Psychological Acculturation

Acculturation describes changes, cultural or psychological, that occur as a result of prolonged firsthand contact between two different cultures. Psychological acculturation describes changes that occur at the individual psychological level. This construct helps us to study and understand changes, adaptation, and other psychosocial processes that occur when immigrants and refugees settle in a host country with a different culture – which in most cases is the dominant and majority culture with the most social power.

Historically, it was assumed that acculturation proceeds along a linear direction, as newcomers and minority groups gradually relinquish their traditional cultural identities, values, customs, and other characteristics, and become absorbed or assimilated into the mainstream culture of the dominant host group. At the midpoint along this trajectory, individuals may be described as bicultural, straddling between two cultures.

It has since been recognized that a bidimensional...