Program

14:15: Presentation by Colleen Ward, Victoria University of Wellington

Mixing it up! The Role of Cultural Identity Styles in the Process of Acculturation and Adaptation

Although there is strong evidence that integration (identification with both heritage culture and the wider national culture) is associated with positive psychological and socio-cultural outcomes, there is little research that addresses the issue of how integration is achieved. In this presentation, I introduce the concept of cultural identity styles, strategies that individuals use for decision-making about identity-relevant issues, and propose that blending and alternating are two strategies that acculturating individuals activate to manage multiple cultural identities. The construction and validation of the Multicultural Identity Styles Scale are briefly described along with our mediational model of cultural identity negotiation, linking the motivation to integrate with psychological well-being. Drawing on diverse samples from New Zealand, Mauritius and Israel, the results of our research show that how acculturating individuals combine multiple cultural identities differentially predicts psychological adaptation in immigrant and minority groups. 

14:45: Questions and discussion

15:00: Break

15:15: Presentation by Lene Arnett Jensen, Clark University

Cultural-Developmental Theory for the 21st Century: Psychological Science in a Global World.

The present thesis is that today’s global world calls for a new mode of inquiry into human development. One-size-fits-all theories, popular in 20th-century psychological sciences, are often too rigid and too biased to capture the complexities of human development across diverse and changing cultures. On the other hand, one-theory-for-every-culture does not capture the fact that humans everywhere share psychological characteristics. An alternative is to conceptualize theories that are “cultural-developmental” in nature. In detailing what is entailed by a cultural-developmental approach, scholarship in the area of moral development is provided as an example. Nonetheless, the cultural-developmental approach may be applied to many other areas of psychological science.

15:45: Questions and discussion

16:00: End of workshop