Journal
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
Volume 49, Issue 2, Pages 352-365Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.2516
Keywords
Emotion; Emotional acculturation; Cultural exposure; Minority youth
Categories
Funding
- Flemish Science Organization (FWO) [G.0493.13, 12L7816N]
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The more immigrant minorities are exposed to the majority culture, the more their emotional pattern fits that of majority culture members-a phenomenon termed emotional acculturation. To assess emotional fit, earlier studies compared minorities' emotional experience with that of separate samples of distant majority members in their country of residence. We added proximal fit with the emotional experience of majority members in their social environment. Drawing on large random samples of immigrant minority and majority youth in Belgian high schools (N = 2,543), our study aimed (i) to test majority culture exposure and contact as predictors of emotional fit and (ii) to distinguish emotional fit with distal and proximal variants of majority culture. Minorities' majority culture exposure predicted both distal and proximal emotional fit. In addition, contact with majority peers better predicted proximal fit. Our findings suggest that emotional acculturation is socially grounded in interactions with proximal majority members.
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