Feeling 'Right' When You Feel Accepted: Emotional Acculturation
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UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Feeling ‘Right’ When You Feel Accepted: Emotional Acculturation In Daily Life Interactions With Majority Members Jasini, A.; De Leersnyder, J.; Mesquita, B. DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01093 Publication date 2018 Document Version Final published version Published in Frontiers in Psychology License CC BY Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Jasini, A., De Leersnyder, J., & Mesquita, B. (2018). Feeling ‘Right’ When You Feel Accepted: Emotional Acculturation In Daily Life Interactions With Majority Members. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, [1093]. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01093 General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). 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UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:25 Sep 2021 fpsyg-09-01093 August 2, 2018 Time: 15:37 # 1 ORIGINAL RESEARCH published: 03 August 2018 doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01093 Feeling ‘Right’ When You Feel Accepted: Emotional Acculturation in Daily Life Interactions With Majority Members Alba Jasini1*, Jozefien De Leersnyder1,2 and Batja Mesquita1 1 Center for Social and Cultural Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium, 2 Programme Group of Social Psychology, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands When immigrant minority individuals engage in frequent and positive social contact with majority culture members, their emotions become a better fit with the majority norm; the increased fit is called emotional acculturation. In the current research, we test the prediction that high-quality interactions with majority others, in which minorities feel accepted, increase the likelihood of emotional fit. We also explore whether this prediction holds true for both positive and negative interactions with majority. To test this prediction, we conducted a 7-day daily diary study with minority students in Belgian middle schools (N = 117). Each day, participants reported one positive and one negative Edited by: Michio Nomura, interaction at school. They subsequently evaluated each interaction (e.g., felt accepted), Kyoto University, Japan assessed their relationship with the interaction partner (e.g., our relationship is important Reviewed by: to me), and rated their emotions. Analyses focused on the interactions with Belgian L. Taylor Phillips, New York University, United States majority interaction partners. Emotional acculturation was computed for positive and Yuri Miyamoto, negative interactions separately, by calculating the fit between the emotional pattern University of Wisconsin–Madison, of the minority student and the average emotional pattern of a sample of majority United States participants (N = 106) who also took part in the daily diary. As predicted, we found *Correspondence: Alba Jasini higher emotional fit in positive interactions when immigrant minorities felt accepted by [email protected]; the interaction partner. In contrast to this finding for positive interactions, emotional fit for [email protected] negative interactions was higher when minorities felt excluded by the interaction partner. Specialty section: Further analyses on the negative interactions suggested that minority adolescents felt This article was submitted to more negative autonomy-promoting emotions (e.g., anger and frustration) when they Cultural Psychology, a section of the journal perceived being excluded. Given that Belgian majority youth feel more autonomy- Frontiers in Psychology promoting emotions generally, minorities’ fit with majority patterns was higher. The Received: 10 February 2018 results confirm our hypothesis that minorities’ fit with majority emotions is contingent Accepted: 08 June 2018 on the quality of their interactions with majority, even if in negative interactions, high- Published: 03 August 2018 quality interactions produced less rather than more emotional fit. Our findings suggest Citation: Jasini A, De Leersnyder J and that emotional acculturation is not just a ‘skill’ that minority individuals acquire, but also Mesquita B (2018) Feeling ‘Right’ a response to the ways in which interactions with majority others develop. Inclusive When You Feel Accepted: Emotional Acculturation in Daily Life Interactions interactions, especially when they are positive, appear to align immigrant minority With Majority Members. individuals with the majority norm. Front. Psychol. 9:1093. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01093 Keywords: emotional acculturation, interaction, quality of interaction, intercultural interaction, multiculturalism Frontiers in Psychology| www.frontiersin.org 1 August 2018| Volume 9| Article 1093 fpsyg-09-01093 August 2, 2018 Time: 15:37 # 2 Jasini et al. Feeling ‘Right’ When Feeling Accepted INTRODUCTION culture if and when the majority emotions are relevant for them in the social situation at hand. This is likely the case when When people experience the normative or ‘right’ emotions of minorities feel part of a majority context: minority individuals their culture, they report better psychological and relational who have high quality contact with majority others, will often wellbeing as well as fewer somatic symptoms (e.g., Consedine have relatively high fit to majority emotions, just because majority et al., 2014; De Leersnyder et al., 2014, 2015). Yet, the contact makes it more relevant to fit the majority norm. If ‘right’ emotions vary across cultures, in ways that can be emotional acculturation is contingent on perceived belonging in understood from cultural differences in the central values and the moment, it is better understood as a situated response than as goals (Mesquita and Frijda, 1992; Markus and Kitayama, 1994; a stable ‘skill.’ Kitayama et al., 2006; Mesquita and Leu, 2007; Mesquita et al., In the current paper, we will explore this situated approach to 2016; Tamir et al., 2016; De Leersnyder et al., 2017). For instance, emotional acculturation, and examine the kinds of interactions in cultural contexts that highlight concerns about personal with majority culture members that predict minorities’ emotional independence, autonomy, and self-enhancement, autonomy- fit. In doing so, we shift attention away from characteristics of the promoting emotions (e.g., feeling proud or angry) are normative minority individual (i.e., emotional fit as a ‘skill’ of the minority and prevalent. In contrast, in contexts that highlight concerns member) toward characteristics of the interaction between about social harmony, interdependence with others, and self- majority and minority members that afford (or constrain) criticism, relatedness-promoting emotions (e.g., feeling close and emotional acculturation (i.e., emotional fit as a ‘state’ afforded by ashamed) are both “right” and commonly observed. the intercultural interaction). Hence, we will examine situation- These observations raise the important question of what level variations in the emotional fit of immigrant minority youth happens when people move to a different culture, with a different as a function of the quality of their interaction with the majority. set of dominant goals and concerns and, therefore, different ‘typical’ or ‘normative’ patterns of emotion. Will there be a misfit between the emotions of immigrant minority individuals Emotional Acculturation at the Situation and their new majority culture? And will this emotional misfit Level influence their wellbeing and relationships in the new culture? The shift in thinking about minorities’ emotional fit not as The evidence so far suggests that immigrant minorities may an individual difference variable and thus a trait, but as a initially experience a misfit, but also that, under the right situation-specific variable and thus a state, parallels research circumstances, minorities’ emotions will acculturate and come on acculturation attitudes, identities, and values that has found to fit the normative emotions of the majority culture (De that fit with the new cultural norm may vary according to Leersnyder et al., 2011; De Leersnyder, 2017). Across several the particular context (for a review see Arends-Tóth and van studies with Korean American, Turkish Belgian, and diverse de Vijver, 2006). For instance, Turkish-Dutch adults endorsed samples of minority youth in Belgium (De Leersnyder et al., majority (Dutch) values in the public domain, but Turkish values 2011; Jasini et al., 2018), we measured emotional acculturation in the private domain (e.g., child-rearing) (Arends-Tóth and van as the fit between an immigrant minority individual’s emotional de Vijver, 2003). Similarly, experimental studies with biculturals pattern and the average emotional pattern of the majority group show that situational cues of the majority or the heritage culture, in comparable