Polyculturalism: Viewing Cultures as Dynamically Connected and its Implications for Intercultural Attitudes in Colombia

In our increasingly globalized world, we are more exposed to diverse people and cultures than ever be-fore, making lay belief systems about cross-cultural influences as well as consequences of those beliefs for intercultural attitudes important to study. Over the past decade, there has been increasing immigration to Colombia, making it a particularly important place in which to understand people’s attitudes and intentions toward individuals from other countries. We previously found in the Philippines and the us that endorsement of polyculturalism —the belief that different racial and ethnic groups influence and are connected to each other— is associated to a range of positive intergroup attitudes. In the current research, we have built on hese past findings to contribute to our understanding of intercultural dynamics in Latin America, exploring polyculturalism in a cross-sectional survey study with 423 adults born and living in Colombia. We found that endorsement of polyculturalism was associated to more positive attitudes toward people from other countries and greater friendship intentions toward immigrants from other countries moving to Colombia, while con-trolling for social dominance orientation, national iden-tification, and feelings toward the self. We also found that there were mean differences in people’s attitudes and friendship intentions toward people from different countries, based on type and level of cultural influence. But, type of country, social dominance orientation, and national identification did not moderate associations of polyculturalism with attitudes and friendship intentions, which suggests that these associations are consistent. Future directions and implications of polyculturalism for understanding intergroup relations around the world are discussed.