Cultural intelligence as a factor shaping attitudes towards disability in the workplace

Li Z. [Cultural intelligence as a factor shaping attitudes towards disability in the workplace]. Vestnik Permskogo universiteta. Filoso-fia. Psihologia. Sociologia [Perm University Herald. Philosophy. Psychology. Sociology], 2023, issue 2, pp. 229–240 (in Russian),

In Russia, approximately 9 % of population live with disability, around 2.5 million people with disability are at working age and majority of them could function productively as workforce, but only 32 % of them are employed [Yakovleva N.V. et al., 2016]. Disability inclusion in workplace has been increasingly addressed by government policies and organizational initiatives in the last decade. In spite of it, there is still a lengthy way to go to provide real and equal work opportunities for people with disabilities. People with disabilities in the work environment are often not trusted, undervalued, not appreciated compared with workforce without disabilities. Existing findings have emphasized attitudes, stereotype and biases towards disability as formidable obstacles which hinder effective disability inclusion [Bonaccio S. et al., 2020]. From the perspective of social model, disability is considered as the social limitations on personal development chances and interpersonal interactions rather than physical impairments [Yarskaya-Smirnova E.R., 1999; Kalashnikova I.V., Thirnadtsatko A.A., 2017]. In this re- gard, the society shares responsibilities for unemployment of people with disabilities. It is crucial to ease negative attitudes and contradictions about disability in order to be ready for inclusive employment in the workplaces.

• 2.    Literature review

  • 2.1.    Implicit and emotional attitude towards disability in Russia

    For the last decades, Russian scholars have investigated the object of attitudes towards people with disabilities in the society [Dobrovolskaya T.A., Shabalina N.B., 1999]. Compared to inclusive employment, more attention from scholars and practitioners have been paid to inclusive education. As the result, more existing findings have addressed attitudes towards children, students with physical or mental limitations in the education rather than in the workplaces in Russia. And to date, self-report questionnaires are commonly used to collect Russian society attitudes towards people with disabilities. Generally, attitudes towards people with disabilities are complex and ambiguous in Russia. In

    Stavropol region in 2004, public perceptions of people with disabilities have been studied via survey among 700 respondents. Results have shown that more than half participants support the view of social model of disability, and willing to help more than 77% participants described perceptions towards people with disabilities positively, and more than 88 % respondents feel empathy and sense of compassion [Ageeva N.V., 2006]. But there are two hidden controversies. Firstly, from the point of view of the survey, we can intuitively see that Russian society generally still treats the disabled as a vulnerable group. This is the traditional paternalistic view towards people with disabilities. They feel that they need to be sympathized with, and feel embarrassed, guilty or even painful when they see them. They feel that the disabled group needs more help than equal opportunity for development in education and employment. Secondly, self-reports questionnaires could reveal explicit attitudes towards people with disabilities rather than the implicit attitudes. For this issue, there is moral pressure on attitudes to people with disabilities, and this social oppression exhorts people to be friendly to people with disabilities, but it doesn’t equal to that organizations will provide equal employment opportunities for disabled employees, and nondisabled colleagues are ready, comfortable and happy to work with employees with disabilities. The explicit attitude is the result of a considered choice, and it is often the ideal self-cognition of the respondents. Respondents feel that their true cognition is immoral for sensitive topics or do not want to express their true perceptions, or they themselves are not aware of their inner attitudes. In this regard, researchers need to pay more attention to people’s implicit attitudes, but currently in Russia, there are very scarce studies on the implicit attitudes of society towards disabled people.

• 2.2.    Cultural intelligence and its effect on attitudes towards disability

  As it has been shown by extant evidence, obstacles, which hinder the positive implicit attitudes towards disability ascribe to the fear for intercultural situations and lack of interculturally interactive experience. People with and without disabilities come from different social backgrounds and hold different cultural norms [Wilson J.D., 2017]. Inclusion requires people to become culturally competent [Winters M.F., 2013]. This paper proposes the hypothesis that cultural intelligence modulates the implicit attitudes and emotional resistance towards disability. Cultural intelligence refers to the capability to identify and appreciate cultural differences, to adapt and

