Module 3: Living in Multicultural Worlds

Question 1

What are the different stages of acculturation?

Answer 1

Stage 1: Honeymoon
Stage 2: Culture Shock
Stage 3: Adjustment
Stage 4: Adaptation

Question 2

What is Stage 1: Honeymoon?

Answer 2

Culture is new and exciting, positively surprised by host culture & have an amazing time
Dreams & expectations about the future seem to be coming true
In a new environment, we tend to overlook the negative & see only the new, fresh, & exciting
Once the novelty fades, individuals move into stage 2

Question 3

What is Stage 2: Culture Shock (acculturative stress)?

Answer 3

Rejection phase:
Realities of life (housing, employment, & family) can become overwhelming
Feelings of frustration & hostility
Reality kicks in & start noticing more & more negative aspects of host culture
People may start to make unfair comparisons between host culture & heritage culture
People may want to withdraw
The most difficult stage of the acculturation process
Regression phase:
Start hanging out more & more with people from heritage culture in an attempt to deal with stressful changes & to belong

Question 4

What is Stage 3: Adjustment (recovery phase)?

Answer 4

Adjustment & emergent comfort in new culture
Feeling more connected to host culture
More familiar with new environments, make new friends, feel more comfortable using target language, appreciate differences between own culture & new one

Question 5

What is Stage 4: Adaptation (acceptance)?

Answer 5

Bridging cultural barriers & accepting new culture

The newcomer adapts and accepts new culture

Question 6

What does the modified “W shape” curve tell us about the second “wave” that is indicative of deeper cultural and personal issues?

Answer 6

Facing deeper cultural & personal issues:
Fundamental disagreement in social, cultural, & political issues
Personal experience in discrimination
More shock and recoil
May result in mental isolation
Requires further adjustment, search for meaning, synthesis, etc.

Question 7

What is Cultural Distance

Answer 7

The difference between two cultures in their overall ways of life – the more cultural distance someone needs to travel, the harder the acculturation process
Language:
People’s confidence in their mastery over host culture’s language greatly affects how they identify with that culture
The easier it is for migrants to learn the language of their host culture, the better they fare in the acculturation process
E.g. If host culture is an Anglo-American country, those who grew up speaking languages that are highly similar to English (e.g. Germanic languages such as Dutch or German) perform better than those who grew up speaking other European languages or non-European languages
Other skills and tasks – making friends, figuring out how to find a doctor, where to go to get a driver’s license, how to cook unfamiliar foods sold at the market
Native indigenous people – have to acculturate to a new set of values imposed on them by a colonial force e.g. indigenous native populations in Canada, the United States, and the aboriginal populations in Australia

Question 8

What is Cultural Fit?

Answer 8

People vary great deal within cultures – some fare better in acculturation process than others regardless of their heritage culture
Cultural fit is the degree to which an individual’s personality is compatible with the dominant values of the host culture:
The greater the cultural fit, the more easily they acculturate to the host culture
E.g. people who have more similar to those of the host culture experience greater relational well-being

Question 9

How does extraversion help in Cultural fit?

Answer 9

Extraversion facilitates communication everywhere, hence in general extraverts fare better in the acculturation experience than introverts.
However, highly extraverted newcomers fare better in terms of well-being specifically when they immigrate to countries with overall more pronounced levels of extraversion

Question 10

What is integration?

Answer 10

Efforts to fit in & fully participate in host culture
At the same time striving to maintain traditions of heritage culture
Positive views toward both heritage & host cultures – seeking best of both worlds
Most common strategy
Most successful strategy, result in the lowest level of acculturative stress: reasons:
Incorporates some protective features, including absence of prejudice & discrimination
Involvement in 2 cultural communities with access to two support groups
Clear ethnic identity
Encourages flexible personality

Question 11

What is marginalization?

Answer 11

Little or no effort to participate in host culture
Little or no effort to maintain traditions of heritage culture
Negative views toward both heritage & host cultures
Least common strategy, rare relatively
Least successful – weakens social support

Question 12

What is assimilation?

Answer 12

Efforts to fit in & fully participate in host culture
Make little or no effort to maintain traditions of heritage culture
Positive attitudes toward host culture & negative attitudes toward heritage culture
Reflects a desire to leave behind the ancestral past in order to fit in with new culture
Potential cost: Loss of one’s heritage culture & accompanying social support networks and sense of disconnection with the past

Question 13

What is separation?

