Acculturation & Enculturation Notes

Cultural Socialization

Socialization is the process of acquiring culture and patterns of behavior acceptable in a given cultural group. It involves adopting the behavior patterns of surrounding cultures and assimilating new ideas into existing cognitive structures. Key outcomes include:

• Acculturation (e.g., Americanization, assimilation)
• Enculturation (e.g., Latino-oriented cultural behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes)
• Ethnic-racial identity

Acculturation

Acculturation refers to changes in an individual’s cultural patterns (practices, values, identities) resulting from sustained firsthand intercultural contact, subsequently affecting the individual’s psychological well-being and social functioning.

Process of Acculturation

• Bidimensional Approach: Adherence to each of the two cultures is examined. The question is whether one can adhere to both, one, or neither.
• Unidimensional Approach: Focus is on the adoption of values, beliefs, norms, and behaviors of a new culture. As one becomes more acculturated, one is expected to adhere less to one’s native culture.

Acculturation is a process over time that entails contact between two cultural groups, resulting in cultural changes in both parties. Individuals adopt values, beliefs, and practices through interactions with new cultural groups. Individuals can adopt some elements of a host culture and retain certain aspects of their native culture.

John Berry’s Model of Acculturation

Based on two principles:

• Cultural Maintenance (Enculturation): The extent individuals value and wish to maintain their heritage/home culture.
• Contact-Participation (Acculturation): The extent individuals value and seek out contact with those outside their own group and wish to participate in the daily life of the larger society.

Berry’s model uses two questions:

1. Is it considered to be of value to maintain cultural identity and characteristics?
2. Is it considered to be of value to maintain relationships with other groups?

These questions lead to four acculturation strategies:

• Integration: Yes to both questions. Individuals maintain their cultural identity and also engage with the wider society.
• Assimilation: No to maintaining cultural identity but yes to relationships with other groups. Individuals adopt the characteristics of the new culture.
• Separation: Yes to maintaining cultural identity but no to relationships with other groups. Individuals separate themselves from the dominant culture and hold onto their native culture. This can be called segregation if it is forced.
• Marginalization: No to both questions. Individuals do not want to maintain their identity with their home culture or engage with the new culture.

Characteristics of Acculturation

• Assimilated Individuals: Do not want to keep their identity from their home culture, but would rather take on all of the characteristics of the new culture.
• Separated Individuals: Want to separate themselves from the dominant culture and hold to the home/native culture.
• Integrated Individuals/Bicultural: Want to maintain their identity with home culture but also want to take on some characteristics of the new culture.
• Marginalized Individuals: Don’t want anything to do with either the new culture or the old culture.

Multidimensionality of Acculturation/Enculturation

Acculturation/Enculturation includes the following components/domains:

• Behavioral/Practices: These are assumed to change and include language use, media preferences, social affiliations, and cultural customs and traditions.
• Value/Attitudinal: Belief systems associated with a specific context or group, such as the value placed on the individual person versus the value placed on the family or other group. Includes familism—behavioral and attitudinal.
• Identity Domains: Attachments to cultural groups, and the positive esteem drawn from these attachments; racial-ethnic identity.

Context and Acculturation

Ward, C., & Geeraert, N. (2016). Advancing acculturation theory and research: The acculturation process in its ecological context. Current Opinion in Psychology, 8, 98-104.

Societal Context & Acculturation

Acceptance of diversity, acculturation expectations, and multicultural policies impact the maintenance and change in cultural orientations and how acculturation relates to adaptive outcomes.

• Some studies suggest that prejudice against immigrants predicts a stronger desire for cultural maintenance in immigrant groups.
• In assimilationist environments, cultural maintenance in ethnic minorities can lead to lower levels of life satisfaction.

Ward, C., & Geeraert, N. (2016). Advancing acculturation theory and research: The acculturation process in its ecological context. Current Opinion in Psychology, 8, 98-104.

Assessing Acculturation & Enculturation

• Behaviors: Language use, media use, social affiliations, ethnic-racial background of friends.
• Values/Attitudes: Familism, religious beliefs, gender roles.
• Ethnic-racial Identity: Exploration, affirmation, resolution, public regard, private regard, centrality.
• Demographics: Educational status, employment (e.g., white-collar or blue-collar), immigrant generational status.

Questions to Assess Acculturation & Enculturation

1. What language do you speak?
2. What language do you prefer?
3. How do you self-identify?
4. Which ethnic identification does (did) your mother and father use?
5. What was the ethnic origin of the friends and peers you had as a child?
6. Whom do you now associate with in the outside community?
7. What is your music/television/movie preference?
8. Where were you born?
9. Where were you raised?
10. What is your food preference?
11. What language do you read/write/think in?
12. How much pride do you have in your ethnic group?

Cultural Values - Familism

Emphasis on family relationships and a strong value placed on family life; sense of belonging, solidarity, family pride, and loyalty.

