Acculturation: Living successfully in two cultures

Abstract

The theme of this conference focusses attention on conflict and negotiation. In this paper, I take one example of these issues, and examine the cultural and psychological aspects of these phenomena that take place during the process of acculturation. During acculturation, groups of people and their individual members engage in intercultural contact, producing a potential for conflict, and the need for negotiation in order to achieve outcomes that are adaptive for both parties. Research on aculturation, including acculturation strategies, changes in behaviours, and acculturative stress are reviewed. There are large group and individual differences in how people (in both groups in contact) go about their acculturation (described in terms of the integration, assimilation, separation and marginalisation strategies), in how much stress they experience, and how well they adapt psychologically and socioculturally. Generally, those pursuing the integration strategy experience less stress, and achieve better adaptations than those pursuing marginalisation; the outcomes for those pursuing assimilation and separation experience intermediate levels of stress and adaptation. Implications for public policy and personal orientations towards acculturation are proposed. With respect to the conference theme, since integration requires substantial negotiation, but results in the least conflict, the concepts and findings reviewed here can provide some guidance for the betterment of intercultural relations.

Introduction

The theme of this conference is one of major importance in two senses. “Conflict, negotiation and mediation across cultures” can be understood at both the group and individual levels. At the group level, it engages the fundamental issue of how collectivities, be they empires, nation states, communities or institutions, work out how to relate to each other, ideally through a process of negotiation in order to avoid conflict. At the individual level, the focus is on how persons who are members of different groups work out how to live together, again through negotiation so that conflict is avoided. Probably the main concern of most people attending this conference is linked to current geopolitical events. We all ask: how can peoples of different cultural backgrounds encounter each other, seek avenues of mutual understanding, negotiate and compromise on their initial positions, and achieve some degree of harmonious engagement? This broad question has been addressed for centuries by many disciplines, and from many differing theoretical perspective. In my own work around the time of the shootings at Kent State University (Berry, 1968) I have sought to develop some insights into how two opposing political cultures in Australia understood each other's position on the US American/Australian war in Vietnam, as a basis for furthering dialogue and the avoidance of civil conflict. One party (the Australian Government) was of the view that anti-war militants were “just a few nuts”. In contrast, those opposed to the war saw themselves as motivated by a concern for human life and human rights, rooted in an ethical position of mutual respect. Our research was intended to assess the motives and attitudes of the marchers in order to convey the legitimacy of their concerns, and to undermine their derogation as “nuts”, or people without any coherent position. Similar concerns about where people are coming from, and how they seek to carry out their lives, have lead me over the years to attend to another form of encounter—that which arises for groups and individuals when they come into first hand contact with each other across cultural borders. This involves addressing some basic psychological features of group relations, and in particular the concept of acculturation.

In a recent review (Berry, 2004), I proposed that there are two distinct, but inter-related domains of psychological research that make up the field of group relations. When the groups involved are essentially cultural in nature, these two domains can be termed acculturation and ethnic relations. Fig. 1 portrays these two fields, as they are rooted in contextual factors (such as the historical, political and economic baggage that they bring to their relationships), and as they lead to outcomes that can range from conflict and stress to harmony and effectiveness.

Many of the concepts identified in the domain of ethnic relations are already well known to you, and will not be the focus of this paper, although some of the concepts will be referred to. The main interest here is in the domain of acculturation, to which I now turn.

Acculturation is the dual process of cultural and psychological change that takes place as a result of contact between two or more cultural groups and their individual members. At the group level, it involves changes in social structures and institutions and in cultural practices. At the individual level, it involves changes in a person's behavioral repertoire. These cultural and psychological changes come about through a long-term process, sometimes taking years, sometimes generations, and sometimes centuries. Acculturation is a process of cultural and psychological changes that involve various forms of mutual accommodation, leading to some longer-term psychological and sociocultural adaptations between both groups. Contact and change occur for a number of reasons, including colonization, military invasion, migration, and sojourning (such as tourism, international study, and overseas posting); it continues long after initial contact in culturally plural societies, where ethnocultural communities maintain features of their heritage cultures. While acculturation is a process that continues for as long as there are culturally different groups in contact, some longer-term adaptation to living in culture-contact settings takes various forms usually resulting in some form of longer-term accommodation among the groups in contact. This often entails, for example, learning each other's languages, sharing each other's food preferences, and adopting forms of dress and social interactions that are characteristic of each group. Sometimes these mutual adaptations take place rather easily (through processes of culture shedding and culture learning; see Berry, 1992), but they can also create culture conflict and acculturative stress during intercultural interactions. One key feature of all acculturation phenomena is the variability with which they take place: there are large group and individual differences in the ways in which people seek to go about their acculturation (termed acculturation strategies), and in the degree to which they achieve satisfactory adaptations. In addition to cultural group and individual variation, there are variations within families: among family members, acculturation often proceeds at different rates, and with different goals, sometimes leading to an increase in conflict and stress and to more difficult adaptations.

From the point of view of this conference, we need to address the basic question: does acculturation always involve conflict and result in negative outcomes for both groups involved? The goal of this paper is to outline the meaning and uses of the concept of acculturation as it is currently used in the fields of cross-cultural and intercultural psychology. Following this discussion of acculturation as a general concept, many of the concepts that have been identified in this introduction will be elaborated in later sections. In my view, acculturation and adaptation are now reasonably well understood; I believe that we are in a position to pursue the development of policies and programs to promote successful outcomes for all parties involved in the contact situation.