P01-544 - The correlation between acculturation stress and acculturation dreaming process

Abstract

AimThe purpose of this study was to test the correlation between acculturative stress scale and acculturation dream scale and to verify previous research outcomes.Methods165 Korean American undergraduate and graduate students (M age = 23.3, SD = 4.1) participated in this study. They submitted the most recent dreams and assessed acculturative stress scale. Total 165 dreams were coded by “Lee Acculturation Dream Scale” (Lee, Sang Bok, 2005: Psychological Reports, 96, 454–456). The hypothesis was that the group members having higher acculturative stressscale would have lower acculturation dream scale than the group members with lower acculturative stress scale.ResultsThe first generation Korean American students group (n = 80, M age = 23.4, SD = 4.2) had higher acculturative stress level and lower acculturative dream scale when compared with the second generation Korean American college student group (n = 85, M age = 23.6, SD = 4.3). The t-test on the two group comparison was significant on acculturative stress level (p < 0.001) and “Lee Acculturation Dream Scale” (p < 0.001). It was proven that day time acculturative stress situation had an effect on the night-time dreaming neurocognitive activities, i.e., unconscious acculturation process (Lee, Sang Bok, 2006: “Acculturation Scale for Korean American College Students,” Psychological Reports; Lee, Sang Bok, 2006: “Asian Values Scale - Comparisons of Korean and Korean-American High School Students,” Psychological Reports).ConclusionThe multiple domains of acculturative processes need to be explicated in terms of “multicultural hermeneutics” (Lee, Sang Bok, 2003: “Working with Korean-American Families - Multicultural Hermeneutics,” The American Journal of Family Therapy, 31, 159–178) and of real life experience mapping.