The Missing Side of Acculturation: How Majority-Group Members Relate to Immigrant and Minority-Group Cultures

Abstract

In many countries, individuals who have represented the majority group historically are decreasing in relative size and/or perceiving that they have diminished status and power compared with those self-identifying as immigrants or members of ethnic minority groups. These developments raise several salient and timely issues, including (a) how majority-group members’ cultural orientations change as a consequence of increasing intercultural contact due to shifting demographics; (b) what individual, group, cultural, and socio-structural processes shape these changes; and (c) what the implications of majority-group members’ acculturation are. Although research across several decades has examined the acculturation of individuals self-identifying as minority-group members, much less is known about how majority-group members acculturate in increasingly diverse societies. We present an overview of the state of the art in the emerging field of majority-group acculturation, identify what is known and needs to be known, and introduce a conceptual model to guide future research.

Minority and Majority Adolescents’ Attitudes toward Mutual Acculturation and its Association with Psychological Adjustment

“…However, acculturation attitudes are commonly assessed by combining attitudes toward only minority group members’ (a) maintenance of their heritage culture and (b) dominant culture adoption (Bourhis et al, 1997 ). Following theoretical considerations on the reciprocity and mutuality of acculturation (Chirkov, 2009 ), empirical research has started assessing not only minority but also majority acculturation (Kunst et al, 2021 ). However, assessing attitudes toward both minority and majority acculturation is still a research gap.…”

“…Diversity approaches at school were found to affect ethnic minority and majority adolescents (Baysu et al, 2021 ), illustrating schools’ agency as well as how immigrant-background and non-immigrant-background students are affected by it. Majority-group members and institutions thus become recipients and minority-group members become agents of social change (Kunst et al, 2021 ). Therefore, instead of focusing only on minority students as acculturating agents, majority students and schools are also considered in this study.…”

“…They found that separated majority members reported more identity threat, more ethnic discrimination, and higher self-esteem than integrated and undifferentiated majority members. In another study, it was found that majority members’ openness predicted more adoption of minority cultures, whereas conscientiousness predicted less adoption of the minority cultures (Kunst et al, 2021 ). As intergroup contact experiences and cross-group friendships were found to be beneficial for everyone (Killen et al, 2007 ) and as cultural diversity is increasing in schools, majority students’ acculturation may also be related to their psychological adjustment.…”

Examining acculturation in mixed-couples to test cultural transmission mechanisms

“…[ 25 ] proposed a list of external factors potentially affecting acculturation: the existence of ethnic enclaves and the dominant culture’s values, behaviour, and attitudes, which may change according to the native’s perception of the motive for migration [ 45 ]. In fact, several of the present results point to the importance of assessing the behaviour of the receiving society towards foreign cultures; which exerts great influence on the cultural orientation of foreigners [ 46 ]. Hence, it is suggested that Carlson and Güler’s [ 34 ] conception of cultural preference could be used to place the local society within a continuum, from allowing the substitution of the majority’s culture, to demanding foreigners for cultural assimilation.…”

“…[ 48 ] to define the status of an influential demonstrator [ 49 ]. Fourth, the acculturation domain (public or private) and cultural distance (the degree of dissimilarity between the Italian/Portuguese and the foreign cultures) could also have been accounted for [ 46 ], despite no significant differences being observed between the Italian and Portuguese samples.…”