Technical Knowledge, Prosocial Knowledge, and Clinical Performance of Indian Medical Students Kamalika Ghosh*, Stephan J. Motowidlo* and Saswati Nath** *Department of Psychology, Rice University, MS-25, P.O. Box 1892, Houston, TX 77251-1892, USA. kamalika.ghosh@rice.edu, ghosh.kamalika@gmail.com **Department of Psychiatry, R. G. Kar Medical College and Hospital, 1, Kshudiram Bose Sarani, Kolkata-700004, India We cross-culturally replicated and extended findings reported by Kell, Motowidlo, Martin, Stotts, and Moreno that technical knowledge and prosocial knowledge have independent ef- fects on performance. In a sample of 196 Indian medical students, we found that prosocial knowledge explains variance in students’ clinical performance beyond the variance ex- plained by technical knowledge and technical knowledge explains variance in clinical per- formance beyond the variance explained by prosocial knowledge. Contrary to findings that American medical students’ prosocial inclinations, as reflected in measures of empathy, seem to decline over the course of their medical training (e.g., Hojat, Vergare, Maxwell, Brainard, Herrine, and Isenberg), we found that Indian medical students’ prosocial knowl- edge steadily increased from their third to fifth years of medical study. 1. Introduction T here is widespread interest in the American medical community in prosocial elements of physicians’ pro- fessionalism, such as caring and compassion for patients, respect for patients, and responsibility and accountabil- ity (National Board of Medical Examiners, 2002). Be- cause the American medical community at large values expressions of prosocial professionalism, physicians who believe that such behaviors are important aspects of what it means to be an effective physician are correct and therefore can be said to have more prosocial knowledge about medical professionalism. Our central thesis is that how professionally physicians actually con- duct themselves depends in part on their beliefs about the value or utility of these prosocial behaviors in medi- cal practice. But because these beliefs might vary ac- cording to cultural factors such as ‘power distance’ (Meeuwesen, van den Brink-Muinen, & Hofstede, 2009), the study reported here asks whether the same behav- iors are also valued in India, where power distance is thought to be higher than it is in the United States, and whether effects of prosocial knowledge on American medical students’ clinical performance (Kell, Motowidlo, Martin, Stotts, & Moreno, 2014) can be replicated in a sample of Indian medical students. The main hypo- thesis driving this study is that despite cultural differ- ences, Indian medical students’ prosocial knowledge will also predict their clinical performance and that this ef- fect is independent of effects of technical knowledge on their clinical performance. We also compare prosocial knowledge scores across years of medical study to de- termine whether Indian medical students’ appreciation for the importance of prosocial action in medical prac- tice increases or decreases as they progress through medical school. 1.1. Prosocial performance and knowledge in medical practice The distinction made by Borman and Motowidlo (1993) between task performance and contextual per- formance argues the point that overall job effectiveness depends both on individuals’ technical contributions to the products and services that an organization pro- duces through its operational core and on individuals’ nontechnical contributions to the social, psychological, and organizational context in which the technical core International Journal of Selection and Assessment Volume 23 Number 1 March 2015 © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main St., Malden, MA, 02148, USA