Fitting in emotionally: The relation between emotional acculturation in immigrant minority youth and their engagement in the majority culture

Abstract:Emotional acculturation is the process throughout which immigrants' emotional experiences come to fit with the typical emotional experience of majority members. Previous research has shown that immigrants' emotional fit with the majority culture is associated with their degree of cultural exposure and social contact with majority members of the culture (De Leersnyder, Mesquita, & Kim, 2011). In my doctoral dissertation, I focus on better understanding (a) the ways exposure and social engagement in the majority culture bring about emotional fit in immigrant minorities, and (b) the role of emotional fit for their social engagement in the majority culture. Adopting a cultural-psychology perspective on emotional acculturation, I put forward that immigrant minorities' emotional experiences come to fit the majority norm through repeated (emotional) interactions with people from the majority culture, in which emotional fit is modeled and rewarded, and misfit is reflected by disfluency of interaction, which itself may over time build up to negative outcomes. In my research, I study the process of emotional acculturation in immigrant minority youth in the school context. Due to the increasing ethnic diversity in schools in Belgium, the school provides an important context for emotional acculturation; one in which cross-cultural interactions may naturally take place. In my dissertation, I aim to: (1) test systematic links between minorities' emotional fit with the majority culture and their exposure to and engagement in the majority culture; (2) identify these links both for distal fit (with the normative emotions of the majority at large) and proximal fit (with majority peers in the class room); (3) examine emotional acculturation over time by examining the links between emotional fit and cross-cultural contact longitudinally; (4) examine the way emotional acculturation is contingent on immigrant minorities' close friendships with majority members; and (5) examine minorities' emotional fit as a process of situational adjustment in response to the quality of everyday interactions with majority. The research aims in my dissertation have been addressed, using a variety of research procedures, methods and analytical approaches, and include data from cross-sectional and longitudinal multilevel study designs, social networks, and experience sampling methodologies. Many, though not all, of the studies make use of a large nationwide sample of middle school student.

Publication year:2018

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