Acculturation orientations affect the evolution of a multicultural society

E Yagmur Erten,E Yagmur Erten,Pieter Van Den Berg,Pieter Van Den Berg,Franz J Weissing,Franz J Weissing

doi:10.1038/s41467-017-02513-0

Abstract

The migration of people between different cultures has affected cultural change throughout history. To understand this process, cross-cultural psychologists have used the ‘acculturation’ framework, classifying ‘acculturation orientations’ along two dimensions: the willingness to interact with culturally different individuals, and the inclination to retain the own cultural identity (‘cultural conservatism’). Here, using a cultural evolution approach, we construct a dynamically explicit model of acculturation. We show that the evolution of a multicultural society, where immigrant and resident culture stably coexist, is more likely if individuals readily engage in cross-cultural interactions, and if resident individuals are more culturally conservative than immigrants. This result holds if some cultural traits pay off better than others, and individuals use social learning to adopt more advantageous cultural traits. Our study demonstrates that formal dynamic models can help us understand how individual orientations towards immigration eventually determine the population-level distribution of cultural traits.

Highlights

The migration of people between different cultures has affected cultural change throughout history
There is a constant influx of immigrants, and residents and immigrants are initially distinguished by an observable cultural trait that can be subject to change
An individual’s cultural trait may change through interactions with other individuals. Whether this occurs depends on the acculturation orientation of the individual, which is determined by the two orientational dimensions: the degree of cultural conservatism and the interaction tendency

Summary

Introduction

The migration of people between different cultures has affected cultural change throughout history. We show that the evolution of a multicultural society, where immigrant and resident culture stably coexist, is more likely if individuals readily engage in cross-cultural interactions, and if resident individuals are more culturally conservative than immigrants This result holds if some cultural traits pay off better than others, and individuals use social learning to adopt more advantageous cultural traits. Acculturation orientations may differ between individuals in both immigrant and resident groups, and may change over time[3,5,6] It is far from obvious how the acculturation process might unfold in a population that is mixed and/or dynamic with respect to acculturation orientations. The societal outcome of the acculturation process in case of such mismatched acculturation orientations is not straightforward to ascertain It is not clear under which circumstances a multicultural society, in which both immigrant and resident traits stably coexist, is likely to emerge

Methods

Results

Conclusion