  function successfully in culturally diverse contexts [Earley P.C., Ang S., 2003]. It comprises four proportions such as metacognitive facet, cognitive facet (cultural knowledge), motivational facet, and behavioral facet. It has been theorized that cultural intelligence closely correlates with perceived inclusion [Alexandra V. et al., 2021]. Furthermore, cultural intelligence has been maintained to advance cross-cultural interactions [Lin Y.C. et al., 2012]. Disability inclusion does require the high cultural intelligence of individuals to be tolerant with different social groups and understand distinct cultural milieu, so as to achieve the high level of inclusion and appreciation. Individuals with high cultural intelligence feel more confident in coping with intercul-tural situation instead of nervous or fear. Furthermore, the development of cultural intelligence involves with intercultural experience and improved cultural knowledge. Individuals with high cultural intelligence tend more open and hold more positive affective reactions towards intercultural interaction, and less cultural biases towards other cultural group, which shapes the sources of implicit attitudes.

• 3.    Method

  • 3.1.    Sample and participants

    Considering the practical characteristics of cultural intelligence and its pertinence to the workplace, this study conducted a random sampling questionnaire survey on employees at institutes such as Ural Federal University, International Relations Institutes, and companies, social enterprises in the service industry in Yekaterinburg, Russia. Totally, 122 employees without disability have been collected to fill in standard scales online via Google Form from 2022 to 2023. Respondents are motivated by invitation letter and voluntarily participated in the survey. The invitation letter with encouraging words states the opportunities and challenges of the people with disabilities and the situation of inclusive employment, the purpose of this study, the research team and the confidentiality of information. Filling out the questionnaire takes 20–30 minutes. The demographics of them have been completed as well. The age of them ranges from 25 to 56 years old (mean: 33.56 years old; mode: 31 years old). Besides, female participants are more than male participants (60.1 % female; 39.9 % male). All participants have higher education and work experience of more than 3 years. Furthermore, information about their positions are collected. 29.9 % participants are engaged in initial positions; 51.9 % participants are engaged in intermediate positions; and 18.2 % participants are engaged in managerial positions.

• 3.2.    Scale

  Regarding questionnaires to measure cultural intelligence, Van Dyne, Ang, Koh and colleagues [Van Dyne L. et al., 2009, 2012] developed the Cultural Intelligence Scale, which comprises four facets, metacognitive, cognitive, motivational and behavioral aspects of cultural intelligence, including 20 statements. The Cultural Intelligence Scale has been recognized the reliable and most popular measuring method. In Russia, Soldatova and colleagues [Soldatova G.U. et al., 2018] has adapted the Cultural Intelligence Scale among Russian sample and highlighted its credibility and suitability. In addition, Thomas and colleagues [Thomas D. et al., 2015] has developed the short form measure of Cultural Intelligence (SFCQ) and established its validity with 3526 participants in five language groups from around the world. The

  SFCQ simplified the traditional facets of cultural intelligence, and kept three aspects such as cultural knowledge, cultural skill and metacognition, which generally include 10 statements. It has been noted that short forms can be just valid and reliable as sophisticated and long ones [Burisch M., 1997]. Therefore, currently the short form are increasingly applied and it has advantages in saving time and related costs for evaluation [Neto J. et al., 2021]. This present study applied the short form measure of Cultural Intelligence (SFCQ) and adapted it among Russian samples.

Implicit attitudes can be conceptualized as the automatic association which individuals hold between an object/event with evaluation, no matter positive or negative [Rudman L.A., 2004]. Rather than explicit attitudes, implicit attitudes refer to more automatic responses which rarely depend on cognitively and motivationally controlled factors. It has been highlighted that; implicit attitudes markedly coincide with automatic emotional reactions. Existing studies highlighted widely recognized sources for the formation of implicit attitudes such as affective experience, cultural biases, and cognitive consistency principles, which significantly shape the negative or positive implicit attitudes towards disabilities [Rudman L.A., 2004]. On the one hand, it has been theorized that affective experience impacts on implicit attitudes more than explicit attitudes. For instance, pleasant interactive experience with partners with disabilities leads to improved implicit attitudes towards disability inclusion. Evidence emphasized the two-way correlation between affective reactions and implicit attitudes [Songa G. et al., 2019]. On the other hand, cultural milieu and cultural biases towards individuals from distinct cultural background highly link to implicit attitudes. Furthermore, the impact of cultural milieu on implicit attitudes towards disability inclusion may will be sculptured by the affective experience [Hinton P., 2017]. The impact of cultural milieu on implicit attitudes provides the possibility that intercultural interaction experience may foster the positive implicit attitudes towards another sub-culture and culture, especially the emotionally benign intercultural experience. In the last decade, with the importance attached to research in implicit attitudes, existing studies separated analysis of implicit attitudes from explicit attitudes towards disability and its separated impact on disability inclusion [Miller E. et al., 2009].

