The researchers discovered that the simple act of living abroad was not enough to bolster creative and professional success. The potential benefits of extended international travel depend on the ability to simultaneously identify with both home and host cultures, which the researchers call "biculturalism." Identifying with two cultures simultaneously fosters a more complex thinking style that views things from multiple perspectives and forges conceptual links among them.
"Unlike patterns of cultural identification in which individuals endorse only one of the two cultures, bicultural identification requires individuals to take into account and combine the perspectives of both old and new cultures," explains Dr. Tadmor. "Over time, this information processing capability, or ‘integrative complexity,‘ becomes a tool for making sense of the world and will help individuals perform better in both creative and professional domains."
The researchers conducted three experiments to determine the impact of biculturalism when living abroad. In the first, 78 MBA students comprising 26 different nationalities at a European business school were asked to complete a series of tasks, including a standard creativity task that asked for as many uses for a brick as possible within a two-minute time limit. In the second experiment, a group of 54 MBA students comprising 18 nationalities at an American business school were asked to describe the new businesses, products, and processes they had invented during their careers. All of the study participants had lived abroad for a period of time.
The studies found that those who identified with both their host culture and their home culture consistently demonstrated more fluency, flexibility, novelty and innovation.
Finally, the third experiment extended the idea, exploring whether the biculturals‘ advantages also gave them an advantage in the workplace. In this study, 100 Israelis living and working mainly in California‘s Silicon Valley were interviewed. The researchers found that Israelis who identified with both their home and host cultures enjoyed higher promotion rates and more positive reputations among their colleagues. Across all three studies, the researchers found that bicultural individuals ranked higher on integrative complexity tests than the other participants, and this drove their success.
The road to biculturalism is fraught with internal conflicts, notes Dr. Tadmor, in which two cultural identities struggle to coexist. It‘s much easier to surround yourself with your expat community than to straddle two separate worlds. But bypassing the conflicts means giving up the best benefits. Integrative complexity, which is responsible for creative and professional success, evolves through the repetitive resolution of these internal conflicts.
研究表明，仅仅出国并不足以使你获得创造力或职业上的成功，跨国旅行所带来的好处是潜在的，取决于你能否同时分辨主体文化与客体文化，研究者们称能够这样做的人为“双文化主义者”，他们形成了一种比较复杂的看待事物的方式，能从多个角度来看待一件事，并且能够在不同角度之间形成关联。
“与那些只能获得一种文化角度的人不同，‘双文化主义者’会将新旧两种文化联系起来考虑，”泰德摩博士（研究者之一）解释说：“随着时间的推移，以这种方式处理信息的能力会逐渐增强，或者说他们获得了一种‘综合性能力’，可以更好地了解世界的意义，并且更富有创造力，更成功。”
研究者们进行了三个实验来确定“双文化主义”的影响。第一个实验的对象是就读于欧洲工商学校的78名来自26个国家的MBA学生，研究者要求他们完成一系列任务，其中包括一个“头脑风暴”－标准的创造性的任务，他们需要在两分钟内尽可能多地想出“砖头”的用途。
第二个实验的参与者是一个美国工商学校的来自18个国家的54名MBA学生，他们要阐述在自己过往职业生涯中发现的一个新的生意，产品和商业模型，所有参与者都有过海外生活的经历。研究发现那些能够稳定地分辨主客体文化的学生在陈述的时候更流利、灵活、新颖和有创意。
第三个实验意在揭示“双文化主义”的优势是否会拓展到工作中，这个实验的对象是100个主要在加州硅谷工作的以色列人，研究者发现，双文化主义者相比其他同事来说，有更多的升职概率，职业声誉更好。
综合这三个实验，研究者认为“双文化主义者”在综合复杂性测试中得分更高，这使他们得以成功。
泰德摩博士认为，成为“双文化主义者”是一条充满内心冲突之路，两种异质文化挣扎着要在你的内心共存，屈服于居住地的文化比起在两个世界之间生活要容易得多，但是屈服也就意味着放弃由此带来的益处。获得创造力或成功的必要条件－综合力、复杂性，在你不断尝试解决内心冲突的过程中才能产生。