Abstract This study examines the influence of cultural exposure on emotional intelligence and cultural intelligence. Because of the importance of international experience in organizations, and the ease of travel, understanding the impact of exposure to other cultures is critical. In this study, cultural exposure is examined in a variety of ways, such as a binary measure, breadth measure, and depth measure, as well as the interaction between breadth and depth. The sample included 485 parti- cipants from a large university in the northeast part of the United States. Regression analysis was conducted and findings indicated that cultural exposure in all forms had an impact on cultural intelligence, while it did not have an impact on emotional intelligence. Introduction Many individuals are exposed to other cultures because of the ease of travel to foreign locations. Additionally, organizations often initiate expatriation, which is when an individual lives and works outside his or her country of citizenship (Carpenter et al., 2001; Inkson et al., 1997; Reuber and Fischer, 1997; Sambharya, 1996; Takeuchi et al., 2005); thus expatriation is a particular type of in-depth exposure to another culture. These assignments are considered valuable for many reasons including knowledge sharing (Makela, 2007; Manev and Stevenson, 2001) and it is believed they can create a competitive advantage for a firm (Carpenter et al., 2000, 2001), but there may be other benefits that have not been explored. Since expatriate assignments are a cost concern for organiza- tions (Black and Gregersen, 1999; Krell, 2005; McNulty and Tharenou, 2004; Peak, 1997; Solomon, 2000; Welch, 2003) and the costs of failure are notably high (Forster, 1997; Johnson et al., 2006), finding additional benefits to these experiences is critical for organizations. Additionally, many of these assignments often fail (Johnson et al., 2006; Tung, 1982) and some report that failure rates are as high as 83% (McFarland, 2006), so determining more effective methods to select employees who will have a lower chance of failure is critical.