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Lecture Notes
Chapter 12: Acculturation, Culture Shock, and Intercultural Competence
Learning Objectives
12.1. Identify and discuss the factors that facilitate or hinder acculturation
12.2. Recognize and discuss the causes of culture shock
12.3. Identify the five personality dimensions linked to success in long-term intercultural
encounters
Chapter Outline
I. Introduction
A. Acculturation: The process of cultural change that results from ongoing contact
between two or more culturally different groups.
B. Culture shock: The effects associated with the tension and anxiety of entering a
new culture, combined with the sensations of loss, confusion, and powerlessness
resulting from the forfeiture of cultural norms and social rituals.
II. Acculturation
A. To describe what happens when people from one culture enter a different culture.
B. Robert Redfield, Ralph Linton, and Melville Herskovits: Phenomena which result
when groups of individuals having different cultures come into continuous first-
hand contact with subsequent changes in the original culture pattern of either or
both groups.
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D. In pluralistic, diverse societies such as the United States, three factors bring
cultural groups together: mobility, voluntariness, and permanence.
i. Mobility, some groups experience acculturation because they have moved
into a new culture as is the case for immigrants and refugee.
E. Acculturative Stress: The degree of physical and psychological stress, persons
experience when they enter a culture different from their own as a result of the
adaptation required to function in a new and different cultural context.
i. Physical and psychological changes:
a. People adapting to new cultures face changes in their diet, climate,
housing, communication, role prescriptions, and media
consumption, as well as in myriad rules, norms, and values of a
new and (relatively) dissimilar culture.
ii. Effect on Hispanics/Latinos:
a. Hispanics/Latinos, acculturative stress is related to decreased self-
efficacy expectations, decreased career aspirations, depression, and
suicidal ideation.
d. Hispanic/Latino women may be more likely than men to suffer from
acculturative stress because their roles are clearly prescribed in
their native culture.
e. Family dysfunction, separation from family, negative expectations
for the future, and low-income levels were significantly related to
higher levels of acculturative stress.
iii. Emeka Nwadiora and Harriette McAdoo investigated acculturative stress
among Amerasian refugees in the United States.
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b. Because of their mixed racial background, these children were
considered half-breeds and social outcasts in their homeland.
c. In 1987, Congress passed the Amerasian Homecoming Act,
permitting all Amerasians and their immediate families to
immigrate to the U.S.
iv. Degree of acculturative stress experienced by people adapting to new
cultures varies according to the similarities and dissimilarities between the
host culture and the immigrants’ native culture. The cultures are more
similar than different, less stress is experienced.
v. Individual personal traits: Play a role in the manifestation of acculturative
stress.
a. Characteristics as one’s degree of previous exposure to the new
culture; one’s level of education; one’s sex, age, language, race,
and income; and one’s psychological and spiritual strength all
affect acculturative stress.
F. A Model of Acculturation
i. Acculturation is not unilateral: An interactive process between a culture
and groups of people.
a. When individuals or groups of individuals enter a new culture, they
are often changed by the culture, but they also impact the culture in
return.
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iii. Host communication competence: Includes how much the individual
knows about the host culture.
a. Affective component: How motivated the individual is to initiate
and develop host culture relationships.
iv. Adaptation is facilitated by maintaining interpersonal and mass
communication (i.e., Host IC and Host MC) with host culture but also
maintaining interpersonal and mass communication (i.e., Ethnic IC and
Ethnic MC) with one’s native culture.
v. Predisposition factors affect acculturation:
a. Newcomers enter new culture with varying degrees of readiness or
preparedness.
vi. Role of environment: The degree to which the host culture is receptive to
strangers is important.
a. Certain factions in the United States believe the country should
close its borders to immigrants.
b. Given the tensions in the Middle East, U.S. citizens sometimes face
hostilities when they enter certain countries.
vii. Host conformity pressure: Extent to which natives within the host culture
exert pressure on newcomers to conform to their culture’s values, beliefs,
and practices can facilitate or alienate the newcomers.
