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Benjamin Cheung

Chapter 7—Living in Multicultural Worlds

Cultural Psychology

Third Edition

Steven J. Heine

Chapter Objectives

In this chapter, you will:

Appreciate the difficulty of engaging in research on acculturation

Differentiate between different types of migrants

Differentiate between how the U- and L-shaped curves represent attitudes toward different host cultures

Define cultural distance and cultural fit

Explain how acculturation can be affected by cultural distance, cultural fit, and acculturation strategies

Explain John Berry’s model of four different acculturation strategies

Understand how acculturation can lead to negative consequences

Chapter Objectives

In this chapter, you will:

Compare and contrast how identity denial and stereotype threat have consequences in multicultural contexts

Define blending and frame-switching

Differentiate between blending and frame-switching

Define bicultural identity integration

Explain the relationship between bicultural identity integration and frame-switching

Define integrative complexity

Understand how multicultural experiences affect creativity

Overriding Themes in This Chapter

How does intercultural contact affect the way people think?

How do majority and minority cultures coexist with each other?

Acculturation Research

Acculturation = process by which people migrate to and learn a culture that’s different from their heritage culture

Sizeable pool of existing research but not very coherent or empirically grounded

The findings are vague and contradictory

Hard to render generalizable results

Acculturation Research

Research on this topic is especially difficult

People migrate for different reasons—as refugees, to seek wealth, to study.

People migrate to different contexts—cultural ghettos, homogenous neighborhoods, cultures that actively discriminate against them.

People’s heritage cultures vary in similarity to the culture of the new environment.

Individuals have different personalities, goals, motivations.

What Happens When We Move

Migrating is often associated with stress.

Moving to a new culture involves psychological adjustment, which can often be associated with stress.

One common pattern of acculturation is captured by a U-shaped curve:

Honeymoon period in the beginning due to novelty

Culture shock often accompanied by homesickness

People often go through a similar pattern after returning home—reverse culture shock

In more homogenous cultures, the adjustment phase of the curve is sometimes not experienced, yielding an L-shaped curve.

Who Adjusts Better?

Several factors that predict adjustment to new host culture:

Cultural distance

Cultural fit

Acculturation strategies

Discussion: What do you think predicts adjustment to a new host culture?

Discussion: What do you think predicts adjustment to new host culture?

There are several factors that may predict how well a person may adjust to the new host culture.

Cultural distance

Cultural fit

Acculturation strategies

Who Adjusts Better?— Cultural Distance

Cultural distance = how much two cultures differ in their overall ways of life

One line of evidence comes from language— the closer one’s mother tongue is to English, the easier it is for them to learn English

Similarly, the more similar one’s heritage culture is to the host culture, the less acculturative stress they experience.

More successful adjustment was seen among Malaysian exchange students who studied in Singapore than those who studied in New Zealand.

Who Adjusts Better?— Cultural Fit

Cultural fit = the degree to which one’s personality is more similar to the dominant cultural values in the host culture

Evidence suggests that people who are high in extraversion fare well in largely extraverted cultures, but have problems fitting in in less extraverted cultures

People with more independent self-concepts suffer less distress in acculturating to the U.S. than those with more interdependent self-concepts

Who Adjusts Better?— Acculturation Strategies

Two issues with implications for outcome of acculturation:

Attitudes toward host culture

Attitudes toward heritage culture

These two lead to distinct strategies that affect the acculturation experience.

Attitudes toward host culture

Does the individual participate in the larger society of the host culture?

Does the individual seek to fit in?

Attitudes toward heritage culture

Does the individual seek ways to preserve the traditions of his or her heritage culture?

Who Adjusts Better? Acculturation Strategies

Attitudes toward host and heritage cultures are seen as being independent from each other.

This yields John Berry’s model of four acculturation strategies.

