Difficulties in studying acculturation

  • Acculturation is the process by which people migrate to and learn a culture that is different from their original or heritage culture.
  • Acculturating individuals move to dramatically different kinds of environments
  • People move to cultures that vary in their similarity to their heritage culture

 

What happens when people move to a new culture

  • Moving to a new culture involves psychological adjustment  Learning new language, new values, social behaviors, etc.
  • The longer immigrants spend in new culture the more similar their emotional experiences become to those of other people living in that culture

 

Changes in attitudes toward the host culture

  • Migrants: those who move from a heritage culture to a host culture
  • Heritage culture: their original culture
  • Host culture: their new culture
  • So-journers: those who intend to stay only temporarily are also migrants
  • Immigrants: people who intend to move permanently are also migrants
  • Immigrants and so-journers are migrants
  • Honeymoon stage: In first few months of migrants moving to host country, they are in honeymoon stage.
    • Excitement, trying new foods, meeting new people, etc
  • Culture shock/crisis stage: the thrill of having novel and exotic experiences wears off, migrants realize their language skills suck, they don’t have a rich understanding to how everything works, etc o Homesickness: people miss home and family and friends.
    • Culture shock: feeling of being anxious, helpless, irritable, and in general, homesick that one experiences on moving to a new culture
  • Adjustment stage: language abilities improve, making friendships, adapting to things, they don’t feel so strange o So-journers can go through same adjustment stages after returning to their home countries
  • Reverse culture shock: when people don’t feel quite at home anymore and why the feel alienated from those around them. Their home culture doesn’t seem same as it use to be
  • Not everyone gets honeymoon phase, some people get anxiety
  • Trying to adjust as a migrant to a homogenous culture/society is always difficult no matter how good you are at adjusting. o L curve – honeymoon and crisis stage but no adjustment stage (for homogenous countries)

 

 

Cultural Distance

  • Cultural distance: the difference between two cultures in their overall ways of life
    • A person’s success in adjusting to a new culture is predicted on the amount of cultural distance between their heritage culture and the host culture.
  • Indirect measure of acculturation is language performance
    • Peoples mastery over the host cultures language greatly affects how they identify with that culture
  • The ease of which people learn English is influenced by how distant their mother tongue is from English
  • Malaysian students who were studying in Singapore reported having fewer difficulties than those who were studying in New Zealand because Malaysians fit in better to Singapore than New Zealand.
  • The Twsimshian acculturated to mainstream Canadian culture with fewer difficultures and the Eastern Cree had most stress, Carrier were middle

 

Cultural Fit

  • Cultural fit: the degree to which an individual’s personality is more similar to the dominant cultural values in the host culture o The greater the cultural fit, the easily they will acculturate
  • Extroverts move to other countries
  • A extraverted person make better cultural fit in new Zealand, than in Singapore and they fare better in the acculturation experience only where they fit in well.  People with independent self-concepts stress less about acculturation

 

Acculturation Strategies

  • Two issues for outcome distress during acculturation:
    • Whether people attempt to participate in host culture
    • Whether people strive to maintain their own heritage culture and identity
  • Integration strategy: This strategy involves attempt to fit in and fully participate in host culture while trying to maintain own tradition of heritage culture o Seeking best of both worlds o Most common strategy
  • Marginalization strategy: they have negative views toward both their heritage and host culture o Least common strategy/ successful o Weakened social support
    • Lower socioeconomic status or indigenous people
  • Assimilation strategy: attempt to fit in and fully participate in host culture but forgetting one’s heritage culture o Lower socioeconomic status or indigenous people
  • Separation strategy: attempt effort to maintain heritage culture while making no effort to participate in host culture o Especially if host culture is prejudice

Some Pitfalls of Acculturation

  • Weight gain such as American culture
  • Less healthy behaviors like drinking and smoking
  • Increase in heart disease if you are an immigrant to America who ACCULTURATED

 

Different but often unequal

  • African Americans on average are more likely to do worse in their classes and to ultimately drop out
  • Stereotype threat: the fear that one might do something that will inadvertently confirm a negative stereotype about one’s group.
  • Stereotype: represents cultural beliefs about members of a culture
  • People experience stereotype threat when they believe they are at risk of proving that negative stereotype and in the end confirm it.
  • In the no race primed and raced primed test, about GRE, blacks who were primed of indicating their race did worse and it interfered with their performance.
  • Native Americans who are shown stereotypical portrayals of like mascots or poca hontas display lower self-esteem, less pride, less achievement goals
  • Minority people tend to form stronger bond about their culture and generate positive feelings

 

Multicultural People

  • Blending: the tendency for bicultural people to have tendencies between their two cultures
  • Frame-switching: tendency for bicultural people to switch between different cultural selves

 

Evidence for Blending

  • After living in Canada for a while, Japanese self-esteem increase. Whereas usually they have low self –esteem in japan. – Culture affects self-concept
  • Canadians living in japan had low self esteem
  • The longer Japanese stayed in Canada, the higher their self-esteem rose.  Acculturation changes in the self-concept extend across a long time.