Regarding the immoral or illegal issues like the discriminating against disability, implicit attitudes are often opposite to explicit attitudes. Out of moral constraints, people universally hold positively explicit attitudes towards disability. Whereas positively explicit attitudes did not result in real productive interactions with employees with disabilities. The reason is that their implicit attitudes are counter negative. That’s why more attention should be paid on implicit attitudes and related emotional reactions towards disability in the workplace. Besides, more concentrations should be focused to investigate resources modulating implicit attitudes towards disability.

Opinion polls present that attitudes towards disabilities are ambiguous and complex in Russia [Romanova M.O. et al., 2022]. In the past decades, there has been growing attention paid on attitudes towards disability in Russia. Traditional Russian attitudes towards disability often tend to be negative, comprising pity, dependence and marginalization. It discourages social rehabilitation and equal opportunities for people with disabilities. It has been underlined that in Russia, people hold nega- tive explicit attitudes and affective reactions towards disability and consider disability more as deficits than abilities [Martz E. et al., 2009]. Furthermore, evidence from self-reported questionnaire highlights that intervention involving knowledge of disabilities significantly promotes explicitly positive attitudes towards disabilities among Russian sample [Packer T.L et al., 2000]. Extant study in Russia pointed out that in spite of three-quarters of the respondents holding positive attitudes towards disability inclusion, only one quarter feel ready to cooperate and interact with individuals with disabilities, and lack of interactive experience as the main reason raises fear to cooperate and draws back the disability inclusion [Vo-losnikovaa L.M., Efimova G.Z., 2016]. As well, one comparative study between Russia and Israel in the context of cooperative inclusion, indicated that participants mostly accept the cooperation and interaction with co-worker with disabilities, but the extent and type of disabilities matter bother for participants from Russia and Israel. Besides, Russian participants hold wider negative attitudes towards cooperation with coworkers with disabilities and regard them as weakness and inability [Fedorova A.I., Shcherbakova A.M., 2020].

In sum, existing evidence preliminarily uncover the widespread negative implicit attitudes towards disability such as dependence, weakness and inability and related negative emotion reactions like feeling fear in Russia. Nevertheless, research in implicit attitudes and affective reactions towards disabilities remain one fresh issue. It demands further investigation in its influential factors and efficacious intervention.

In the past decade, Russian scholars increasingly paid attention on the study about cultural intelligence. Chigarkova and Soldatova reviewed the concept of cultural intelligence and studying trends of empirical research into cultural intelligence [Chigarkova S.V., Soldatova G.U., 2018]. It provoked the popularity in studies of cultural intelligence in Russia and highlighted the new research points in other intercultural phenomena like ethnic identity rather than only in the field of management and organizational psychology. As well, empirical study has underlined the relations between cultural intelligence, ethnic identity and intercul-tural tolerance. It investigated the cultural intelligence, tolerance and ethnic identity types, and found that compared with mono-ethnic residents, bi-ethnic and multi-ethnic residents hold higher cultural intelligence and tolerance [Soldatova G.U. et al., 2018]. In general, concept of cultural intelligence has been recognized overseas, however, so far scarcity has been underlined in the Russian psychological science. Moreover, studies of cultural intelligence still have poorly covered intercul-tural interactive situations like ethnic identity, interactions with minority social groups. This present paper originally identifies the correlation between individual cultural intelligence with attitudes towards people with disability in Russia.

