see, when traveling to another country with a completely different culture than what you have at home, it actually enhances creativity in the workplace. A study now shows that creativity can be enhanced by experiencing cultures that are different from your own – this is according to a recent study provided by the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Additional studies concerning travel to different cultures and its relation to enhancing creativity involved students enrolled at institutions of higher learning, and compared those who had studied abroad and those who remained domestically during their enrollment period. These students were then tested on different aspects of creativity. Relative to a control group of students who had not experienced a different culture, participants in the different culture group provided way more evidence of creativity in various standard tests. The conclusive results suggested that multicultural learning can be a critical component to the adaptation process of different cultural influences, which, in turn, acts as a creativity catalyst.

Those conducting the research concluded that the key to the enhanced creativity was related to the students’ open-minded approach in adapting to the new culture.

Thus, the definitive conclusion to the study is that in a global world, where more people are given the opportunity to acquire multicultural experiences, more so now than ever before, students who choose to live abroad benefit from enhanced creativity.

The evidence provided by studies performed on students attending institutions of higher learning can be applied to those already in the workplace. Creativity is an obvious necessity to practically every business and type of industry, therefore, it should be deemed highly advantageous to send top performing employees on incentive travels, so not only can they rest, relax, and recuperate from the stress of work, they can also expand their minds and become more creative. If traveling to different locations with different cultures can truly expand the minds of workers, like these studies suggest, perhaps it would be prudent for business owners and company executives to offer incentive travel to even more employees, as the benefits to traveling to a new country has a multitude of advantages.

For more information regarding how incentive travel works, and the type of locales that are available, it would be wise to consult with a business known and well regarded in the industry – Incentive Travel Solutions.