The Effects of Programmed Culture Training upon the Performance of Volunteer Medical Teams in Central America.

This article examines the effects of programmed culture training upon the performance of volunteer medical teams in Central America. Living and working in a foreign culture is notoriously difficult for a large number of people. One phenomenon, frequently observed in newcomers, is the culture shock syndrome which has been extensively described in the psychological literature. Self-instructional culture training programs, called Culture Assimilators, have been developed for Iran, Thailand, and Honduras. A number of laboratory studies have shown that programmed culture assimilators lead to improved adjustment, although not to improved productivity on the part of those who have read the assimilator programs prior to working in heterocultural group. The present study was designed specifically to investigate the effects of a task-related assimilator on the productivity of groups working for a considerable period of time. During the summer of 1967, 91 teams went to Honduras and Guatemala as voluntary public health workers. The results show that groups where the majority of members were culture assimilator trained had overall higher levels of productivity than groups containing a minority of, or no assimilator trained members.