As for attitudes towards disability, there are several generalized scales for measuring attitudes towards disability such as the Attitudes Towards Disabled Persons Scale (ATDP) by Yuker and colleagues [Yuker H. E., 1986], and the Disability Attitude Scale (ADs) [Power M.J. et al., 2010]. Romanova M.O., Kozhan E.A. and colleagues have adapted the Disability Attitude Scale among Russian participants and proved its validity [Romanova M.O. et al., 2022]. The Disability Attitude Scale (ADs) includes 12 statements, like «People with disabilities find it harder to make new friends», «People tend to lose patience with people with dis-abilities», «Disability can build willpower», «Peo-ple with disabilities are more motivated to achieve their goals than people without disabilities», «Don’t expect much from people with disabilities» and so on. This present study uses the Disability Attitude Scale (ADs) to measure self-reported attitudes towards people with disabilities.

But as it has been demonstrated, it is arduous to collect individual’s implicit attitudes only by subjective self-report questions. Greenwald and his colleagues (1998) have carried out a series of investigations to build the implicit association test technique and concluded that the implicit association test was useful in assessing evaluative differences in associations of contrasting social categories such as ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation [Greenwald A.G. et al., 1998]. Building on it, attitudes towards disability - implicit association test was developed. For measuring implicit attitudes, there are two existing methods, 1) the traditional computer-based responsive stimulus like Harvard Implicit Association Test, 2) the adaptive paper-pen scale Attitudes towards Disability- Implicit Association Test (DA-IAT) [Pruett S.R., Chan F., 2006]. But the paperpen version is more flexible to collect data from large sample in a short period. Therefore, this study uses DA-IAT (Pruett and Chan, 2006) to evaluate implicit attitudes towards people with disability. The DA-IAT blocks designed to measure attitudes applied disability–nondisabled symbols rather than words as the stimuli. These symbols were obtained from Project Implicit (. The critical blocks of the DA-IAT pages included 1) [disability plus good–nondisabled plus bad (incongruent)] and 2) [disability plus bad–nondisabled plus good (congruent)] pairings.

In total, this present study combines both the Disability Attitude Scale (ADs) and DA-IAT via Google Form. And afterwards, all responses have been collected and analyzed by IBM SPSS Statistics 26.

4.    Results

Firstly, the descriptive statistic of cultural intelligence is listed in the Table 1 as below.

Table 1. Descriptive Statistics of Cultural Intelligence

Таблица 1. Описательная статистика культурного интеллекта

Statements	Mean	SD
I know the ways in which cultures around the world are different (K)	3,76	1,221
I can give examples of cultural differences from my personal experience, reading and so on (K)	4,07	1,348
I enjoy talking with people from different cultures (S)	4,33	1,162
I have the ability to accurately understand the feelings of people from other cultures (S)	3,10	1,401
I sometimes try to understand people from another culture by imagining how something looks	3,70	1,620
from their perspectives (S)
I can change my own behaviors to suit different cultural situations and people (S)	3,88	1,129
I accept delays without becoming upset when in different cultural situations and with culturally different people (S)	3,30	1,717
I am aware of the cultural knowledge I use when interacting with someone from another culture (M)	3,59	1,328
I think a lot about the influence that culture has on my behavior and that of others who are culturally different (M)	3,51	1,656
I am aware that i need to plan my course of action when indifferent cultural situation and with culturally different people (M)	4,11	1,126
Cultural intelligence	37,35	8,806

Note : K refers to cross-cultural knowledge; S refers to cross-cultural skill; M refers to cross-cultural metacognition.

Примечание: K — относится к кросс-культурным знаниям; S — к кросс-культурным навыкам; M — к кросс-культурному метапознанию.

The short form of cultural intelligence scale uses a five-dimensional Likert scale, and the degree of recognition for the statement is: «1 = Not at all, 2 = A little, 3 = Somewhat, 4 = A lot, 5 = Extremely well». Mean responses of cultural intelligence items mainly distributed in the middle and high scores. They are all above 3. It could be due to the characteristics of participants. Around 55% of them could speak the second or third language. And around 44 % of them had abroad experience. Furthermore, many of them work in the institutes or companies and had intercultural interaction before. Among them, statements with higher recognition include: «I can give examples of cultural differences from my personal experience, reading and so on» (4,07); «I am aware that I need to plan my course of action when different cultural situation and with culturally different people» (4,11); and «I enjoy talking with people from different culture» (4,33). On the other hand, there are also statements with low recognition, including: «I have the ability to accurately under- stand the feelings of people from other cultures» (3,10); «I accept delays without becoming upset when in different cultural situations and with culturally different people» (3,30); «I think a lot about the influence that culture has on my behavior and that of others who are culturally different» (3,51) and «I am aware of the cultural knowledge I use when interacting with someone from another culture» (3,59). This shows that respondents have lower initiative and planning for effective cross-cultural communication and low awareness of emotional sensitivity and emotional experience in the process of cross-cultural interaction, compared to their high enthusiasm and high motivation in the process.

