Hyisung C. Hwang

Assessing Cross-Cultural Competence: A Review of Available Tests

Recent years have witnessed the emergence of a number of tests that measure cross-cultural competence; yet to date there is no review of their validity and reliability. This article addresses this gap in the literature. We discuss issues associated with evaluation of the content, construct, and ecological validity of such tests, and review the evidence for 10 tests. We evaluate that evidence, draw conclusions about the tests with the best evidence for ecological validity, and provide recommendations for future research in this area.

Emotional Language and Political Aggression

We examined how leaders’ expressions of emotion and emotion-related appraisals in their speeches were associated with subsequent political aggression by their groups. We obtained records of speeches anchored to identified acts of aggression and selected for analysis those speeches that were available at three points in time prior to those acts. We then coded the speeches for their expressions of emotion and emotion-related appraisals and tested the differences in that content separately for groups that committed acts of aggression and those that did not, which we labeled acts of resistance. Leaders’ expressions of contempt and disgust and the appraisals related to them differentiated the two groups. We discuss the unique potential contributions of expressions of contempt and disgust to aggression and violence.

The Language of Political Aggression

We examined the relationship between language and political aggression by examining the words used by world leaders and leaders of ideologically motivated groups when talking about their despised opponent out-groups in their speeches. We searched the archives for records of such speeches, anchoring them to an identified act of aggression or nonaggressive resistance, and analyzed speeches at three points in time prior to those acts. We tested three hypotheses about linguistic differences in speech content separately for groups that committed an act of aggression and those that did not. Support was found for all three hypotheses, indicating that speeches associated with aggression had different linguistic markers than speeches associated with nonaggression. These findings highlighted the function of speech in providing glimpses into the mind-set of the speech makers as their groups ramp up to violence or not.