In simple terms
A friendly intro before the formal notes — no formulas yet.
Two Cultures, One Person
When a person lives in contact with a culture other than the one they grew up in, both the person and their behaviour can change. Psychologists call this process acculturation. How smoothly it goes — and how much stress it causes — depends on the strategy the person adopts and the support they receive.
Think of moving to a new school where everyone already knows the rules, the slang and the in-jokes. You have four broad ways to cope: learn the new rules while keeping your own style (integration), drop your old ways entirely to fit in (assimilation), stick tightly to friends from your old school and ignore the new one (separation), or end up belonging to neither group (marginalisation). Your choice — and how welcoming the new school is — shapes how stressed, confident or isolated you feel. Acculturation works the same way, but between whole cultures.
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Define acculturation: the psychological and behavioural change that happens when cultures come into continuous contact.
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Name the strategy at work (integration, assimilation, separation or marginalisation) and note that it depends on both the individual and how the host society responds.
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Link the strategy to an outcome — for example acculturative stress — and support it with a named study's aim, procedure and findings.
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Evaluate: consider bidirectionality, individual variation, and whether the research generalises across groups.
Explore the concept
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Full topic notes
Formal explanation with the rigour you need for the exam.
Acculturation: what changes when cultures meet
Acculturation is the process of psychological and behavioural change that occurs when an individual, or a group, comes into continuous first-hand contact with a culture different from their own. It is not the same as enculturation, which is learning the norms of the culture you were BORN into. Acculturation is what happens afterwards, on contact with a second culture — and it is a two-way street: newcomers change, but so, over time, can the host society.
John Berry's influential model argues that acculturation is not a single path from 'old culture' to 'new culture'. Instead, it depends on how a person answers two questions: (1) Is it valuable to maintain my heritage culture and identity? (2) Is it valuable to seek contact with, and participate in, the larger host society? Crossing these two questions produces four distinct strategies.
Integration (maintain heritage YES / seek host contact YES) — keep your own culture while also engaging with the host culture. Consistently linked to the LOWEST acculturative stress and best adjustment.
Assimilation (maintain heritage NO / seek host contact YES) — give up the heritage culture and take on the host culture.
Separation (maintain heritage YES / seek host contact NO) — hold on to the heritage culture and avoid or reject the host culture.
Marginalisation (maintain heritage NO / seek host contact NO) — lose connection to both cultures, belonging to neither. Consistently linked to the HIGHEST acculturative stress and poorest outcomes.
The strategy available is shaped by the individual AND the host society: discrimination or pressure can push people toward separation or marginalisation even when they would choose integration.
Acculturative stress
Adapting to a new culture is demanding. Acculturative stress is the psychological, physical and social strain that arises when the challenges of cultural change — a new language, unfamiliar norms, discrimination, loss of a familiar support network — outstrip a person's resources for coping. It can show up as anxiety, depression, identity confusion and feelings of marginality. Crucially, acculturative stress is not inevitable: certain factors reliably raise or lower it, which is why the topic is so well suited to a 'how does acculturation influence behaviour' question.
Raises stress: perceived discrimination and negative treatment, forced (rather than voluntary) migration, loss of social support, and marginalisation.
Lowers stress (protective factors): bilingualism / a shared language with family, strong social support and family cohesion, an integration strategy, and economic opportunity.
Because these factors are measurable, researchers can test WHICH aspects of acculturation drive changes in behaviour and wellbeing — this is the empirical heart of the topic.
The influence of globalisation on behaviour and identity
Acculturation used to require physically moving countries. Globalisation — the deepening interconnection of the world through migration, trade, media and technology — means a person can now be exposed to another culture without leaving home. Adolescents in almost every country grow up navigating a LOCAL culture (family, community, heritage) alongside a GLOBAL culture (transnational media, consumer brands, online communities). Psychologists study how holding these two cultures at once shapes identity and behaviour.
Bicultural / hybrid identity: many people blend the global and the local, developing a flexible identity that draws on both. This can broaden opportunities and worldviews.
Identity confusion: for others, exposure to a global culture that clashes with local values produces a sense of belonging to neither — a globalised parallel to marginalisation.
Behavioural change: globalisation can shift values (e.g. toward greater individualism), consumption, and even self-concept, as global norms are absorbed alongside local ones.
Globalisation is bidirectional and uneven: individuals actively negotiate which global influences to adopt, so outcomes vary widely between people and communities.
How cultural context shapes cognition and behaviour
Underlying acculturation and globalisation is a broader principle of the sociocultural approach: the culture a person is embedded in shapes not only how they act but how they THINK. Cultural context influences what people attend to, how they explain events, and what they remember. When people acculturate or are exposed to global culture, these cognitive habits can shift too — which is why a study of cultural influence on cognition is also relevant evidence here.
