| This dissertation examines how East Asian international students at University in the U.S. may acculturate differently across domains, the link between those change patterns and mental health, and potential predictors for such change. Study 1 was a four-year longitudinal study showing that, on average, participants aligned their psychological processes more closely with the host culture in the cultural mandate domain (i.e., psychological tendencies based on values and meanings dominant in a culture that are often mandated in an unspoken, intuitive manner by the cultural environment; Kitayama, Park, Sevincer, Karasawa, & Uskul, 2009) in that they became more relatively independent v. interdependent in their self-construals over time, but did not change or became slightly more negative in the cultural evaluation domain (i.e., identification with American culture, preferences for Associating with Americans over Asians). Furthermore, analyses of individual differences showed that changes to align with host culture in the cultural mandate domain and toward more positive evaluations in the cultural evaluation domain predicted more positive mental health. Study 2 was a daily diary study showing that engagement in relatively independent activity-based cultural practices (that met mandates of the host culture) predicted increased alignment in the cultural mandate domain, whereas greater engagement in interactions with host culture members that met intergroup contact theory conditions (Allport, 1954; Pettigrew, 1998) predicted increased positive evaluations in the cultural evaluation domain. Implications for acculturation, cross-cultural psychology, and intergroup attitudes research are discussed. |
