With a little help from our friends: The impact of cross‐group friendship on acculturation preferences

Abstract

Despite extensive research on intergroup contact and acculturation, our understanding of how contact affects receiving society members' preferences for acculturation orientation of immigrants over time is still relatively rudimentary. This longitudinal study examined how perceived group similarity and outgroup trust mediate the effects of cross-group friendship on acculturation preferences (culture maintenance and culture adoption) of the receiving society. It was predicted that cross-group friendship would affect acculturation preferences over time, and that these relationships would be partly mediated by outgroup trust and perceived group similarity. A three-wave full longitudinal sample (N = 467 Chilean school students) was analyzed using structural equation modeling. Results confirmed that cross-group friendship longitudinally predicted majority members' support for the adoption of Chilean culture (via perceived group similarity) and Peruvian culture maintenance (via outgroup trust). Conceptual and practical implications are discussed.

Ethnic Identity Development and Acculturation Preferences Among Minority and Majority Youth: Norms and Contact

“…The literature agrees on the general idea that perceiving positive in-group norms about developing cross-group friendships, as well as having quality contact with out-group members, should increase intergroup trust (a negative predictor of identity threat), perceive group similarities, and make adolescent majority group members more willing to integrate minority members into the society by supporting them to maintain their culture and adopting the mainstream culture (see Gonz alez & Brown, 2017;H€ assler et al, 2015 addressing these issues involving immigrants). Consequently, the present study tests whether intergroup contact and normative support for contact influence Mapuche and nonindigenous youth's attachment and commitment to the Mapuche identity, a psychological antecedent of both the Mapuche and nonindigenous Chilean's acculturation preferences.…”

“…Indeed, we know that the majority can exert more power over the intergroup relationship as they represent the numerical majority and their culture is more strongly embedded in the country's civic and political institutions. Therefore, it is critical to understand the majority's point of view as their preferences make an important contribution to promote multiculturalism (González & Brown, ; Hässler et al., ).…”

“…Second, the quality of the interaction between members of minority and majority groups may strongly influence not only the minority group's acculturation preferences, but also the majority group's beliefs about the desirability of the minority group adopting the majority culture and maintaining (or not) their minority group cultural identity (Hässler et al., ). Past research on intergroup interaction has been strongly influenced by intergroup contact theory (Allport, ; Pettigrew & Tropp, ).…”

“…Several hypotheses were developed following prior conceptual approaches and empirical evidences regarding the effect of contact and norms on acculturation preferences (González & Brown, ; Hässler et al., ) and the role of identity formation across adolescence, especially regarding minority groups (Meeus, ; Meeus et al., ; Phinney et al., ; Umaña‐Taylor & Fine, ; Umaña‐Taylor et al., ). First, it is predicted that both positive quality of contact and normative support for contact will influence Mapuche and nonindigenous youth's attachment and commitment to Mapuche identity.…”

“…Based on the research findings that demonstrate that contact does not necessarily operate in the same way for majority and minority members (e.g., Hässler et al., ; Pettigrew & Tropp, ), in particular that majority members attitudes change the most from contact experiences, we hypothesized that although the quality of contact may have a positive effect on acculturation preferences for both nonindigenous Chilean and Mapuche group members, nonindigenous Chilean members' acculturation preferences would change to a greater degree by positive contact experiences as compared to Mapuche members (Shelton, Richeson, & Salvatore, ). Thus, we expect ethnicity to moderate the effect of contact on acculturation preferences.…”