• Domains: Support, Obligations, Referent
  • Support: Family provides emotional support, maintain close relationships.
  • Obligation: You have family responsibilities (e.g., caregiving) that you must fulfill.
  • Referent: You should confer with your family when making decisions and defining yourself.

Cultural Values: Traditional Gender Roles

Expectations for Males vs. Females in behaviors and values. For females, marianismo, cultural conceptions of important female characteristics and values. For males, the cultural traditions of machismo and caballerismo are conceptions of masculinity.

Cultural Values: Respect for Elders

Focus on intergenerational behaviors.

• Show deference in demeanor.
• Yield to elders’ wisdom on decisions

Cultural Values: Religion

• Faith in a higher power
• Spiritual beliefs

Mainstream Values

• Material Success
• Independence & Self-Reliance vs. Collectivism
• Competition & Personal Achievement

Other Cultural Values: Fatalism

Feel your destiny is beyond your control.

• Sample Items:
  • It is more important to enjoy life now than plan for the future.
  • People die when it is their time, and there is not much that can be done about it.
  • It is not always wise to plan too far ahead because many things turn out to be a matter of good and bad fortune anyway.
  • It doesn’t do any good to try to change the future because the future is in the hands of God.

Cultural Values: Personalismo

Warm and personal way of relating to others.

• Sample Items:
  • I like to greet people in a warm and friendly manner.
  • Good manners are more important than formal education.

Cultural Values: Folk Illness Beliefs

• Sample Items:
  • My family and I have used the services of curanderos/as in the past
  • I have been treated for susto.
  • I have been treated for Mal de Ojo.

Remember: Within Group Diversity

• Do all Latinx individuals adhere to these values?
• What factors can account for differences?
  • Location, generational status, gender, social class, age

Roche et al.: Cultural Orientation and Educational Achievement

Research question: “How are U.S. and Mexican cultural orientations associated with Mexican-origin youth’s educational attainment?”

Introduction

• Second-generation Mexican immigrants complete less formal schooling than more recently immigrated people.
• Selective assimilation theory: people who are immigrants adopt some parts of the host culture while keeping certain elements of their native culture.
• Acculturation occurs when people modify their beliefs, practices, and values by interacting with new cultural groups.
• Enculturation refers to the degree to which individuals adopt beliefs, practices, and values of their family/native culture.
• Familism is a central value in Latinx culture. Familism refers to family loyalty, solidarity, and attachment along with cooperation and shared responsibilities.
• The Mexican cultural emphasis on interdependence can promote and inhibit youth’s educational attainment.
• Strong family values and connection can inspire Latinx youth to do well in school.
• Behavioral demands by the family can inhibit educational attainment by youth’s entering the work force at an early age to support the family, language brokering for parents, and fulfilling household tasks.

Method

Data from three waves of The Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS).

• 49 private and public schools in Miami/Ft. Lauderdale and San Diego
• 755 second-generation Mexican immigrant youths focus for paper
  • 8th and 9th graders at Time 1 (1992); average age (14 yrs old)
  • Time 3 in 2002; average age (24 year olds)
  • 50% female

Measures

• Educational Attainment: Highest year of school the youth had completed
• Language:
  • How well the youth speaks, reads, writes, and understands English
  • How often they spoke Spanish at home
• Ethnic Behavioral Preferences: Total number of friends in the city/county and the number of friends not born in the country of birth
• Values and Beliefs Emphasizing Interdependence: Vignettes measuring the youths’ values on social ties to get jobs early in life versus achieving individual success
• Background Variables: Age, gender, academic achievement, parents’ educational achievement

Key Findings

• Youth attained more formal education when:
  • Greater English ability
  • Greater endorsement of familism values
• Youth attained less formal education when:
  • Parents’ friendships mostly included U.S.- born individuals
  • Youth endorsed scenario of paid work prior to finishing high school, rather than choosing to stay in school because long- term it would be better for adolescent

Discussion

Youth’s entire cultural repertoire (language, parents’ U.S. social ties, familism, orientation to work/school) is associated with youth’s educational attainment. Parent and youth’s cultural orientations towards the U.S. and Mexico for acculturation appear to contribute to the long- term educational attainment of second-generation Mexican immigrant youth.

Smokowski et al. 2009: Acculturation and Adjustment- Cultural Risks and Assets

Study goal: Examine cultural risk factors and assets as predictors of mental health (internalizing problems, externalizing behaviors), self-esteem, and educational outcomes

Introduction

Latino youth engage in high levels of risky biopsychosocial behaviors related to negative long-term consequences and acculturation factors have been implicated in these patterns.

