The Relationship Between Bicultural Identity Integration And Psychological Adaptation: The Mediating Role Of Dialectical Self

The number of bicultural individuals and even multicultural individuals greatly increased because of the cultural diversity resulted from factors such as globalization,migration,mixed-living,and so on.Many bicultural individuals are often confronted with the problem of psychological adaptation(Berry,Phinney,Sam,&Vedder,2006).From the perspective of culture identity for the bicultural individuals,the present study investigates the relationship among bicultural identity integration(BII),dialectical self and psychological adaptation,and examines the mediating effect of dialectical self between BII and psychological adaptation.Adopting questionnaire survey method,Tibetan(n=281)and Hui(n=106)106 university students from the Northwest multi-ethnic areas and 148 Tibetan university students from the Han culture area are randomly selected in this study,in this process all subjects are tested anonymously.When tested,half of the participants first fill in Bicultural Identity Integration Scale and Dialectical Self Scale,then fill in the Psychological Adaption Scale,while the other half fill with the opposite order.Results are as following:(1)For two kinds of participants,Harmony–conflict dimension of BII was positively correlated with psychological adaptation,(r =.13,p <.05;r =.23,p <.05;r =.40,p<.01),but negatively correlated with the dialectical self(r =-.23,p <.01;r =-.36,p <.01;r =-.46,p <.05).But the difference is,while blend–compartmentalization dimension of BII for Tibetan communities was not correlated with psychological adaptation and the dialectical self.(2)Multiple regression analysis and Bootstrapping method showed that the dialectical self mediated the relationship between BII(Harmony–conflict dimension)and psychological adaptation.What the results enlightened us is that the psychological adaptation of minority bicultural individuals can be enhanced from the perspective of cultural identity integration or dialectical self,which is a brand-new and effective path.In our real life,creating harmonious cultural atmosphere can reduce the extent of the dialectical self with minority bicultural individuals,forming consistent values and unified self-concepts.Therefore,negative disturbance resulted from culture shock,such as contradiction and indecision will be effectively reduced.The sense of belonging in cultural psychology will be also boosted,which enhance their psychological adaptation and improve their state of psychological health.