Integrative Communication Theory of Cross‐Cultural Adaptation

Abstract

Abstract The integrative communication theory of cross‐cultural adaptation provides two models to explain how and why people, on relocating from a familiar home culture to a new culture, are changed by continuous experiences of interacting with the host environment. The process model presents the stress‐adaptation‐growth dynamic as the dialectic and cyclic psychological movement underpinning an individual's gradual transformation toward greater functional fitness and psychological health vis‐à‐vis the host environment and an emergent intercultural identity orientation beyond the boundaries of a single culture. The structural model highlights the individual's ability to communicate according to the host cultural norms and practices and active engagement in the host interpersonal and mass communication activities as the main engine driving his/her adaptation process. These communication factors are further explained as influencing, and being influenced by, key conditions of the host environment and the individual's own personal and ethnic predispositions.