Acculturative Stress

Abstract

One of the central lessons to be learned from the study of cross-cultural psychology is that there are close links between the cultural context in which individuals grow up and the psychological characteristics that they develop. The question naturally arises: What happens to individuals when they come into contact with another culture, either by moving to another one (for example, by becoming immigrants or refugees), or by becoming colonized by a dominant culture (for example, by being an indigenous person in North America)? The answer is that people change, both culturally and psychologically, in numerous and various ways. To help describe these changes, anthropologists and psychologists have coined the term acculturation, literally meaning "to move toward a culture." One of the more common features of acculturation is the experience of being stressed by such changes; and for this, cross-cultural psychologists have coined the term acculturative stress. In this chapter, we begin with an outline of what is known about acculturation itself; we then use this background as a basis for a discussion of acculturative stress.