The Pros And Cons Of Acculturation

Acculturation is a process that takes place when members of different cultures reside in a shared environment (Berry, 1997). This most often occurs if people who grew up in one culture leave their country of origin to go and live in a country with a different culture. These people could be referred to as the acculturating individuals. This process involves adjusting to many of the cultural differences that exist in such situations (e.g., language, food, and social norms). In addition, such cultural changes usually affect the acculturating individuals more than the members of the dominant culture.

In some cases, acculturation can lead to acculturative stress (Berry, 1997, 2005). This is a stress reaction of an individual caused by prolonged difficulties with acculturation. For example, learning a new language or completely adjusting to new

For example, acculturating groups and individuals may often feel like they are being discriminated against by the members of the dominant culture (Berry, 1995, 2005). Such perceived discrimination is one of the predictors of acculturative stress (Torres, Driscoll, & Voell, 2012), as well as one of the predictors of social anxiety among different ethnic groups (Levine et al., 2014). In fact, Fang et al. (2016) found that those who reported higher levels of social anxiety also reported higher levels of perceived discrimination. It is plausible that perceived discrimination and other social difficulties first led to acculturative stress, which in turn could explain the higher levels of social anxiety among these individuals. Whether this is the case or not, the matter remains that both acculturative stress and social anxiety can be triggered by perceived discrimination. And such a common precursor is one of the reasons to further study the relationship between these two