Secondly, this study as well conducted Correlation Analysis between cultural intelligence and attitudes towards people with disabilities. In regard to implicit attitudes, this paper only analyzes the correlation between aggregated cultural intelligence and integrative implicit attitudes. The Pearson correlation coefficients are shown in the table 2 below.

Table 2. Correlation between cultural intelligence with attitudes towards disability

Таблица 2. Связь между культурным интеллектом и отношением к инвалидности

Correlation coefficient	Cultural intelligence
Implicit attitudes	0,386**(0,001)
ADs attitudes (positive items)	0,304**(0,007)
ADs attitudes (negative items)	-0,339**(0,003)

** Significant correlation at 0.01 level.

** Корреляция значима на уровне 0.01.

According to it, cultural intelligence significantly positively correlates with implicit association attitudes towards people with disability (0.386 at 0.01 level). It represents that individual with higher cultural intelligence could hold more positive implicit attitudes towards people with disabilities. When it comes to disability, they can associate more positive aspects. Correspondingly, they tend recognize the abilities and appreciate values of disabled people and interact and cooperate with them with a more affirmative and open attitudes.

Thirdly, based on whether the statements in the Disability Attitude Scale (ADs) are positive or negative, this paper divides the statements in the scale into two groups, positive and negative. For example, «People with disabilities are more motivated to achieve their goals than people without disabilities» is one of the positive statements in the scale and whereas, «Don’t expect much from people with disabilities» is the negative statement.

This paper analyzes the correlation coefficients of cultural intelligence and positive and negative attitudes respectively (0.304 at 0.01 level; -0.339 at 0.01 level). The correlation analysis results are shown in table 2 above.

Results present that participants’ cultural intelligence is significantly correlated with their attitudes towards people with disabilities, in other words, individuals with higher cultural intelligence are more positive viewing people with disabilities. This suggests, to some extent, that cultural intelligence can be used as a resource of mediating people’s attitudes toward people with disabilities.

In addition, this paper also conducts the correlation analyses on the three branches (cross-cultural knowledge, cross-cultural skill and cross-cultural metacognition) of the cultural intelligence scale to reveal a more detailed correlation between cultural intelligence and attitudes towards people with disabilities. This information is shown in table 3 below.

Table 3. Correlation between three facets of cultural intelligence with attitudes towards disability

Таблица 3. Корреляция между тремя аспектами культурного интеллекта и отношением к инвалидности

Correlation coefficient	Attitudes (positive items)	Attitudes (negative items)
Cross-cultural knowledge	0,132(0,251)	-0,343**(0,002)
Cross-cultural skill	0,344**(0,002)	-0,323**(0,004)
Cross-cultural metacognition	0,226*(0,049)	-0,202 (0,078)

* Significant correlation at 0.05 level. ** Significant correlation at 0.01 level.

* Корреляция значима на уровне 0.05. ** Корреляция значима на уровне 0.01.

As it has shown, cross-cultural skill is significantly correlated with attitudes towards disabilities, no matter positive or negative statements. It suggests that individual with high cross-cultural skills such as motivation or accurate behavior, provokes their positive attitudes towards disabilities and ease negative attitudes or bias towards people with disabilities. This can be considered that individuals with cross-cultural skills have internalized high- level cultural competence, and it also enables them to adopt a more positive attitude when facing unfamiliar disabled groups. In the meanwhile, individual cross-cultural metacognition can significantly promote positive attitudes. When individuals can have a sense of self-regulation in a cross-cultural context, they also have a more friendly attitude towards unfamiliar disabled groups. An individual’s intercultural knowledge does not pro- mote his or her positive attitudes, but when he or she has higher intercultural knowledge, it moderates negative attitudes.

