Finding Common Ground
My Personal Project investigating how psychological biases influence cultural misunderstandings among international teenagers.
Click any red dot to read a personal story
This research platform explores the invisible forces that shape how we see each other across cultures.
The Research Question
How do psychological biases — confirmation bias, in-group favouritism, attribution errors — create barriers between teenagers from different cultural backgrounds?
Psychological Biases
We carry invisible lenses shaped by our upbringing. This project maps the specific cognitive biases most likely to cause cross-cultural friction among international students.
Cultural Navigation
Understanding your own biases is the first step. The platform then provides a personalised roadmap to help you navigate and adapt across cultural contexts.
"I will investigate how psychological biases influence cultural misunderstandings among international teenagers, and construct an interactive digital platform that maps this and encourages perspective-taking."
— MYP 5 Personal Project — International Sharing School
Your Journey to Common Ground
Identify Your Background
Share your cultural context, nationality, and lived experience to personalise your journey.
Map Your Biases
Take the interactive quiz to discover which psychological biases most influence your worldview.
Navigate New Cultures
Receive a personalised roadmap with strategies for perspective-taking and cultural assimilation.
Every background is a lens. Every lens reveals something new.
Where Curiosity Meets Common Ground
A personal inquiry into the invisible forces that divide us — and the tools that can bring us together.
How do psychological biases influence cultural misunderstandings among international teenagers, and how can an interactive digital platform encourage perspective-taking and cultural assimilation?
This question emerged from personal experience navigating multiple cultural environments as an international student. The friction I observed between peers from different backgrounds was rarely about facts — it was about interpretation, assumption, and the invisible lenses we carry.
The IB Framework
This project is completed as part of the IB Middle Years Programme (MYP) Personal Project — a self-directed inquiry that demonstrates the learner profile in action.
Approaches to Learning
The project develops and demonstrates five core ATL skill categories across research, design, and reflection.
Research Skills
Gathering and evaluating sources on cognitive psychology, cultural dimensions theory, and cross-cultural communication. Synthesising academic literature with lived experience.
Thinking Skills
Applying critical and creative thinking to identify patterns in bias literature, design the quiz methodology, and evaluate the platform's effectiveness.
Communication Skills
Translating complex psychological concepts into accessible, engaging digital content for a teenage audience across cultural backgrounds.
Self-Management Skills
Planning and executing a multi-month independent project: managing timelines, iterating on design, and maintaining a reflective process journal.
Social Skills
Collaborating with peers from different cultural backgrounds to test the platform, gather feedback, and refine the perspective-taking exercises.
The Biases Under Investigation
Six key psychological biases were identified through literature review as most likely to create cross-cultural friction among teenagers.
Confirmation Bias
The tendency to search for, interpret, and recall information in a way that confirms one's pre-existing beliefs.
In-Group Favouritism
The preference for members of one's own group over those of other groups.
Fundamental Attribution Error
Overemphasising personality-based explanations for others' behaviour while underemphasising situational factors.
Stereotyping
Applying generalised beliefs about a group to individual members of that group.
Ethnocentrism
Evaluating other cultures according to the standards and values of one's own culture.
Availability Heuristic
Overweighting information that comes easily to mind when making judgements.
Why This Matters to Me
Growing up between cultures, I have experienced first-hand the discomfort of being misread — and the equal discomfort of realising I had misread others. These moments are rarely dramatic. They are quiet: a joke that lands wrong, an assumption that goes unquestioned, a friendship that never quite forms.
The research literature confirmed what I had felt intuitively: these misunderstandings are not random. They follow predictable patterns rooted in cognitive shortcuts our brains evolved to use. Understanding those patterns is the first step to overcoming them.
This platform is my attempt to make that understanding accessible — not as an academic exercise, but as a practical tool for teenagers navigating the same cultural complexity I have lived.
About this quiz
What Are Your Hidden Biases?
A self-assessment tool to help you discover the psychological biases that shape how you see other cultures — and yourself.
This quiz presents real-world scenarios drawn from cross-cultural encounters. There are no right or wrong answers — only honest ones. Your results will map your tendencies across six psychological biases explored in this project.
Google Form not connected yet
Open index.html, find GOOGLE_FORM_URL near the bottom, and paste the form's embed link there.
Stories from Around the World
Click a pin on the map — or a name in the list — to read a personal story about navigating cultural bias as an international teenager.