Living in Multicultural Worlds_1

LIVING IN
MULTICULTURAL
WORLDS
Por Rochelle Hernández

■ Process by which people migrate to and learn a
culture that is different from their original (or
heritage) culture
■ Difficult to study

What do you think happens to
people’s cultural psychology
when they move to a culture that
is different from the one where
they were raised?

Psychological adjustment
 Aquiring a new language, learning new interpersonal and social
behaviors, adjusting one’s self concept
Key Terms
 Migrants
 Heritage culture
 Host culture
 Sojourners
 Immigrants
Studies
 Numerous done to explore migrants’ psychological adjustment

■ Lysgaard study found a
pattern in Norwegian
Fulbright Scholars that
came to US
(1) U Shaped Curve
- Honeymoon
- Culture Shock
- Adjustment
■ Creation of a W Shaped
Curve (Gullahorn &
Gullahorn, 1963)
Sverre Lysgaard U-Curve of
Cultural Adjustment (1955)
(months)

 It’s thought that success of people’s acculturation experiences are
influenced by the homogeneity of the society to which they are
trying to acculturate
 Heterogeneous cultures thought to be better
 Sojourner Adjustment: The Case of Foreigners in Japan (Hsiao-
Ying, 1995)
 US vs Japan: Japan, L shape (no adjustment)
 Possible that adjustment phase takes longer in homogenous
societies

What are some factors that
influence how people will adjust
to their acculturation
experiences?

 Cultural Distance
 Cultural Fit
 Acculturation Strategies

 Difference between two cultures in their overall ways of life
 More cultural difference someone needs to travel, more difficulty person will
have in acculturating (Harder if cultures are more different)
 One way to test the above hypothesis is to compare performance on various
measurements of acculturation across countries
 One test that’s looked at a lot is ones over language performance (i.e. the
TOEFL)
 Another study looked at overall cultural difference in general (Ward and
Kennedy, 1995)
 Distance within same country

 Is the degree to which an individual’s personality is more similar to the dominant
cultural values in host culture
 Greater the cultural fit of a person with host culture, more easily he/she should
acculturate to it
 Extraversion
 Silventoinen et al., 2008
 Searle & Warde, 1989

 Berry & Sam, 1997
 2 issues
 Did people attempt to participate in host culture?
 Are people striving to maintain their own heritage culture and identity as members of that
culture?

 Other’s adopting “American Lifestyle”
 Geol, McCarthy, Phillips, & Wee, 2004
 US eating habits
 Marmot & Syme, 1976
 Japanese and heart disease
 Immigrants and descendents exposed to harmful discrimination

What are some of the psychological
costs of being a member of a culture
that is actively discriminated against by
others?

 People from diff cultures not all treated with equal respect
 Happens to those who move to a new culture and to those whose ancestors are from diff cultural
background
 Stereotype threat
 African-Am & schooling
 Steele et al., 1995
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTYMSulvnyw (1:03)
 Coping with stress of stereotype
 Disidentify
 Avoiding

How are people’s minds different if they
have lived in two distinct cultures
throughout their lives?

■ If people’s self-concepts and ways of thinking are shaped
by their cultural experiences, then what kind of self-concept
do people have who live in more than one culture?
■ Blending vs Frame Switching
■ Studies on both

 People’s self-concepts reflect a hybrid of their two
cultural words
 Study by Heine & Lehman in 2004
 Self-esteem of Japanese exchange students in
Canada vs Canadian English teachers in Japan
 Self-esteem of 7 levels of Japanese who never
left Japan to those of Euro-descent Canadians

 Thought to be when bicultural people are able to switch between different cultural selves
 They don’t blend or lose culture
 Different selves can be selectivity activated by cultral cues/contexts
 Navigating language. Switch, don’t blend
 W.E.B. Du Bois (1903/1989)
 Af-Am; two selves/thoughts/etc.
 Behave different in certain contexts; rules of school vs rules of street (aka “code-switching” from “decent to
street”)
 Conscious process
 Studies
 Fish (Hong et al., 2000)
 Brain clusters related info in networks, this is how priming works.
 Unconscious process
 Bicultural Identity Integration

Do you think multicultural people are
more creative?

 More than one perspective may allow you to learn
how to see the world in novel ways, fostering
creativity
 Ang Lee
 Alejandro González Iñárritu
 Will Maddux and Adam Galinsky (2009)
 Measured creativity and identified correlations between levels
of creativity and living abroad
 3 groups
 Primed first then asked to draw an alien

“Dimensions in Acculturation: One, Two, or Many?” (De Vijver, 2015)
Says that there has been a shift on acculturation models from one- to
two- to multidimensional models
Describes each models and explains strengths/weaknesses
Argues that shift to two- and multidimensional models reflect complex
reality of psychological acculturation and changing nature of
migration in last 100 yrs

● Lysgaard, S. (1955) Adjustment in a foreign society: Norwegian Fulbright grantees visiting the United States.
International Social Science Bulletin, 7, 45-51.
● Gullahorn, J.R., & Gullahorn, J.E. (1962). An extension of the u-curve hypothesis. Journal of Social Issues, 3, 33-47.
● Oberg, K. (1960). Culture shock: Adjustment to new cultural environments. Practical Anthropology, 7, 177-182.
● Gaw, K. (2000). Reverse culture shock in students returning from overseas. International Journal of Intercultural
Relations, 24, 89-104.
● Maddux, W.W. & Galinsky, A.H. (2010). When in rome . . . learn why the Romans do what they do: How Multicultural
Learning Experiences Facilitate Creativity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36, 731-741.
● De Vijver, F.J.R. (2015). Dimensions in Acculturation: One, Two, or Many? Psihologia Resurselor Umane, 13, 32-38.
● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTYMSulvnyw
● Heine, S.J. (2012). Cultural Psychology (2nd ed). New York: Norton.

Living in Multicultural Worlds_1

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