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d. Newcomers may feel pressure from host culture to adapt, while
simultaneously facing pressure from their native ethnic group to
preserve their ethnic heritage.
ix. Functional fitness: Able to accomplish goals that perhaps prior to leaving
G. Modes of Acculturation
i. For acculturation to occur, there must be contact between members of the
host culture and the newcomers: Such contact needs to be continuous and
direct.
ii. Short-term accidental contact does not generally lead to much
acculturation.
iii. Purpose of contact between the two groups: Colonization, enslavement,
trade, military control, evangelization, or education.
iv. Length of contact: Social or political policies of the mainstream culture as
they relate to the immigrant group.
v. Individual’s level of acculturation depends in part on two independent
processes:
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b. The individual takes on the behaviors and language habits, as well
as practices the basic rules and norms of the host culture.
vii. Integration: Mode of acculturation in which the individual develops a
kind of bicultural orientation that successfully blends and synthesizes
cultural dimensions from both groups while maintaining an identity in each
group.
a. Individual develops a kind of bicultural orientation that successfully
blends and synthesizes cultural dimensions from both groups while
maintaining an identity in each group.
d. To be sure, an individual’s successful integration of cultural skills
and norms does not mean that the person relinquishes his or her
native cultural identity.
e. Development of the bicultural identity is what leads to a successful
life in a bicultural context.
viii. Separation: A mode of acculturation in which individuals prefer low
levels of interaction with their host culture while maintaining a close
connection with their native culture.
a. The individual resists acculturation with the dominant culture and
chooses not to identify with the host cultural group. At the same
time, the person retains his or her native cultural identity.
b. People choosing separation may harbor animosity toward the host
culture as a result of social or historical factors.
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c. Such persons generally focus on the perceived incompatibility
between their native culture and the host culture.
f. For example: Some Black Americans and Native
Americans/American Indians prefer not to identify with the
dominant White culture because of past racism and the country’s
history of slavery.
g. In some models, the separation mode is labeled segregation.
ix. Marginalization: A mode of acculturation in which an individual chooses
not to identify with his or her native culture or with the host culture.
c. These persons experience alienation from both cultures.
d. Dysfunctional behaviors are often seen in marginalized people.
e. Black Americans, Asian Americans, and Hispanic/Latino Americans
often feel marginalized in U.S. culture.
x. Cultural transmutation: Mode of acculturation in which the individual
chooses to identify with a third cultural group (microculture) that
materializes out of the native and host cultural groups.
a. In this mode, the individual chooses to identify with a third cultural
group (microculture) that materializes out of the native and host
cultural groups.
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H. Acculturation in the United States
i. Acculturation among Hispanic/Latino:
a. Difficult due to the loss of social support from the family.
b. Hispanic/Latinos adhere to the value of familismo. Refers to a
strong obligation to the family; that family comes before the
individual; and that family members are interconnected and honor
one another.
c. Benefits and costs associated with familismo:
• May enhance the development of adaptive behavior among
Hispanic/Latino children as they model their parents and
attend to the needs of extended family members.
• May conflict with academic success as familial obligations
tax the student’s time and energy that lead to school
absences, school dropout, and lower rates of college
enrollment.
• Some research has found a potential risk caused by very high
levels of familismo and mental health. Suicidal
Hispanic/Latino adolescents explained their suicidal
ideation in terms of heavy and demanding sacrificing for
their families.
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ii. Acculturation among Asian Americans:
a. Acculturation gap among Asian American youth and their parents.
Unlike the U.S. cultural norm of individuals maintaining their
independence from the age of 18 years until late adulthood, Asian
American parents expect their children to care for their elders until
the elderly family member passes away.
d. These differing dimensions of cultural variability create conflict in
the Asian American family and are most visible in the context of
parent–child relationships.
iii. Acculturation among Arabs:
a. Many Arab Americans experience acculturative stress due to
strained political relationships between the U.S. and Middle
Eastern countries.
b. Negative stereotypes often seen in U.S. media creating a hostile
environment for many Arab Americans and making acculturation
difficult.
c. Religious affiliation affects the degree to which Arab Americans
acculturate.
• Muslim Arab Americans are more likely to identify with their
Arab heritage than Christian Arab Americans.