• Higher host cultural involvement (assimilated into US-culture):
  • more delinquency, more antisocial peer affiliation
• Lower host cultural involvement (low acculturation, low English fluency):
  • fear of victimization; Increased anxiety
• Lower involvement in Latino culture:
  • More depressive symptoms, lower optimism
• Higher involvement in Latino culture:
  • more self-esteem
• Biculturalism (e.g., fluency in both languages):
  • less likely to drop out
  • fewer emotional and behavioral program
  • less delinquency, less aggression

Method

281 Latino families (adolescent and one parent) in North Carolina and Arizona

• 78% of adolescents lived with 2 parents; 21% with single parent
• Median grade: 9th grade
• 58% from Mexico, 21% U.S. born, remainder from Central/South America
• More foreign-born parents and adolescents in NC than AZ
• 2 hrs per family, interviews at their homes; Spanish and Eng versions
• metropolitan, small town, rural areas

Measures

• Outcomes Variables: Self-esteem, hopelessness, humiliation, social problems, Aggression, anxiety, school belonging
• Home cultural involvement (Hispanicism): Assessed for parents and adolescents; Measures language, food, recreation, and media use
• U.S. Involvement (Americanism): Assessed for parents and adolescents; Measures language, food, recreation, and media use
• Time in the U.S.:
  • Average 7 yrs, range 1 month to 18 years
  • For U.S.-born adolescents, their age was used as time in the U.S.

Findings

Adolescent Culture of origin
Involvement and Parent Culture of origin Involvement results in positive adolescent mental health one year later.

Adolescent U.S. Cultural Involvement and Parent U.S. Cultural Involvement results in inverse adolescent mental health one year later.

• Only for foreign-born females
• Only for foreign-born & males
• Only for foreign-born

Cultural Orientation, Parenting, Child Behaviors (Wood et al):

• Latinas tend to hold socialization goals for their children that emphasize proper demeanor and respect for elders (i.e. respeto and familism)
• Latina mothers employ behaviors that emphasize a directive, controlling, and protective approach to parenting, more so than EA mothers, who have a tendency toward democratic styles
• Results between controlling parenting and poor child outcomes for samples of Latina mothers and their children are mixed
  • Controlling behaviors of Latina mothers have not uniformly related to poor child outcomes especially within less acculturated Latino families

Adolescent Mothers

Among female adolescents ages 15-19, Latinas have the highest birthrates in the USA. Adolescent Motherhood is associated with numerous contextual risk factors.

• This increases the likelihood of parenting difficulties and in turn impacts critical childhood outcomes (i.e. self-regulatory behaviors)
• Characteristics and contexts of adolescent mothers compared to adult mothers include risk factors (i.e. poverty, single parenthood, lower parental education, depressive symptoms, etc.) which place them at a higher likelihood of employing behaviors that hinder their children's development
• Individuals of Puerto Rican origin have the highest rates of poverty amongst all Latino subgroups in the USA

Study Sample

123 Puerto Rican adolescent mothers (M_{age}= 17.93 years) and their toddlers (47.2% were female; 86.2% were first-born or only-child)

• Drawn from a larger study of Latina adolescent mothers and their toddlers
• Majority of mothers received less than a high school diploma
• Majority of mothers were born in the USA (59.3%)
• Most mothers (89.4%) reported receiving some kind of government assistance
• Data was collected from 2 time points
  • When children were 18 (W1) and 24 (W2) months
  • Observational data used to code child reactivity was collected at W1
  • Clean-up task observations and self-report data were collected at W2
• Participants were recruited from low-income neighborhoods in Midwest city

Measures—Coding of Observations Behaviors

• Mothers Behaviors: Guidance was coded when a mother approached the task in a gentle or playful manner to engage the child and elicit interest in the task; mothers often used games, songs, collaborative statements and questions (e.g., “let’s put the toys away,” “can you show me how to clean up?”) or praise and encouragement (e.g., “good girl!”, “what a big boy!”).
• Control was coded when a mother used assertive commands (e.g., “put that in the box”) and prohibitions (e.g., “you cannot play anymore”), delivered repeatedly either as matter-of-fact statements or with impatience; nonforceful physically controlling behaviors (e.g., taking toys from child, physically orienting child toward toy box, blocking child from toys) counted as instances of control.
• Child Behavior: Committed compliance (hereon referred to as compliance) was assigned when a child eagerly cleaned up toys on his or her own or sought help from mother in doing so and Defiance was coded when a child displayed anger or emotionally dysregulated behaviors such as screaming and crying.

Findings

• Mothers who frequently used guidance to facilitate clean-up had children who demonstrated greater compliance
• Children whose mothers endorsed more Latino cultural values and practices (i.e., enculturation) demonstrated more compliance than those with less enculturated mothers
• Mothers with more frequent use of control had children who displayed more defiant behaviors
  • Only for mothers who endorsed high levels of mainstream American orientation
• Temperamental tendencies during 18m were significantly related to child behaviors 6m later
• More life Stressors, more defiance in children