I’ve written numerous times about the advantages of migration, both to host communities and to the migrants themselves.  It goes without saying, of course, that the key to success is settling in as quickly as possible, and it’s equally true that some people are more successful at doing this than others.

Research from Columbia Business School explores what it is that makes people successful in their adaptation to a new culture.  Doing so requires people to internalize not just the official rules but also the unwritten rules of that culture.  The researchers explain that some people are better able to pick up these norms than others, which expedites their cultural fluency.

Cultural fluency

The researchers identify a number of key aspects of learning any new culture, including implicit-cognition aptitude, which they refer to as our ability to use our intuition rather than our rational mind in any situation.  If we’re able to develop a high aptitude in this skill, then we’re generally quicker at mastering unfamiliar cultural norms than our peers with high explicit-cognition aptitude, which is analogous to IQ.

Those people with high IQs tend to rely on conscious reasoning to learn, whereas those with higher implicit aptitude tend to spot patterns automatically and without consciously trying to.  This results in them being better able to learn the interaction patterns evident in the unfamiliar culture through reinforcement.

“Cross-cultural researchers and trainers traditionally assumed that people first learn norms as verbal rules—that conscious competence comes before unconscious competence. But the problem of learning complex rules of conduct from experiential feedback lends itself better to the implicit-cognition system than the explicit-cognition system,” the researchers explain. “High IQ expatriates should take a cue from those with high implicit attitudes if they want to better familiarize themselves with their home.”

The study found that we tend to learn interpersonal norms primarily through trial and error, which is where higher implicit aptitude really comes in useful.  What’s more, when such experiential learning wasn’t really an option, higher IQ didn’t really help people to better learn from their experiences.

“Learning the unwritten rules of another culture can feel overwhelming for some,” the authors conclude. “But through exposing yourself repeatedly to a situation and seeking feedback from locals about your conduct, you can learn through trial-and-error how to understand and navigate diverse communities and their rich, individual cultures.”