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III. Culture Shock: Depending on degree of similarity between the old and the new culture,
the values, beliefs, customs, and behaviors of the native culture clash with those of
the new culture that results in disorientation, misunderstandings, conflict, stress, and
anxiety.
A. Michael Winkelman: A multifaceted experience that results from the numerous
stressors that occur when encountering a different culture.
B. Education Shock: Expatriate professors teaching abroad often describe their
experiences.
C. Anthropologist Kalervo Oberg: First to apply term culture shock to the effects
associated with the tension and anxiety of entering a new culture, combined with
the sensations of loss, confusion, and powerlessness resulting from the forfeiture
of cultural norms and social rituals.
i. It stems from the challenges associated with new cultural surroundings in
addition to the loss of a familiar cultural environment.
ii. Appears to be a psychological and social process that progresses in stages,
usually lasting a year.
D. Most models of culture shock include four stages.
i. Oberg’s model: Begins with incubation stage, followed by crisis, leading to
recovery, and finishing with full recovery.
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E. Most models of culture shock describe the process curvilinearly, or “U-curve
hypothesis.”
F. Tourist stage or honeymoon stage: Characterized by intense excitement and
euphoria associated with being somewhere different and unusual.
i. This stage is typical of that experienced by people who enter other cultures
temporarily during honeymoons, vacations, or business trips.
ii. Stresses associated with cultural differences are tolerated and may even
seem fun and humorous.
G. Active culture shock: Failure events once considered minor and funny are now
perceived as stressful.
i. Partially based on the simultaneous effects of cognitive overload and
behavioral inadequacy that are rooted in the psychological and physical
stresses associated with confronting a new environment.
iv. People may experience personal shock in the form of a loss of intimacy
with interpersonal partners.
v. People feel helpless, isolated, and depressed.
vi. Paranoia in which newcomers are convinced that their troubles are
deliberate attempts by the natives to disrupt their lives.
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c. Organismic/biological factors
d. Intrapersonal factors
e. Spatial/temporal factors
f. Geopolitical factors
ix. Arza Churchman and Michal Mitrani have added three additional factors:
H. Adjustment phase: Also known as reorientation phase. Some people never
recuperate from the crisis stage of culture shock and return home or isolate
themselves from the host culture by restricting their interaction with it, such as by
fostering only intracultural relationships.
i. When the lines of communication with the host culture are severed, there is
little hope of acculturation or recovery from the crisis stage.
ii. People eventually realize that the problems associated with the host culture
are due not to deliberate actions by the natives but, rather, to a real
difference in values, beliefs, and behaviors.
I. Adaptation or acculturation stage: Individuals actively engage the culture with their
new problem-solving and conflict-resolution tools, and they experience some
degree of success.
i. The extent that people acculturate to their new culture, they experience
cultural transformation.
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J. W-Curve Models of Reentry Culture Shock
i. Reentry shock: The effects associated with the tension and anxiety of
returning to one’s native culture after an extended stay in a foreign culture.
ii. “W–curve” model of culture shock contains two U curves: Initial culture
shock experienced when the traveler enters a new culture and a reentry
shock U curve.
a. When people return home after an extended stay in a foreign
culture, they experience another round of culture shock, this time
in their native culture.
K. Strategies for Managing Culture Shock
i. Do your homework and be prepared:
a. Successful management of culture shock depends on an awareness
of its symptoms and the degree of its severity.
b. Sometimes people falsely attribute their problems to sources other
than culture shock.
ii. Culture Shock Profile: Assess the intensity of culture shock an individual
is experiencing.
a. Culture Shock Profile be taken several times during the first year of
one’s move specifically, after the first month, sometime during the
fourth or fifth month, and then after 1 year.
b. If managed appropriately, most culture shock is significantly
reduced after a year.
iii. Danger signs that indicate when culture shock may be getting out of
control:
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d. You spend too much time texting and e-mailing people from home.
e. You constantly complain about your host culture.
f. You have adopted very negative attitudes about the local people.
IV. Indicators of Success in the Intercultural Context
A. Five personality dimensions directly linked to success in long-term intercultural
encounters: Increase an individual’s professional performance, personal
adjustment, and social integration during acculturation across a variety of settings,
including employee effectiveness on the job, successful immigration, relational
satisfaction among expatriates and their families, and the academic performance
of students studying abroad.
