The extended acculturation model for locals: validation, outcomes, and antecedents

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University London.Previous scholarship has highlighted the validity and reliability of a bidimensional acculturation model for migrants, allowing for simultaneous endorsement of one’s heritage and national culture. So far, however, no empirical research has explored whether the bidimensional acculturation model can be extended from migrants to members of the mainstream society (i.e., locals). Thus, the broad aims of this dissertation were threefold: (a) to validate a new framework, termed the Extended Acculturation Model for Locals (EAML), which consists of two dimensions (i.e., national culture maintenance and multicultural adaptation), and (b) to examine the outcomes as well as (c) antecedents of these dimensions. In this dissertation, the General Introduction outlines the growth of multiculturalism across societies, followed by a review of existing acculturation research on migrants and the analogous work on locals. It is noted that migrants’ acculturation process implies individual-level changes, whilst locals’ acculturation process implies attitudes and behaviours which hinder or foster migrants’ individual-level changes. The Study Overview outlines the dimensionality of locals’ acculturation process, their adjustment outcomes and antecedents. Using a modified Vancouver Index of Acculturation (Multi-VIA), Study 1 found support for a bidimensional acculturation model for locals consisting of two reliable and valid subscales indicating national culture maintenance and multicultural adaptation. Study 2 buttresses the validity and reliability of the Multi-VIA across cultures as well as demonstrates the ability of national culture maintenance and multicultural adaptation to predict locals’ sociocultural and psychological adjustment outcomes. Study 3 explains why the correlation between locals’ national culture maintenance and multicultural adaptation is either orthogonal or positive oblique; more specifically, the correlation is moderated by locals’ degree of multicultural exposure, their likeliness to compartmentalize or blend their multicultural identity as well as through high or low self-construal endorsement. Study 4 demonstrates that national culture maintenance and multicultural adaptation predict local employees’ organizational behaviour in multinational corporations. Study 5 revealed that cultural values endorsed at the individual-level predicted locals’ national culture maintenance and multicultural adaptation. Moreover, these individual-level value-outcome associations were moderated by compatible societal-level pro-diversity messages. The General Discussion reviews all of the study findings as well as discusses their implications. The General Limitations and Future Directions describes the theoretical and methodological shortcomings of the Extended Acculturation Model for Locals whilst setting future directions for research. Last, the Final Remarks stresses the overall strengths of the present dissertation – that is, it fills the present research gap on locals’ acculturation towards multiculturalism, and in turn, provides a new route towards harmonious intergroup relations and social cohesion in mixing societies

Locals bidimensional acculturation model : validation and associations with psychological and sociocultural adjustment outcomes

Across two studies, we tested whether members of host communities (i.e., locals) can themselves simultaneously maintain their national culture maintenance and adapt toward cultural diversity (i.e., multiculturalism) in their own home country, supporting a bidimensional model of acculturation, or whether these strategies are incompatible, supporting a unidimensional model of acculturation. We modified the Vancouver Index of Acculturation (Multi-VIA) to assess locals’ national culture maintenance and multicultural adaptation within their own home country. Study 1 supported the bidimensionality of the Multi-VIA in an American sample (n = 218). Moreover, we found an oblique association between locals’ national culture maintenance and multicultural adaptation. In Study 2, we tested the Multi-VIA’s psychometric properties across three continent groups (North America, Europe, and Asia; N = 619). Multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated good model fit for the entire sample. Nevertheless, the association between national culture maintenance and multicultural adaptation was orthogonal for Asians and oblique for Americans and Europeans. In addition, national culture maintenance predicted higher levels of locals’ life satisfaction, whereas multicultural adaptation was associated with less acculturative stress and greater intercultural sensitivity

Culture, norms and the assessment of communication contexts : multidisciplinary perspectives