 

Frame-Switching

  • People frame-shift among cultures just like languages
    • Frame shifting occur among those who are high in bicultural identity integration
  • People learn how to behave depending on which context they are in
  • Code-switching also occurs in many cultures like code of the street or code of school
  • Code-switching is how people need to act and present themselves to others in their respective cultures
  • People who are exposed to multiple cultural worlds have multiple information networks
  • Chinese are more likely to make external attributions (fish is being chased) and Americans more likely to make internal ones (fish is leading the pack) about that fish picture
  • People are more likely to think using implicit notions when explaining behavior through an American type of thinking o Ex: when thinking about mickey mouse, American, people are more likely to explain fish behavior by focusing on the individuals and making internal attributions)
  • High in bicultural identity integration: people who can integrate aspects of both cultures in their daily lives – two compatible cultural identities
  • Low in bicultural identity integration: they see their two cultural identities as oppositional or cant identify with both of them simultaneously (they may feel they have to choose)
  • Language can activate cultural frame
  • Monocultural people can probably be primed to think in ways that are more similar to other cultures to the extent that those ways of thinking are sometimes present in their own minds
  • Bicultural and monoculture people can frame switch
  • Promotion orientation/interdependence =existential universals  Everyone is capable of frame switching:
    • People who were primed with independence, compared to those primed with interdependence, rated the individualistic values as more important and the collectivistic values as less important.
  • Act of adapting to new culture leads to more creativity

 

Immigration Trends

  • Most desirable: The USA, then the UK

 

Living Abroad

  • 130 million people currently live in countries not born in
  • Relatively new trend
  • For most part, most people stay where they are born
  • Centuries ago, only explorers, warriors, merchants, etc encountered other cultures
  • That’s changed now a days

 

Ibn Battuta

  • Moroccan traveler
  • 1325 left to visit Mecca
  • Didn’t come back for 24 years and he travelled some more
  • Travelled most of the known world (parts of Europe, Asia, Africa)
  • Journeys written in Rhila, meaning Journey
  • Roughly 40 modern countries visited
  • Not typical

 

Living Abroad

 Technology innovations help immigration

  • Trains, planes, automobiles (and boats)
  • Takes almost a year to walk across Canada

 

Mixed Cultural Backgrounds

  • Can be difficult to define someone’s cultural background o Many have lived in multiple cultures
  • What culture is this person from o Born in India, live primarily in Australia and Singapore, now lives in Canada o Collectivistic/Individualist mix  What culture is this person from?
    • Born in Britain, moved to Canada, lived in Canada longer, but has British accent
      • Individualistic cultures, so individualistic
      • Lots of cultural differences are lost when simply saying they are individualistic
    • Difficult to categorize mixed cultural backgrounds
  • It is difficult to know the effects different cultures have on people
  • Cultural experiences are so different

 

Common Experiences

  • Easier to study some common experiences
  • Large number of Mexicans in USA o 22% of all Mexicans live in USA

o 35 million people of Mexican decent living in USA o Canada has the 2nd most Mexicans, with less than 1% population  Might not generalize to other cultures

 

Hong Kong and Canada

  • Most live in Toronto or Vancouver
  • Large numbers to Canada 80s and 90s
  • Many are now returning to Hong Kong
  • Hong Kong has the most Canadian immigrants in Asia
    • More than 300, 000
    • Many are Canadian citizens returning to Hong Kong
  • Doing cultural research on HK Canadians applies to a large group of people
    • But does it generalize

 

Acculturation

  • Process by which people migrate to and learn from a new culture that is different from their original culture
  • Host culture = New culture
  • Original Culture = Heritage Culture
  • Learning new culture
  • Psychological difficulties

 

Difficulties in Studying acculturation

  • Culture vary
  • Different reasons for moving
  • Number of factors that influenc acculturation process
  • Individual difference between people

Hard to find a job, struggle to learn new culture, hard to acculturate,

 

Acculturation Trends

Norwegian people who came to USA

 

Acculturation Curve

  • Honeymoon Stage: At first there is positive feelings o Positive feelings toward host culture o Excited, meeting new people, new experiences o What often happens when you travel for fun o Tourism and the Honeymoon Stage
    • France is most visited place
    • Finland people, USA, HK, Canada
  • Crisis Stage: They didn’t like it after spending time
    • Negative feelings toward host culture
    • Frustration, limited lanague skills, alck understanding of how culture works, miss people and favorite foods
    • Culture Shock: feeling helpess, anxious, irritable, and homesick
  • Adjustment Stage: After spending time, they like it again
    • Positive feelings toward host culture
    • Function better in host culture, making friends, better at language thinking and acting like the locals

 

 Not everyone goes through these stages

  • Honeymoon stage missing o Not everyone experiences culture shock o Sometimes no evidence of adjustment stage o Length of each stage varies tremendously
  • Acculturation experience depends on host and heritage culture

 

Culture Shock Video

  • Black family liked the nice house – they had honeymoon stage
  • But the white family never had honeymoon stages – they had culture shock right away

 

Reverse Culture Shock

  • Culture shock when returning to your heritage culture
  • Occurs after you’ve become acculturated to a different host culture
  • What applied to culture shock also applies to reverse culture shock
  • Expectation that home is the same, but things may have changed

