INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS AND GROUP PROCESSES Is Acculturation Unidimensional or Bidimensional? A Head-to-Head Comparison in the Prediction of Personality, Self-Identity, and Adjustment

The unidimensional model of acculturation posits that heritage and mainstream culture identifications have a strong inverse relation, whereas the bidimensional model posits that the 2 identifications are independent. The authors compared these models in 3 samples of ethnic Chinese (ns = 164, 150, and 204), 1 sample of non-Chinese East Asians (n = 70), and one diverse group of accultumting individuals (n = 140). Although the unidimensional measure showed a coherent pattern of external correlates, the bidimensional measure revealed independent dimensions corresponding to heritage and mainstream culture identification. These dimensions displayed patterns of noninverse correlations with personality, self-identity, and psychosocial adjustment. The authors conclude that the bidimensional model is a more valid and useful operationalization of acculturation. The culture in which people live plays an important role in shaping their sense of self. Indeed, one facet of people's self-identity is that they belong to a certain cultural group. Thus, they have a sense of themselves as being, for example, Canadian, American, or Chinese. When an individual moves from one culture to another, many aspects of self-identity are modified to accom-modate information about and experiences within the new culture. This process, generally referred to as acculturation, involves changes that take place as a result of continuous and direct contact between individuals having different cultural origins (Redfield, Linton, & Herskovits, 1936). Such changes may be observed in a number of different domains, including attitudes, behaviors, val-ues, and sense of cultural identity. At a fundamental level, then, acculturation involves alterations in the individual's sense of self. An examination of the extant literature on the acculturation process reveals two predominant formulations, which we term th