Integration

Marginalization

Who Adjusts Better? Acculturation Strategies

Positive attitudes toward host and heritage culture

Participate in host culture while maintaining traditions of heritage culture

Most successful strategy—least prejudice and greatest social support

Negative attitudes towards host and heritage culture

No effort to engage with host and heritage cultures

Rare and least successful strategy

May characterize third culture kids

Attitudes toward host and heritage cultures are seen as being independent from each other.

This yields four acculturation strategies.

1. Integration = individual attempts to fit in and fully participate in host culture, while also maintaining heritage culture

Associated with the least acculturative stress and the most successful strategy

Success likely due to least amount of prejudice experienced and access to greatest level of social support due to access to both cultural groups

2. Marginalization = negative attitudes toward both host and heritage cultures; relatively rare

May characterize third culture kids (people who have grown up in different cultures across childhood)

Associated with neuroticism

Weakest social support

Separation

Assimilation

Who Adjusts Better? Acculturation Strategies

Negative attitudes toward host but positive attitudes toward heritage culture

Participate in host culture while maintaining traditions of heritage culture

Positive attitudes toward host but negative attitudes toward heritage culture

Participate in host culture while leaving behind traditions of heritage culture

3. Assimilation = individual attempts to fit in and fully participate in host culture and rejects one’s heritage culture

4. Separation = individual maintains heritage culture and does not try to fit in with host culture

Neither of one these two strategies is better than the other.

Who Adjusts Better?— Acculturation Strategies

A host culture that expresses prejudice against one’s heritage cultural group diminishes one’s motivation to fit in.

People who have distinctly different physical characteristics from the host culture are more prone to pursue marginalization or separation.

Who Adjusts Better?— Acculturation Strategies

People low in socioeconomic status (SES) or indigenous groups also generally adopt separation or marginalization strategies due to frustrations with the host culture.

A culture that values cultural diversity and the acceptance of multiculturalism is more likely to encourage integration or assimilation.

Is Acculturation Always Good?

Acculturating may not always be beneficial—not all cultural habits are inherently good.

Length of stay in the United States is associated with higher rates of obesity.

Japanese immigrants who embraced little of their heritage culture were at greater risk of coronary heart disease.

The less that Vietnamese immigrants were integrated to New Orleans, the more they achieved in school, and the more upwardly mobile they were.

Prejudice

Discrimination can be a large problem in contexts where there is intercultural interaction.

It can impact the acculturation process in two ways.

Prejudice

Identity denial—questioning someone’s cultural identity because he or she does not match the prototype of the culture

The first effect is identity denial, or the questioning of someone’s cultural identity because that person does not match the prototype of the culture.

This is often encountered when ethnic minorities who are born in the host culture are asked “No, seriously, where are you REALLY from?” or are assumed to not properly speak the language of the host culture.

Research has found that when, for example, Asian-Americans’ “American” identity is threatened or questioned, such as being asked whether they spoke English, participants were more likely to subsequently assert their American identity by ordering typically American food.

This shows how simple interactions can have a strong impact on ethic groups in a multicultural society.

Prejudice

2. Stereotype threat—anxieties about one’s group’s negative stereotypes lead one to confirm those stereotypes

The second effect of discrimination is stereotype threat. This occurs when a person is reminded of, or thinking about, those negative stereotypes about his or her group—even if the he or she does not believe those stereotypes are true.

One consistent finding is that African-Americans underperform compared to European-Americans in college, even after controlling for their level of preparation.

Many negative stereotypes exist about African-American academic performance, so an African-American student will be reminded of those stereotypes in academic settings.

Such anxiety leads to stress, and subsequently hinders performance.

Prejudice

Demonstrated in a study involving African-Americans and European-Americans taking a GRE test

African-American

Condition 2:

Condition 1:

This was also shown in a study involving African-Americans and European-Americans taking a GRE test (a standardized test for entering graduate-level programs).

One condition: There was no manipulation; participants just took the test as is.

Another condition: They took the test after first indicating their race.

Prejudice

African-American students answered fewer items correctly after indicating their race.

European-American students were unaffected by indicating their race.

