Acculturative Stress

Acculturation refers to a process of cultural change that occurs when two or more cultural groups come into contact for an extended time, particularly when individuals in minority groups move into a new culture or host society. This is a complex, dynamic change process whereby individuals continuously negotiate among accepting, adapting to, or denying the characteristics of a majority culture, as well as retaining, changing, or rejecting certain components of their own culture. Psychological acculturation involves an adaptation or change in attitudes, behaviors, values, and identity.

As people undergo the process of cultural change, they often encounter difficulties or challenges in adapting to a new set of cultural customs and behavioral rules in a nonnative society, where they may lack resources and support from their native culture. Acculturative stress is defined as stress related to moving from one's culture of origin to another culture. Although the traditional view held that acculturation inevitably brings tremendous stress, the contemporary view attempts to understand acculturative stress through a lens of a stress-coping model. This model postulates that (1) acculturative stress may occur when the external and internal demands of the acculturation process exceed the individual's coping ability or resources, and (2) the level of acculturative stress depends on multiple factors, such as the mode of acculturation, nature of the acculturating group, characteristics of the host culture, and demographic variables (e.g., age, gender).

For example, it has been found that among international students in the United States, acculturative stress is associated with English fluency, satisfaction with social support, social connectedness, the need for approval, and maladaptive perfectionism. For African American college students, acculturative stress is associated with racial identity and racial socialization. For Latinos, acculturative stress is related to the efficacy of stress-coping resources, degree of acculturation, cohesion of the family, language use, and length of residence in the United States.

Not surprisingly, acculturative stress has been linked to academic performance and negative mental health consequences. For example, acculturative stress has been positively associated with lower academic performance, lower quality of life in general, excessive alcohol intake, body dissatisfaction and bulimia, identity confusion, anxiety, psychosomatic symptoms, depression, and suicidal ideation. Moreover, during the past five years, research related to acculturative stress has begun to identify variables that might mediate or moderate the relationship between acculturative stress and depression. For example, it has been found that maladaptive perfectionism moderates the relationship between acculturative stress and depression in international students. Similarly, perceived social support from friends has been shown to have a buffering effect between acculturative stress and depression for Korean adolescents from immigrant families in the United States. Likewise, family closeness, hopefulness for the future, and financial resources have been found to provide a buffer against the negative effects of acculturative stress experienced by Mexican immigrants. Thus, the relationship between acculturative stress and mental health in not necessarily a simple linear relationship but can be buffered by a range of personality variables, social support, and financial resources.