Discrepancies in Perception of Cultural Differences and Their Potential for Intercultural Conflicts in German-Dutch Interactions

ABSTRACT We investigated whether the conflict potential of cultural characteristics might be influenced by the importance that interaction partners attribute to them. We conducted a quasi-experiment in which we analysed the attitudes of 74 German and 75 Dutch people towards two cultural characteristics which both Germans and Dutch consider to be equally important and two cultural characteristics which they regard as differently important. We determined whether they were aware of this difference in equal measure. We found that intercultural conflicts are unlikely when people from both cultures estimate correctly how important persons from the neighbouring culture regard a certain cultural characteristic.