For example, research on attribution and attention has repeatedly found that people from more individualistic contexts tend to focus on central objects and explain behaviour in terms of individual dispositions, whereas people from more collectivistic contexts tend to attend more to context and relationships and explain behaviour situationally. As individuals move between cultural contexts through acculturation and globalisation, these cognitive tendencies can move with them — evidence that cultural context reaches all the way into cognition, not just outward behaviour.
Choose ONE study and go deep, rather than name-dropping several. For a 9-mark SAQ, examiners reward a clearly DESCRIBED study (aim, procedure, findings) that is then EXPLICITLY LINKED back to the exact wording of the question. Depth on one linked study beats breadth across many listed ones every single time.
Evaluating research on cultural influences
For extended-response questions you will also need to evaluate this research. Keep the evaluation grounded in the specific studies you used, not generic phrases.
Correlational, not causal: much acculturation research (e.g. surveys linking language or support to stress) is correlational, so it cannot prove that acculturation strategy CAUSES the outcome — third variables such as pre-existing wellbeing may be involved.
Bidirectionality and individual variation: models like Berry's risk implying people fit neatly into one box; in reality individuals move between strategies and outcomes depend on the host society, so avoid treating a strategy as a fixed trait.
Generalisability: findings from one migrant group (e.g. Asian Americans, or Japanese workers) may not transfer to refugees, other regions, or other historical moments — cultural change is context-specific.
Sampling and self-report: reliance on questionnaires and interviews introduces social desirability and translation-equivalence problems across cultures, threatening validity.
Constructive real-world value: despite these limits, the research has clear applied strength — identifying protective factors (bilingual support, family cohesion, integration) informs genuinely useful settlement and mental-health policy.
Common mistakes examiners penalise
Confusing acculturation with assimilation — acculturation is the whole PROCESS; assimilation is only one of its four strategies. Collapsing the two is the single most penalised error in this topic.
Confusing enculturation with acculturation — enculturation is learning your FIRST culture; acculturation is adapting to a SECOND one. Define the right term.
Listing studies instead of describing one — an SAQ that only names researchers ('Berry did a study, Lueck did a study…') without aim/procedure/findings sits in the 1–3 band. Describe ONE study properly.
Describing a study but never linking it — a well-described study that is not tied back to the question's command term caps you in the middle band. Always finish with an explicit link sentence.
Evaluating in an SAQ — strengths and limitations are for extended responses. In a 9-mark SAQ they earn no extra marks and cost you the time you needed to describe and link.
Treating a strategy as a personality trait — acculturation outcomes depend on the host society too; ignoring discrimination and social context flattens the answer and weakens evaluation.
Worked examples
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Describe one study investigating acculturative stress, and link its findings to how acculturation influences behaviour. [Practice SAQ]
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One relevant study is Lueck and Wilson (2010).
Explain how globalisation can influence identity, with reference to one study. [Practice SAQ]
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Globalisation exposes individuals to a global culture alongside their local, heritage culture, which can reshape identity. This can be illustrated with research by Ogihara and Uchida (2014) on changing values in Japan, a society exposed to increasingly globalised, individualistic norms.
Paper 1 SAQ: Explain, with reference to one study, how acculturation can influence behaviour. [9 marks]
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Model answer: Acculturation is the process of psychological and behavioural change that occurs when a person comes into continuous first-hand contact with a culture different from their own. One way acculturation influences behaviour is through acculturative stress — the strain experienced when the demands of adapting to a new culture exceed a person's coping resources, producing behaviours and states such as anxiety, withdrawal or depression. Berry's model notes that how a person acculturates (for example integration versus marginalisation) affects how much of this stress they experience.
How it all connects
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Tap a linked idea to see how it connects back to the main topic — that connection is what examiners reward.
Glossary
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Quick check
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Revision flashcards
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Acculturation
The process of psychological and behavioural change that occurs when an individual or group comes into continuous first-hand contact with a culture different from their own. It changes both the newcomer and, potentially, the host.
Key takeaways
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Integration (maintain heritage YES / seek host contact YES) — keep your own culture while also engaging with the host culture. Consistently linked to the LOWEST acculturative stress and best adjustment.
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Assimilation (maintain heritage NO / seek host contact YES) — give up the heritage culture and take on the host culture.
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Separation (maintain heritage YES / seek host contact NO) — hold on to the heritage culture and avoid or reject the host culture.
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Marginalisation (maintain heritage NO / seek host contact NO) — lose connection to both cultures, belonging to neither. Consistently linked to the HIGHEST acculturative stress and poorest outcomes.
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The strategy available is shaped by the individual AND the host society: discrimination or pressure can push people toward separation or marginalisation even when they would choose integration.
Practice — then mark it
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Get a Paper 1 SAQ marked: explain, with one study, how acculturation influences behaviour
Get a Paper 1 SAQ marked: explain, with one study, how acculturation influences behaviour
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Checkpoint
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Before you move on: do Get a Paper 1 SAQ marked: explain, with one study, how acculturation influences behaviour on paper, snap a photo, and get examiner-style feedback on exactly where you win and lose marks.