Acculturation and Personality

Abstract

A CCULTURATION in its general sense may be regarded as referring to those processes whereby the culture of a society is modified as the result of contact with the culture of one or more other societies.' It may be a two-way process, the contacts upon which it is contingent may be of many different types and of all degrees of intensity; and the study of acculturation may provide many important leads to the understanding of cultural dynamics.2 In the present paper, however, our interest is centered primarily on that type of acculturation found among preliterate peoples of non-European culture who are subject to the impingement of European or Western civilization. We wish to direct attention to two aspects of the study of such situations which have received scanty attention to date, namely, the effects of acculturation upon certain aspects of personality organization and upon the patterns of social participation of individuals. Likewise, we wish to offer a few looking to the formulation of the results of such investigations in a manner which lends itself to ready and accurate comparison with all types of acculturation situations, regardless of the specific character of their respective components. The principal object of these is to indicate some means for the more precise statement or measurement of what we may call the degree of acculturation, or stated otherwise, to answer the question, Is society I more, or less, acculturated than society B, and how can it be demonstrated? In their Memorandum for the Study of Acculturation, published in 1936, Redfield, Linton, and Herskovits recommended the study of psychological mechanisms of selection and integration of traits under acculturation3 but made no reference to the effect of the process upon the individuals of the acculturated society. In I938, Herskovits, apropos of suggestions for future research, remarked that: