Conceptual Freedom of the Globalized Mind: Multicultural Experiences Enhance Human Cognition Through the Expansion of Conceptual Categories

This work provides a psychological perspective on globalization. It argues that multicultural experience may facilitate a merge of different cultural values, which forms a distinctively new state of mind. Experience with multicultural settings expands conceptual category boundaries, interrupts categorical thinking, and subsequently creates a new frame of thought. Studies identifying the important role of the multicultural experience in cognitive development and enhancement of creative abilities are presented to support this argument. The article questions the validity a of common critique that globalization brings the world to the unified model of thought. It argues that this critique is an oversimplification of the matter caused by individuals' closed-mindedness and unreceptiveness to a new experience.