There is increasing acknowledgement by psychologists and interculturalists that the ways in which culture influences people’s behaviour are likely to be affected by characteristics of the situation. Over 15 years ago, Smith (2003, p. 68) called for a greater focus on context, arguing: “If the context within which one works with a person from another culture elicits different types of behaviour, then cultural maps will be a poor guide to what happens in such circumstances. […] a sharper focus on more specific settings, events and contexts and indeed the passage of time is needed.” He recently (Smith, 2015, p. 1312) reiterated this call for greater attention to be paid to context. Others have made similar arguments. For example, Leung and Morris (2015) have proposed a ‘situated dynamics framework’ that incorporates the role of the situation and integrates values, schemas and norms in the culture–behaviour nexus. In line with this, researchers (Morris, Hong, Chiu, & Liu, 2015; Zou & Leung, 2015) have drawn attention to the importance of norms and the role they play in linking culture and behaviour. In terms of culture, Leung and Morris (2015, p. 1042) have further argued that the situation is an ”integral part of culture because situations are nested within culture, and the influence of culture cannot be fully understood without considering the situation.” In this special issue we follow up on this trend from a multidisciplinary perspective, with a focus on contexts (especially communication contexts), the norms associated with people’s assessments of those contexts, and their impact on behaviour. More specifically, we aim to introduce sociolinguistic/pragmatic perspectives and insights to move the debate forward. Our approach and perspective is thus very different from that of Zou and Leung (2015) in their special issue on intersubjective norms. Our goal of gaining multidisciplinary insights into the culture–behaviour nexus by integrating concepts and findings from the different fields proved much more challenging than we initially anticipated. Concepts, terms, theoretical starting points, academic goals, and ‘acceptable’ research methodologies all turned out to be different, and researchers from the different disciplines (including within our editorial team!) sometimes had difficulty appreciating the perspectives and contributions of work from the ‘other’ discipline. It turned out to be an intercultural endeavour in its own right. In this introduction, therefore, we not only introduce the articles in this special issue, but we attempt to explain the different conceptual approaches with social psychology and sociolinguistics/pragmatics to key facets of the culture–behaviour nexus, particularly context/situation, norms and behaviour. We start by considering the concepts of contexts and communicative situation

Validation of a comorbidity questionnaire in patients with neurological disorders

Rational: Several tools exist to assess comorbidities in neurological disorders, the most widely used being the Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI), but it has several limitations. The Comorbidity and General Health Questionnaire (CGHQ) is a newly designed tool, which includes additional comorbidities associated with health-related quality of life (HR-QOL) and outcomes in neurological disorders. Aims and objectives: To assess the feasibility and validity of the CGHQ in patients with neurological disease. Method: Two hundred patients attending a general neurological clinic were invited to complete the CGHQ along with the EQ-5D-5L questionnaire. The CCI was simultaneously completed by the assessor. CGHQ comorbidity scores were compared with CCI, symptom burden and EQ-5D-5L scores. Results: The CGHQ captured 22 additional comorbidities not included on the CCI and more comorbidities were endorsed on the CGHQ. The CGHQ correlated weakly to moderately with CCI comorbidity scores. While both the CGHQ and CCI correlated negatively with the EQ-5D-5L Visual Analogue Scale, only the CGHQ correlated negatively with the EQ-5D-5L summary index. The CGHQ but not the CCI correlated strongly and positively with symptom burden scores. Conclusion: The CGHQ allows a more comprehensive assessment of comorbidities than the CCI and better correlates with patients’ overall symptom burden and HR-QOL in neurological patients

The missing side of acculturation : how majority-group members relate to immigrant and minority-group cultures

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 to those 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) the implications of majority-group members’ acculturation .Although research across several decades has examined the acculturation of individuals 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 guiding future research

Ethnic Speech and Ethnic Action as Ethnic Behavior: Part 1. Construction of the Brunel Ethnic Behavior Inventory

© 2016 Taylor & Francis.This article reports the construction of a new survey—specifically, the Brunel Ethnic Behavior Inventory (BEBI)—designed to measure ethnic speech and ethnic action as separate, yet related, aspects of individuals’ ethnic behavior. Using Tajfel’s social identity theory as a conceptual frame of reference, this study sought an answer to the research question of how many factors actually are measured by the BEBI, and tested the hypothesis that a two-factor model (i.e., Ethnic Speech and Ethnic Action as two correlated factors) would provide significantly better goodness of fit to the correlational data than would a one-factor model (i.e., Ethnic Behavior as one undifferentiated factor). Across one pilot sample (n = 101) and two main samples (n = 120 for Sample 1, n = 148 for Sample 2), the study found that not only did the BEBI measure two factors at most (i.e., Ethnic Speech and Ethnic Action) but, consistent with the hypothesis, the two-factor model yielded better goodness of fit than did the one-factor model. Implications for the conceptualization and measurement of Verkuyten’s “ways of ethnicity” are discussed

COVID-19 cases correlate with greater acceptance coping in flexible cultures: A cross-cultural study in 26 countries

The current study examines whether the prevalence of COVID-19 cases and cultural flexibility correlate to one's use of acceptance coping across 26 cultures. We analyzed data from 7476 participants worldwide at the start of the first outbreak from March 2020 to June 2020. Results showed that cultural flexibility moderated the relationship between COVID-19 cases and individuals' acceptance coping strategies. Specifically, for cultures with high flexibility, COVID-19 cases correlated with more acceptance coping; for cultures with low flexibility, COVID-19 cases correlated with less acceptance coping. This result demonstrates how participants from flexible cultures can coexist with the realistic challenges and suffering faced during this pandemic