Investigating the effectiveness of virtual reality for cross-cultural competency training SIEDS 2018

With the increased globalization of private companies and the reality of operating in the complex multinational environments that modern militaries face, demonstrating cross-cultural competence has become increasingly important for many businesses and military operations. Research in this area has not yet reached a consensus as to the most effective methods of training and assessing cross-cultural competence of individuals. To meet this need, this study investigates the use of Cultural Dimension theory and the application of immersive virtual reality technology to impart cross-cultural training. Virtual reality research in other types of social interaction applications has demonstrated promising results, allowing the user to be more realistically immersed in an experience. Therefore, we hypothesize it would translate into gains in cross-cultural competence as well. This paper describes the development process of creating a virtual reality cultural training game as well as the experimental design to evaluate the efficacy of the game. Since this game targets a military audience, it is set as a joint humanitarian effort between the US Army and Chinese People's Liberation Army. The user plays the role of a U.S. officer who must collaborate with the Chinese commander to achieve pre-defined objectives. In order to validate the cultural consistency of the game, we describe the validation process and report on the cultural consistency of the scoring methodology through the use of inter-rater reliability. As a part of the experimental design, we also propose a novel methodology for evaluating incremental changes in cross-cultural competence through the use of real human interactions.