Acculturation and Globalization

Question 1

acculturation

Answer 1

• Consequences of people from different cultural groups being in continuous first-hand contact → change occurs in one or both groups
• Not just about the non-dominant group adjusting to the dominant groups → bi-directional relationship
• Can occur at group-level or individual-level

Question 2

group-level acculturation

Answer 2

• 3 possible outcomes:
• • destructive
• • reactive
• • creative
• none of these outcomes are inherently positive or negative

Question 3

group-level acculturation: destructive outcomes

Answer 3

• Loss of culture through absorption or elimination due to continuous contact with another cultural group
• Ex. Indian Residential School System (negative outcome); loss of dangerous/painful cultural practices like foot binding (positive outcome)

Question 4

group-level acculturation: reactive outcomes

Answer 4

• Groups re-establish their original cultures by revitalizing or reaffirming them
• Ex. language schools (ie. Chinese school), language revitalization efforts (ie. Squamish immersion house)

Question 5

group-level outcomes: creative outcomes

Answer 5

• New cultures or cultural information emerge through interactions between the original cultures
• Ex. fusion food, religion (different practices across the world)

Question 6

individual-level acculturation

Answer 6

• Acculturation takes on multiple strategies that reflect how people reconcile norms and values of:
• • Culture of origin
• • Culture of dominant society
• Acculturation strategies:
• • unidimensional model (mutual exclusion model)
• • 2-dimensional model

Question 7

individual-level acculturation: unidimensional model

Answer 7

• Assimilation: adopting mainstream culture and rejecting heritage culture
• Separation: rejecting mainstream culture and retaining heritage culture
• Both of these strategies assume that adoption of dominant norms and values is inversely related to retention of original norms and values

Question 8

individual-level acculturation: 2-dimensional model

Answer 8

• Mainstream identification can be high or low
• Heritage identification can be high or low
• Leads to 4 acculturation styles:
• • Integration, assimilation, separation, marginalization

Question 9

2-dimensional model: integration

Answer 9

• Strongly identifies with both mainstream and heritage culture; positive feelings towards both
• Participate in host culture but maintain traditions of heritage culture
• Most successful strategy (more social support - social networks in both cultures)

Question 10

2-dimensional model: assimilation

Answer 10

• Strongly identifies with mainstream culture, but not with heritage culture; positive feelings towards mainstream, negative feelings towards heritage
• Participate in host culture and leave behind traditions of heritage culture

Question 11

2-dimensional model: separation

Answer 11

• Strongly identifies with heritage culture, not with mainstream culture; positive feelings towards heritage, negative towards mainstream
• Ignore host culture and maintain traditions of heritage culture

Question 12

2-dimensional model: marginalization

Answer 12

• No identification with either culture; negative feelings towards both
• Least common strategy

Question 13

predictors of acculturation strategies

Answer 13

• High prejudice from host culture → high levels of separation
• Migrant’s lower socioeconomic status → high levels of marginalization or separation (financially “locked out” of host culture)
• Host valuing cultural diversity and multiculturalism → higher integration or assimilation

Question 14

impacts of acculturation strategies

Answer 14

Even second and third generation Muslim Europeans have engaged in extremist radicalization → prejudice against Muslim migrants accounts for significant component of radicalization process

Question 15

global orientation

Answer 15

• Individual differences in receptiveness to cultural globalization
• Can be affective, cognitive, and behavioural
• 2 types of responses: proactive responses and defensive responses

Question 16

global orientation: proactive responses

Answer 16

• receptive to acquiring new cultures
• • Appreciating cultural diversity (affective)
• • Having diverse knowledge of other cultural groups (cognitive)
• • Learning the languages and norms of other cultural groups and making social contact with cultural others (behavioural)
• • Associated with promotion orientation: motivation to try to achieve and approach positive outcomes (ie. learning new things, having new experiences)
• • Tend to have higher levels of cross-cultural efficacy: more confidence in one’s ability to engage in cross-cultural interactions

Question 17

global orientation: defensive responses

Answer 17

• focus in on affirming one’s ethnic culture
• • Feeling uneasy about cultural interactions (affective)
• • Believing in superiority of one’s own cultural group (cognitive)
• • Insisting on sticking to norms of ethnic culture and doesn’t try to make social contact with cultural others (behavioural)
• • Associated with prevention orientation: motivation to try to avoid losses and other negative outcomes (ie. avoiding potential undesirable consequences of globalization such as losing an aspect of your culture)
• • Tend to have lower levels of cross-cultural efficacy: less confidence in one’s ability to engage in cross-cultural interactions

Question 18

impacts of proactive responses

Answer 18

• For those from mainstream culture:
• • Fosters more tolerance for other cultural groups
• • Predicts more frequent, pleasant intercultural contact
• Migrants have better acculturation outcomes (psychological well-being and cultural competence), and perceive less discrimination