Answer 13

Efforts to maintain the traditions of heritage culture
Make little or no effort to participate in host culture
Positive attitudes toward heritage culture & negative attitudes toward host culture
Do not want to acculturate to the host culture – prefer to continue to exist in the cultural world of heritage culture
Potential costs: Rejection of host culture & all its protective features and leading to being rejected by host culture

Question 14

What is the immigrant paradox?

Answer 14

Children of immigrants have a variety of negative outcomes, e.g. lower educational achievement & poorer physical & mental health, than their parents
It is paradoxical b/c children of immigrants are more acculturated, or assimilated, than their immigrant parents
Health outcomes:
Obesity - immigrants who move to Western countries are susceptible to weight gain if they adopt unhealthy eating habits
The longer some immigrants have been in their host country, the more likely they adopt less healthy behaviours such as smoking and drinking
Education:
Vietnamese immigrants in New Orleans:
The better they did in school, the more upwardly mobile they were, & the fewer delinquent acts they committed, the less they were integrated into broader community
B/c many immigrant groups are disadvantaged and discriminated against, they often live in poorer neighbourhoods where the surrounding community is caught up with problems of crime & dropping out of school
Immigrants who assimilate into surrounding community can end up having more problems than those who resist the cultural values of the community
Immigrants tend to have a stronger motivation to do well at school compared to children of immigrants, who have become more acculturated to local norms
B/c European American adolescents are more likely to disrespect authority figure than immigrant adolescents are, the more immigrants are acculturated to the mainstream culture surrounding them, the less seriously they take their studies & the worse they perform in school

Question 15

What is positive stereotyping?

Answer 15

“Positive” stereotypes – “model minority stereotype”: Asian-Canadians = overachievers

Question 16

What are autostereotypes?

Answer 16

Stereotypes about own group

Question 17

What are heterostereotypes?

Answer 17

Stereotypes about other groups

Question 18

What are attributed autostereotypes?

Answer 18

Members from Group 1 think this is how members of Group 2 see themselves (Group 2)

Question 19

What are metastereotypes?

Answer 19

Members from Group 1 think this is how members from Group 2 see them (Group 1)

Question 20

What is subtyping?

Answer 20

Accommodating groups of individuals who deviate from one’s stereotype by thinking of them as a special category of people with different properties

Question 21

What is identity denial?

Answer 21

People’s cultural identity is questioned b/c they are not recognized as matching the prototype of the cultural group to which they belong
For many immigrants, when asked the familiar getting-to-know-you question “Where are you from” the follow-up is often “No, where are you really from?”
Immigrants perceived to not really be from the host culture – their appearance betrays that the person’s ancestors come from some other part of the world, & the questioner is suggesting that the person doesn’t really fit in

Question 22

What is stereotype threat?

Answer 22

Apprehension experienced by members of minority group that they might behave in a manner that confirms an existing cultural stereotype; may lead to:
Performative deficits – being reminded to be Black → ↓ performance in I.Q. test; being reminded to be female → ↓ performance in math test
Disidentification with stereotyped domain – deliberately shun heritage identity

Question 23

What are self-blaming attributions?

Answer 23

Members of stigmatized groups may minimize discrimination they experience & blame themselves for their poor performance
BUT some may be hypervigilent readily attributing negative outcomes to discrimination, to preserve self-esteem

Question 24

What is self-fulfilling prophecy?

Answer 24

Members of stigmatized groups have to ask whether others’ negative or positive behaviour toward them is due to prejudice or to some factor having nothing to do with their group membership
“Did my officemate get the promotion instead of me because I’m so overweight?”

Question 25

What is blending?

Answer 25

Tendency for bi- (or multi-)cultural people to show psychological characteristics in between those of their two (or multiple) cultures
Multicultural people have psychological responses that are intermediate to responses of monocultural people in each culture
E.g. Asian-Americans think not quite like either mainstream Americans or mainstream Asians, but in some way that lies between the two
North Americans much more likely to express positive aspects about themselves (high self-esteem) than East Asians
The more exposure one has to North American culture, the higher one’s self-esteem
It appears to take 3 generations of living in Canada for the self-esteem of East Asians to fully approximate that of European Canadians