 

Acculturation Example

  • Lets compare Japan with USA
  • Acculturating to the USA might be easy
    • Large population of immigrants o You can find a place to fit in
  • Acculturation to Japan might be hard o 98%
  • No adjustment stage in Japan –even after 5 years o There’s only honeymoon and perpetual crisis
  • Mexicans living in USA
    • Generation 1: born in Mexico o Generation 2: Parents born in Mexico o Generation 3: grandparents born in Mexico o Generation 4 and 5 etc
  • Completed acculturation scale in English/Spanish
    • Extent associated o They start to like USA more

 

Cultural Distance and Language Key Point

  • The ease of learning a new language is influenced by how different the languages are
  • The ease of learning a new culture is influenced by how different the cultures are
  • It is relatively easy to determine how different languages are
  • It is much more complicated to determine how different cultures are

 

Indigenous Canadian Tribes and Acculturation to Canada

 Eastern Cree, northern Quebec

    • Migratory and low stratification
    • Least similar to Canadian society
  • Carrier, rocky mountains in northern BC – Moderate stratification
    • More similar to Canadian society
  • Tsimshian, northwest pacific coast
    • Stratified permanent settlements
    • Most similar to Canadian society
  • Measured acculturation in a variety of ways
  • Tsimshian had least difficulties acculturating, then Carrier, and Cree had the most difficulties

 

Mexicans in USA

  • Generation 1 similar to separation (positive heritage and negative host)
  • Generation 2 shows integration (positive host and heritage)
  • Generations 3 to 5 similar to assimilation (positive host and negative heritage)

 

Acculturation Score

 Host and Heritage scores high?

    • Integration
  • Host score high, Heritage score low?
    • Assimilation
  • Host score low, Heritage score high? – Separation
  • Host and Heritage scores low?
    • Marginalization

 

Taking on a new Culture

 The longer you live in USA, the more likely you will be obese  Diet

 

Different, but often unequal

  • Immigrants often face prejudice and discrimination
  • Prejudice: preconceived opinion about someone, especially of a hostile nature, regarding a group (religious, racial, national group) (thoughts) o Blacks aren’t as smart
  • Discrimination: treating someone based on prejudice (behavior)

o Not hiring a competent black person because of your prejudice

 

Interacting in a New Culture

  • Might fear confirming negative stereotypes
    • Called stereotype threat o Can negatively affect performance
  • Claude Steele
  • Lots of research
  • Several possible mechanisms
  • Toni Schmader
    • Lot of important work on stereotype thret

 

Stereotype Threat

  • Occurs when ones concept of self and expectations for success conflict with negative stereotypes
  • An African American wanting to succeed an intellectual exam conflicts with neg sterotype that perform poorly on these exams  This leads to:
    • Stress (increased heart rate, etc)
    • Monitoring (paying attention to your performance)
  • Stress, Monitoring, And appraisal Processes decrease working memory
  • Working memoery
    • Holds info in the mind, the stuff you are thinking about
    • Related to performance on controlled tasks (ones you do when you are consciously thinking, like taking a test

 

BOXES TO KNOW Integrated Process Model

  • Sterotype threat , physiological stress response, monitor processing , and appraisal

 

Confirming Stereotypes

  • Stereotype threat can lead to confirming negative stereotypes
  • Black people and white people students
  • Took test, similar to GRE
  • Sometimes asked to indicate their race before exam
  • Very little difference in black and white subjects when NOT primed
  • But drastic differences when they stated their ethnicity

 

  • Race Prime did little to white students
  • Black students did worse when reminded of their race
    • Stereotype threat
    • Appear to confirm the stereotype

 

Confirming Stereotypes

  • Stereotype threat can lead to confirming negative stereotypes
    • Blacks do worse on exam
    • White men do worse on math tests when compared to Asian men o Whites do worse on motor tasks compared to blacks o Women do worse math tests when in room with men
    • Low caste Indians do worse on intellectual tasks when caste is salient

 

  • When you put them (stereotypes) in the stereotype threat situations they do worse

 

Harmless Stereotypes

  • Mascot for the Cleveland Indians baseball team
  • Completed a varierty of measures
  • Those presented with stereotypes reported:

o Lower self-esteem o Less pride in community  o Fewer achievement goals

  • Even though they appear harmless, these images can have detrimental effects on those they depict

 

Multicultural People

  • Chinese student living in Canada
  • Does she act more chinese, or Canadian  Explanations of how people act:
    • Blending: tendency for bicultural ppl to act in ways that roughly fall in between two cultures
    • Not quite chinese typical, but not quite Canadian typical  Frame-Switching:
    • Tendency for bicultural ppl to switch between different cultural selves o Can act chinese and Canadian depending on which self is activated

 

Blending Evidence

  • Measured self-esteem in Canada
  • More exposure you have of western life, the more you show of western life
  • Takes about 3 generations to be fully acculturated
  • Chinese people have low self esteem

 

Frame-Switching Evidence

  • Hong kong students are exposed
  • Evidence for frame switching and blending
  • Frame-switching in monocultural

o Shows similar priming effects as bicultural o You can pride interdependence vs independence