Acculturation

Acculturation is a common feature of the global era. It is the process of cultural and psychological change that takes place as a result of contact between cultural groups and their individual members. Such contact and change occur for many reasons (such as colonization and migration); it continues after initial contact in culturally plural societies, where ethnocultural communities maintain features of their heritage cultures over generations, and it takes place in both groups in contact. Adaptation to acculturation takes place over time; occasionally it is stressful, but often it results in some form of mutual accommodation.

The initial interest in acculturation examined the effects of European domination of colonial and indigenous peoples. Later, it focused on how immigrants (both voluntary and involuntary) changed following their entry and settlement into receiving societies. More recently, much of the work has been involved with how ethnocultural groups and individuals relate to each other, and how they change, as a result of their attempts to live together in culturally plural societies. Nowadays, all three foci are important areas of research, as globalization results in ever-larger trading and political relations.

The concept of psychological acculturation was introduced by Theodore D. Graves in 1967; it refers to changes in an individual who is a participant in a culture contact situation, being influenced both directly by the external (usually dominant) culture and by the changing culture (usually nondominant) of which the individual is a member. There are two reasons for keeping the cultural and psychological levels distinct. The first is that in cross-cultural psychology, individual human behavior is viewed as interacting with the cultural context within which it occurs; hence, separate conceptions and measurements are required at the two levels. The second reason is that not every group or individual enters into, participates in, or changes in the same way; there are vast group and individual differences in psychological acculturation, even among people who live in the same acculturative arena.

At the cultural level, there is a need to understand key features of the two original cultural groups prior to their major contact. It is also important to understand the nature of their contact relationships and the resulting cultural changes in both the original groups and in the ethnocultural groups that emerge following contact during the process of acculturation. These changes can be minor or substantial and range from being easily accomplished to being a source of major cultural disruption.

At the individual level, there is a need to consider the psychological changes that individuals in all groups undergo and to examine their eventual adaptation to their new situations. These changes can be a set of rather easily accomplished behavioral shifts (e.g., in ways of speaking, dressing, and eating), or they can be more problematic, producing acculturative stress as manifested by uncertainty, anxiety, and depression. Adaptations can be primarily internal or psychological (e.g., sense of well-being or self-esteem) or sociocultural (e.g., as manifested in competence in the activities of daily intercultural living).

As noted earlier, not every group or individual engages the acculturation process in the same way. The concept of acculturation strategies refers to the various ways that groups and individuals seek to acculturate. These variations have challenged the assumption that everyone would assimilate and become absorbed into the dominant group. At the cultural level, the two groups in contact (whether dominant or nondominant) usually have some notion about what they are attempting to do (e.g., colonial policies). At the individual level, persons will vary within their cultural group (e.g., on the basis of their educational or occupational background).

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