To sum up, this paper shows that the Russian sample has a high level of cultural intelligence, and cultural intelligence is significantly correlated to attitudes towards people with disabilities, cultural intelligence and its facets can be used as an effective way to adjust attitudes towards people with disabilities.

5.    Discussion

This article highlights the impact of cultural intelligence on people’s attitudes toward people with disabilities. On the one hand, this suggests that cultural intelligence can be used as a new tool to regulate attitudes toward people with disabilities and the effective cooperation of disabled and nondisabled employees. Building on activity theory, the activities and experiences of the disabled group are different from those of the non-disabled group in the process of their development. No matter their learning process or the process of interacting with society, people with disabilities have certain particularities. People with disabilities do have cultural differences from non-disabled group. These differences cause non-disabled groups unfamiliar with disabled groups and are more likely to lead to misunderstandings, resulting in negative attitudes and discomfort feelings. Cultural intelligence is consistent. Individuals with high cultural intelligence have a higher degree of adaptability and acceptance to various cultures, which can help nondisabled groups alleviate misunderstandings, and more actively recognize and appreciate the competencies and specialties of disabled labor forces. This means that it is necessary to add cultural intelligence education or training programs to inclusive education and inclusive employment. By improving the cultural competence of individuals, so that they can treat individuals with disabilities more positively and truly accept them. On the other hand, this also inspires a wide range of applications of cultural intelligence. Cultural intelligence is not only used in the fields of transnational management and psychological characteristics of multicultural organizations, but it can also be applied in a wider and comprehensive context of cultural interaction. For example, interaction between multiple ethnic groups, communication and cooperation between different social groups, and phenom- ena such as prejudice, discrimination, incomprehension, and inclusion among different groups.

Inevitably, this paper has several limitations. First, the sample size of this paper is small. Representativeness of small samples has certain risks. Subsequent verification based on a large sample size is necessary. Secondly, the samples in this article come from single-ethnic areas in Russia, and the opinions of people in bi-ethnic or even multiethnic areas are not considered enough. Thirdly, the applicability of the Implicit Association Test -Disability Attitude used in this paper is not yet mature enough in Russia, and more verification on the adaptation of the scale are still needed.

In addition, this paper also provides new directions for future research. Firstly, the study of the moderators of the relationship between cultural intelligence and attitudes towards social minorities. Demographics such as gender, age, education level, and mastered language may have an impact on individual cultural intelligence itself and its moderating effect. This requires more research in the future. Secondly, research on different dimensions of cultural intelligence for disability inclusion. Metacognition, knowledge, motivation, and behavioral facets of cultural intelligence have different effects on the attitudes of people with disabilities. More investigations are called to uncover the logic behind this phenomenon. Thirdly, in Russia, more follow-up research is needed on the attitudes of social groups towards the disabled. So far, only a few studies have used standardized scales to measure people’s attitudes, and there are still too many details about the attitudes of people with disabilities undone. Implicit association attitudes toward persons with disabilities is an almost new field, and comparative research on implicit versus explicit attitudes has been less touched. It as well needs attention from scholars and practitioners.

6.    Conclusion

As inclusive education and the employment of persons with disabilities continue to receive attention, the attitudes of employers and employees towards persons with disabilities are crucial. In Russia, there are few existing studies capturing employees’ attitudes towards persons with disabilities through standard scales. People have complex attitudes towards the disabled. On the one hand, it is reasonable to put the disabled on the vulnerable side, to be pity and sympathy for them, and to provide help, which is positive in terms of benevolence and morality; on the other hand, individuals tend to ignoring the abilities and skills of the disabled, and hard to trust that they can study and work normally, which makes it extremely difficult for real employment and disability inclusion. Therefore, research on resources that rest people’s attitudes is necessary.

This paper stands from the view of cultural boundary interaction, introduces the concept of cultural intelligence and demonstrates that the level of cultural intelligence of employees effectively adjusts their attitudes towards people with disabilities. Theoretically, this fills in the gap in research on the influencing resource; and practically, it provides a new view that organizations could cultivate the culture intelligence of employees through training or inclusive events, and it will help employees to tolerant, trust and appreciate employees with disabilities, which will ultimately contribute to the effective cooperation and improvement of organizational performance.