C. Open-mindedness: Individual’s motivation and ability to delay or defer judgment
when confronted with the different behaviors or values of a new culture. When
confronted with cultural differences, often our initial response is to reject them.
i. Associated with psychological adjustment and satisfaction with life in new
culture.
F. Flexibility: Ability to transition from or replace those thoughts, feelings, and
behaviors that have become almost second nature to you in favor of new
strategies to deal with everyday situations.
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V. Intercultural Communication Competence: Degree to which you effectively adapt your
verbal and nonverbal messages to the appropriate cultural context. Process requires:
A. Have some knowledge about the person with whom you are communicating.
B. Motivated to communicate with him or her.
C. Have appropriate verbal and nonverbal skills to encode and decode messages.
F. Verbal and nonverbal appropriateness and effectiveness are two important qualities
of intercultural competence.
i. Appropriate behaviors conform to the rules, norms, and expectancies of the
cultural context.
G. A Model of Intercultural Competence
i. The Knowledge Component: The extent of one’s awareness of another
culture’s values and so forth; also, the extent to which one is cognitively
simple, rigid, and ethnocentric.
a. To be perceived as culturally knowledgeable, minimally, one should
have some comprehension of the other person’s dominant cultural
values and beliefs.
b. In addition, one should know whether the other person is from an
individualistic or collectivistic, high- or low-context, large or small
power distance, and high or low uncertainty avoidance culture.
c. Verbal and nonverbal scripts are also a part of the knowledge
component: Guide communication action.
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f. People with simplistic and rigid cognitive systems tend to engage in
gross stereotyping. Such individuals may have narrowly defined
and inflexible categories.
h. Ethnocentric person: Create and reinforce negative attitudes and
behaviors toward out- groups. Judgments about in-groups and out-
groups almost always are biased in favor of in-group at the
expense of the out-group.
• Ethnocentric groups see themselves as righteous and
exceptional and view their own standards as universal and
moral.
• Out-groups are immoral, subordinate, and impotent.
• An obstacle to intercultural communication competence.
ii. The Affective Component: Approach–avoidance tendencies during
intercultural communication; the extent to which one experiences
intercultural communication apprehension and one’s willingness to
communicate.
a. Intercultural communication apprehension (ICA): Fear or anxiety
associated with either real or anticipated interaction with persons
from different cultures.
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when they are completely free to choose whether to communicate
or not.
c. Avoidance tendencies: One’s ability to cope with stress also affects
one’s approach.
d. The knowledge component and the affective component of
intercultural competence are interdependent: More knowledge one
has, the more likely one is to approach situations involving
intercultural communication.
iii. The Psychomotor Component: The extent to which one can translate
cultural knowledge into verbal and nonverbal performance and role
enactment.
a. Actual enactment of the knowledge and affective components.
b. The elements of the psychomotor component: Verbal and nonverbal
performance.
c. Verbal performance: How people use language.
• A person may know a great deal about the language of the
host culture but not be able to engage in a conversation.
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d. Nonverbal performance: Nuances of the kinesic, paralinguistic,
haptic, olfactic, and proxemic codes of the other culture.
• Before traveling to a foreign country, it might be wise to
polish and refine your repertoire of nonverbal skills.
H. Situational Factors
i. Situational Features: The extent to which the environmental context,
previous contact, status differential, and third-party intervention affect
one’s competence during intercultural communication.
ii. Environment context: Some situations may have higher information loads
than others, which may affect your motivation and ability to enact
appropriate verbal and nonverbal behaviors. Highly loaded situations may
increase anxiety and reduce your motivation to approach another.
iii. Previous contact: Previous contact you may have had with a person from
another culture may enhance your perception of competence.
iv. Status difference: May require you to take on multiple modes of behavior.
a. Certain verbal and nonverbal strategies may be more or less
appropriate, depending on whether you are interacting with
someone of lower, equal, or higher status.
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v. Third-party interventions: May noticeably change the dynamics of the
situation and, hence, your competence.
a. Suddenly, your status may go up or down, as might the status of the
person with whom you are interacting.
b. The gender of the third party may also alter the situational features.