Does Cultural Distance Influence Task-Related Performance and Anxiety in Digital Learning Settings?

Digital learning settings (DLS) are increasingly used in higher education. As student populations become increasingly diverse, learners more often encounter gamified DLS whose design elements cue a culture other than their own. This may create a cultural distance between the learner’s own cultural values and those of the culture represented in the DLS. While findings of prior research on cultural distance in classroom contexts remain mixed, cultural distance in gamified DLS is largely unexplored. To address this gap, we investigated whether cultural distance influences task-related performance and anxiety in a gamified task interface. In a between-subjects experiment, 112 university students solved logical problems in a DLS whose design elements represented their own culture, a culturally close culture, or a culturally distant culture. Cultural distance had no detectable effect on task-related performance or anxiety, and cultural identification did not significantly moderate these relationships. Exploratory analyses provided preliminary evidence that, among female participants, the association between cultural distance and anxiety varied with cultural identification. These preliminary findings suggest that the effects of cultural distance in gamified DLS are unlikely to be captured by a single moderator. Future work should clarify whether the gender-dependent pattern observed here replicates under confirmatory testing.