EMOTIONAL ACCULTURATION PREDICTS BETTER SOMATIC HEALTH: EXPERIENTIAL AND EXPRESSIVE ACCULTURATION AMONG IMMIGRANT WOMEN FROM FOUR ETHNIC GROUPS

Acculturating into a new cultural environment is an increasingly common experience. It is, moreover, a demanding process that is frequently accompanied by stress and adjustment difficulties. However, while acculturation is increasingly studied, there are few data examining how profiles of emotion and emotion regulation change following immigration and/or whether emotionally acculturating is linked to clinical outcomes. In the current report, 915 immigrant women from Haiti, the Dominican Republic, the English-speaking Caribbean and Eastern Europe completed measures of emotion and emotion regulation together with a measure of somatic health. As expected, the proportion of time spent in the United States was associated with greater similarity between immigrants' and the mainstream culture's patterns of emotion and emotion regulation. Further, immigrants who were emotionally more different (i.e., less acculturated) reported greater somatic symptomology, although there was some variation depending on which direction differences lay. Data are discussed in terms of their implications for clinical interventions among immigrant groups and a model describing the factors influencing emotional acculturation is proposed.