Influences of Cultural Similarities and Differences on Coworker Relationships and Perceived Levels of Workplace Psychological Stress

One of the most important environments for many adults is the workplace, and we increasingly find co-workers with a wide variety of cultural backgrounds. Different cultural backgrounds must communicate and collaborate for an effective team to meet the common goal for a workplace. However, different cultural values and practices in one place often create misunderstandings and fraught challenges. One of the significant differences in culture is how people interact socially and their primary motivation when interacting with others. When independent and interdependent cultural backgrounds are considered, it is suggested that interdependent cultures tend to focus on relationship-preserving while independent cultures try to achieve work credentials. These cultural differences in work-approach often create a disconnection from organizational goals. Organizational goals are hard to achieve when employees aren’t on the same page, especially in a demanding work environment. Stressful situations often yield a person to be in a state of ego-depletion; one can easily be biased in favor of their cultural group to interact and be more socially integrated with culturally similar backgrounds. Thus, given that independent and interdependent cultural backgrounds have psychological and behavioral differences, it is hypothesized that there is a higher frequency of psychological stress when people from different cultural backgrounds work together than when two individuals with similar cultural backgrounds work together. In addition, it is also hypothesized that someone experiencing higher perceived stress levels in general will be feeling higher levels of workplace stress, which will result in greater difficulties integrating with individuals from culturally different backgrounds. To test these two hypotheses, a sample of participants will be providing data from questionnaires measuring; 1) feeling about two of their co-workers who are culturally similar and dissimilar; 2) level of perceived general stress; 3) scale of participants’ independent and interdependent cultural behaviors. The first hypothesis will be supported if levels of difficulties between two people of diverse cultures are higher compared to coworkers of similar cultures. The second hypothesis will be supported if there is a significant relationship between the general level of stress and difficulties people have integrating with culturally different individuals