PSYC 307 Lecture 7: 14 Feb 2019 - Acculturation - Living in Multicultural Worlds
Document Summary
Research on acculturation is very important but difficult to do. Ideally, studying how people acquire new cultures would be conducted longitudinally, but this is rarely done. People move to different cultures for many different reasons - some move as refugees, some move to study, and some as young children with their families. People move to many different kinds of contexts - cultural ghettos, homogeneous neighborhoods, expatriate communities, or cultures which actively discriminate against them. Cultures vary in their similarity to people"s heritage culture. Furthermore, people have different personalities, goals, and expectations that affect their acculturation. Hence, people"s experiences vary tremendously and there are few universal acculturation findings. Moving to a new culture involves physiological adjustment, and psychological adjustment can often be associated with stress. One common pattern of acculturation is captured by a u-shaped curve. The u-shaped curve is quite common, although some people never experience the honeymoon phase.
