The Missing Side of Acculturation: How Majority-Group Members Relate to Immigrant and Minority-Group Cultures

In many countries, individuals who have represented the majority group historically are decreasing in relative size and/or perceiving that they have diminished status and power compared to those identifying as immigrants or members of ethnic minority groups. These developments raise several salient and timely issues including: (a) how majority-group members’ cultural orientations change as a consequence of increasing intercultural contact due to shifting demographics; (b) what individual, group, cultural and socio-structural processes shape these changes; and (c) the implications of majority-group members’ acculturation. Although research across several decades has examined the acculturation of individuals identifying as minority-group members, much less is known about how majority-group members acculturate in increasingly diverse societies. We present an overview of the state of the art in the emerging field of majority-group acculturation, identify what is known and needs to be known, and introduce a conceptual model guiding future research.