Prejudice

Subtle primes can elicit stereotype threat with dramatic consequences.

People deal with negative stereotypes by:

Disidentifying with the stereotyped domain (e.g. “I don’t care about school”)

Avoiding reminders of the stereotype (e.g. “I’m going to drop out of school”)

Not isolated to African-Americans and academic performance

The same effect has also been found concerning women and math, as well as European-Americans and sports performance.

Multicultural People

For biculturals, their multicultural experiences impact the self-concept in two ways:

Blending

Frame-switching

What about how people who are acculturating actually handle the different cultural perspectives that they are exposed to?

This is easiest to consider when thinking about biculturals—people who have two cultural systems.

For biculturals, their multicultural experiences impact the self-concept in two ways:

Blending

Frame-switching

Multicultural People

Blending = people’s self-concepts reflect a hybrid of their two cultural words

Evidence suggests that, for the most part, multicultural people appear intermediate on many assessments compared to monocultural people from different cultures.

This is especially evident with Asian Americans, whose ways of thinking tend to be sandwiched between Americans’ and Asians’ ways of thinking.

Multicultural People

For example, when Japanese had lived in Canada for seven months, their self-esteem increased significantly.

In contrast, when Canadians had lived in Japan for seven months, their self-esteem decreased significantly.

Multicultural People

In a more cogent example, self-esteem levels of Asian-Canadians were measured and compared to Canadians and Asians.

In this sample, Japanese who had never been abroad scored the lowest, while European-Canadians scored the highest.

Self-esteem levels of Asian-Canadians were intermediate between them.

Multicultural People

Frame-switching = people maintain multiple self-concepts and switch between them depending on context

Rather than blending two self-concepts, people switch between them.

Such self-concepts are represented by a network of ideas in the mind.

Code-switching = a specific instance of frame-switching in which, for example, inner-city African-American children quickly learn to switch between the norms and rules that govern their interactions with mainstream society, schools, and workplaces and those that govern how they act “on the street.”

Multicultural People

Beyond subcultures within the United States, other biculturals also experience frame-switching.

Biculturals have been investigated to see whether primes of cultural ideas lead them to switch between different thinking styles.

Multicultural People

Students from Hong Kong (due to their history as a British colony) were shown images that were either neutral, or primed Western ideas (e.g., Mt. Rushmore and the statue of liberty) or Chinese ideas (e.g., a Chinese dragon and the Great Wall).

Multicultural People

External attribution: A fish is being chased.

Internal attribution: A fish is leading other fish.

The students were then shown a picture of a school of fish and asked why one fish is swimming ahead of the others.

Theoretically:

Participants primed with Chinese ideas should use external attributions (something about the pack) due to less of a perception that people are bounded entities and more perception that they are affected by the environment.

Participants primed with Western ideas should use internal attributions (something about the fish) due to a greater perception of the impact of dispositions.

Multicultural People

Accordingly, American primes led to the fewest external attributions.

Chinese primes led to the most external attributions.

Hong Kong participants have access to both Western and non-Western ways of thinking—which one they use depends on which one is activated.

Multicultural People

Frame-switching depends on important individual factor, called bicultural identity integration.

Do biculturals see their different cultural identities as being compatible, or in opposition, with each other?

High bicultural identity integration means seeing the two cultural identities as being compatible with each other and living with both of them, integrated, every day. This leads to fluid frame-switching.

Low bicultural identity integration means that one must choose between identifying with one cultural identity versus the other at any given time as they are seen as being in opposition with each other. This leads to more difficulty in frame-switching.

Multicultural People

Other kinds of primes have shown similar evidence for frame-switching.

Speaking in one language primes people to have a self-concept associated with that language (e.g. answering a questionnaire in Chinese primes Chinese self-concepts).

Interestingly, much research finds that priming ideas in anyone (monocultural or multicultural) leads to activation of associated networks.

However, multicultural people show more pronounced effects of priming due to more clear-cut networks in their minds.