Spiritual intelligence in a multicultural context:: Theory and Assessment

This study investigates the nature of spiritual intelligence and its link to ethnic identity, and gauges the difference across the main ethnic groups in Mauritius: Hindu-Mauritians, Creole-Mauritians, and Muslim-Mauritians. The authors proposed a new scale, the Multicultural Spiritual Intelligence Scale (MSIS), using the following six dimensions: self-awareness, transcendental awareness, levels of consciousness, quest for meaning, sensitivity, and resilience. The MSIS’s construct validity was tested with other similar scales. The Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR) (Paulhus, 1991) was also included to check for socially desirable responses and MSIS’s divergent validity. A Welch ANOVA revealed a statistical difference in spiritual intelligence among the ethnic groups: Welch’s F (2, 639.98) = 3.923. Spearman’s rank order correlation revealed that ethnic identification was connected to spiritual intelligence: rs (98) = 0.52, p < 0.0005. A Games-Howell post-hoc analysis indicated a statistically significant mean difference between Muslim-Mauritians and Hindu Mauritians (0.27, 95% CI [0.083, 0.45]) and between Muslim-Mauritians and Creole Mauritians (0.44, 95% CI [0.25, 0.62]). The Muslim-Mauritians obtained the highest score in both ethnic exploration and ethnic commitment. Implications for further research include using the MSIS with other minority groups in Mauritius.