The Culture-Transmission Motive in Immigrants: A World-Wide Internet Survey.

Irina Mchitarjan,Rainer Reisenzein,Massimo Ciccozzi

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0141625

Abstract

A world-wide internet survey was conducted to test central assumptions of a recent theory of cultural transmission in minorities proposed by the authors. 844 1st to 2nd generation immigrants from a wide variety of countries recruited on a microjob platform completed a questionnaire designed to test eight hypotheses derived from the theory. Support was obtained for all hypotheses. In particular, evidence was obtained for the continued presence, in the immigrants, of the culture-transmission motive postulated by the theory: the desire to maintain the culture of origin and transmit it to the next generation. Support was also obtained for the hypothesized anchoring of the culture-transmission motive in more basic motives fulfilled by cultural groups, the relative intra- and intergenerational stability of the culture-transmission motive, and its motivating effects for action tendencies and desires that support cultural transmission under the difficult conditions of migration. Furthermore, the findings suggest that the assumption that people have a culture-transmission motive belongs to the folk psychology of sociocultural groups, and that immigrants regard the fulfillment of this desire as a moral right.

Highlights

In the wake of increasing international migration, the question of how majority societies deal with linguistic and cultural, ethnic and religious minorities and the related issue of cultural transmission in minorities, have become important topics of research in several branches of social science including sociology, psychology, and educational science (e.g. [1,2,3,4,5,6,7])
We tested eight hypotheses derived from the theory of cultural transmission in minorities and obtained support for all hypotheses
Hypotheses 1–6 were already tested in the previous study by Mchitarjan and Reisenzein [5] with a small sample of adolescents and young adults with mostly Russian migration background in Germany

Summary

Introduction

In the wake of increasing international migration, the question of how majority societies deal with linguistic and cultural, ethnic and religious minorities and the related issue of cultural transmission in minorities, have become important topics of research in several branches of social science including sociology, psychology, and educational science (e.g. [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]). In the wake of increasing international migration, the question of how majority societies deal with linguistic and cultural, ethnic and religious minorities and the related issue of cultural transmission in minorities, have become important topics of research in several branches of social science including sociology, psychology, and educational science In part because these theories were not originally developed to explain cultural transmission in minorities, they provide, in our view, only partial explanations (for more detail, see [14,15]). Mchitarjan and Reisenzein [14,16]; see [17,18]) proposed a theory of cultural transmission in minorities that is tailored to the social phenomena in question.

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Results

Conclusion