Question 19

impacts of defensive responses

Answer 19

• For those from mainstream culture:
• • Higher levels of separation and marginalization from cultural minority
• Migrants have greater acculturative stress

Question 20

ways globalization impacts us

Answer 20

• self-identity
• quality of life
• mental health
• interpersonal/intergroup relationships
• environment

Question 21

ways globalization impacts us: self-identity

Answer 21

• Traditional theories of the self focus on traditional characteristics of individuals (ie. personality traits, individual characteristics)
• Also includes characteristics of cultures as embodied by individuals (ie. independence vs. interdependence, holistic vs. analytic thinking)
• What’s needed: greater focus on individual differences within contexts (cultural fit)
• influences third culture kids

Question 22

cultural fit

Answer 22

cultural context emphasizes same characteristics that a person has → we can best adjust to a new environment if our characteristics match what that cultural context emphasizes (ex. An extrovert will do a lot better in a culture that emphasizes extroversion)

Question 23

third-culture kids

Answer 23

• First culture: heritage culture; second culture: heritage culture + another culture; third culture: a whole new cultural perspective
• Lack a rooted sense of belonging in a particular country → feel like outsiders
• • Feel like they can adjust everywhere, but don’t belong anywhere
• • Belong more strongly to relationships and as citizens of the world than to countries
• More chameleon-like in interactions → changing, fluid identities
• • Hard to find people who understand their experience or can affirm their identity
• • Identity not fixed or permanent - highly fluid and adaptive
• • Some suggest high levels of marginalization as an acculturation strategy

Question 24

ways globalization impacts us: quality of life

Answer 24

• Deterritorialization of information: information is no longer segmented by territory
• • Engagement in global and local networks of information
• • Sense of subjective overload → difficult to manage the amount of info that’s easily accessible
• • The absent-present phenomenon: physically present, but psychologically disengaged in a virtual realm

Question 25

ways globalization impacts us: mental health

Answer 25

• Western models of mental health are very different compared to those of other cultures
• When working with other cultures in terms of mental health, certain things are critical to understand:
• • Must learn about local culture (what are their needs? customs?)
• • Insistence on Western therapy harms effective cultural systems and indigenous ways of healing
• • Psychological conditions contain cultural meaning that’s embedded in our cultural systems (ie. some cultures consider schizophrenia to be positive)

Question 26

Western models of mental health: Posttraumatic stress disorder and the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia

Answer 26

• after the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia, Western psychologists went to impacted countries to try to help people work through their trauma
• However, counsellors knew little about the region, didn’t consult with local informants, assumed universality of trauma responses, and ignored cultural traditions regarding traumatic events
• Westerners were unprepared for the resilience of Sri Lankans, saying that many of them were in denial; Hindu and Buddhist beliefs helped promote resilience

Question 27

Western vs. Sri Lankan responses to traumatic events

Answer 27

• Western response to traumatic events:
• • Centered around damage to individual psyche
• • Associated with a lot of fear, anxiety, and other emotional consequences
• • Negative social consequences occur because of damage to individual psyche
• • Must directly talk through experience - should not avoid discussing traumatic events
• Sri Lankan response to traumatic events:
• • Centered around damage to social relationships
• • Associated with physical ailments like joint pains and muscle aches
• • Negative social consequences as a source of distress
• • Cultural mechanisms to only talk about certain traumatic events using euphemisms (talk around it)

Question 28

ways globalization impacts us: interpersonal/intergroup relations

Answer 28

• More globalization = more intergroup contact → higher likelihood of intergroup conflict (especially when groups see their culture “threatened”)
• • More countries involved in conflicts, consequences affect more countries

Question 29

ways globalization impacts us: environment

Answer 29

• Climate change:
• • Less developed nations are less complicit, but more impacted that more developed nations
• • Impact:
• – Rising temperature and aggression
• – Increased natural disasters and trauma
• – Increased intergroup conflict over natural resources (primarily water)

Question 30

Kurtis & Adams reading: what are the points they’re making?

Answer 30

• major issue with cultural psych is that researchers often rely on broad national or racial/ethnic categories (ie. “Asians”, “Chinese-Americans”), which essentializes people and leads to stereotypical generalizations
• a mutual constitution framework could help reduce this issue because it emphasizes the dynamic production of culture and mind and doesn’t rely on stereotypes

Question 31

mutual constitution

Answer 31

the process by which mind and culture dynamically influence and create each other

Question 32

essentialism

Answer 32

Objects in the world exist in fundamentally different categories, and there’s an “essence” that underlies fundamental differences

Question 33

genetic essentialism

Answer 33

• Believing that people are different because of inherent genetic differences
• Associated with social dominance orientation (thinking that there are inherent hierarchies between groups)
• Associated with higher levels of sexism
• Associated with high levels of racism

Question 34

ultimately, what is culture?

Answer 34

• The way we were raised and taught
• The interactions we have with people
• The collection of our experiences
• Culture is NOT genetic essentialism