Acculturation of self-construal: First evidence from immigrant minorities in Belgium and the UK

Abstract

There are systematic cultural differences in people's self-construal – their typical ways of being and relating – that are in line with the meanings and practices of the sociocultural context in which they were socialised. Given increasing globalisation and ethnocultural diversity, immigrant minorities may experience some ‘misfits’ with common self-construal patterns in host majority groups. Bridging perspectives from cultural psychology with acculturation psychology, we expect that minorities’ engagement in the host culture is positively associated with self-construal fit. In the current research, we calculated to what extent the average patterns of self of Turkish Belgian (Study 1), Chinese British (Study 2) and representative samples of Turkish and Moroccan Belgian minorities (Study 3) ‘fit’ with those of the respective host-cultural (majority Belgian or British) and heritage-cultural (Turkish in Turkey or Chinese in China or Turkish and Moroccan minority) groups. Across studies, we replicated meaningful cultural group differences in self-construal fit in line with minorities’ acculturation towards host-cultural patterns of self. Furthermore, in partial support of the role of host culture engagement, social contact with the majority group predicted self-construal fit within a specific relationship context of self-construal. Thus, (high-quality) contact with friends (Study 1) and teachers (Study 3) predicted the fit of minorities’ self-construal in the respective relationship contexts. No consistent associations emerged between self-construal fit and acculturation attitudes. Taken together, our findings highlight the malleability of selves in cultural and relational contexts and provide initial evidence for the acculturation of self in immigrant minorities.