LINDA E. ANDERSONdownload.xuebalib.com/xuebalib.com.38860.pdfview, culture shock is usually...

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Int. J. Intercultural Rel., Vol. IS, No. 3, pp. 293-328, 1994 Copyright 0 I994 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in the USA. All rights reserved

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A NEW LOOK AT AN OLD CONSTRUCT: CROSS-CULTURAL ADAPTATION

LINDA E. ANDERSON

h4on treal, Quebec

ABSTRACT. The dominant picture of cross-cultural adaptation still, with some exceptions, features a reified process of recovering from culture shock or culture- related stress. The purpose of this article is to put cross-cultural adaptation back into perspective, reconnecting it with its roots in sociopsychological adjustment theory. Cross-cultural adaptation represents in essence a common process of environmental adaptation. Far from being culture spectfic, Pulture” shock is simply a frustration reaction syndrome. A model of cross-cultural adaptation based on sociopsychological adjustment theory and applied to the findings of decades of cross-cultural investigations is presented. It holds that all adjustment is a cyclical and recursive process of overcoming obstacles and solving problems in present-environment transactions. It is the individual who chooses how to respond, and in so doing creates his or her own adjustment. Cultural adaptation is a continuum. Sojourners exhibit a broad range of degrees, modes, and levels of adaptation. Adaptation is also more than the sum of the subadjustments that compose it. Working one’s way into a culture can produce fundamental changes in the sojourner commensurate with a process of resocialization. When, in the adaptation process, socialization is extensive or adjustments are particularly dtf- ficult, sojourners can be ‘Yeborn” by the experience.

CULTURAL ADJUSTMENT IN THE CROSS-CULTURAL LITERATURE

The cross-cultural literature encompasses four broad families of models describing the process of adapting to another culture, although the distinctions between them are often more a question of emphasis than of substance. The first group, by far the most dominant, features what we call the “recuperation” model. With culture shock as its pivot point, the model holds recovery from the shock to be the mechanism for accommodation to life in strange new lands. Using the famous U-shaped curve (Lysgaard, 1955), this view posits an initial “high” occurring at cultural

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entry; followed by a bottoming out resulting from cultural confrontation; and, finally, a climb up and out to cultural acceptance and adaptation.

As originally defined by the anthropologists Kalervo Oberg and George Foster in the late 195Os, culture shock was a medical condition describing feelings of disorientation following entry into a new culture, feelings often so strong as to degenerate into physical symptoms. In this view, culture shock is usually portrayed as an affliction that descends on the individual almost as an occupational illness, and with the impact of a falling piano.

A modern variant of the culture-shock recuperation model has recovery following not upon a disease or malaise producing mental or physical disintegration but on a crisis of personality or identity (e.g., Adler, 1975; Bennett, 1977; Garza-Guerrero, 1974; Harris & Moran, 1979; Pearson, 1964; Weinmann, 1983). Psychological-crisis conceptualizations tend to view identity crises as the more or less natural outcome of contact with an alien culture. Upon contact, all the familiar underpinnings of one’s sense of self are said to be torn away, depriving persons of most of the familiar reference points that provide the cues for their behavior as well as the substrate for their sense of identity (cf. Lewis & Jungman, 1986; Pearson, 1964). The points of passage through to full recovery are stages in the working out of new identities incorporating both the old and the new selves.

Perhaps the best proponent of this view is Adler (1975, 1987), who construed the cultural-adaptation process explicitly as a powerful developmental experience. To Adler, the culture crisis provides the impetus necessary to open the way to personality development and personal growth. The change that the cross-cultural experience produces in the adjuster’s consciousness shakes up the individual’s preconceptions, may even lead to “disintegration” of his or her personality, but the disintegration is necessary to allow a “better,” more integrated and transcultural self to be constructed out of the ashes of the old.

A second group of investigators views cross-cultural adaptation essentially as a learning process (e.g., Byrnes, 1965; Ezekiel, 1968; Guthrie, 1975; Lee, 1979). Sojourners adrift in a sea of perceptual and behavioral anomalies and difference are in a state of ignorance. To adapt, they must learn the parameters of the new sociocultural system and acquire the sociocultural skills necessary for participating in it. Rather than following a U-curve as in the previous formulations, adaptation here is plotted as the classic ascending slope of the learning curve.

Two somewhat different courses of culture learning are postulated that correspond to two different slants on the mechanism of cultural accommodation. The first school of thought, primarily encompassing communication theorists (cf. Furnham & Bochner, 1986; Gardner, 1952;

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Hammer, Gudykunst, 8~ Wiseman, 1978; Nishida, 1985; Ruben, 1976; Ruben & Kealey, 1979), holds that because communication governs individuals’ ability to interact effectively in all life situations, intercultural communication is the core of cultural adaptation. Cultural adaptation is therefore a process of learning the communication skills necessary for effective social interaction in order to overcome the verbal and nonverbal communication failures that are inevitable in a strange land (Furnham & Bochner, 1986).

The other school of thought holds that successful adaptation lies in implementing appropriate social behaviors but distinguishes itself from the communication view by its emphasis on the behavior learning itself. To behaviorally oriented investigators (e.g., David, 1976; Guthrie, 1975; Mischel, 1973; Pedersen, 1983; Triandis, 1980; Wallace & Atkins, 1961), cultural adaptation is construed as a recursive process of operant condi- tioning. In social-learning theory, certain behaviors are observed to pre- vent “punishing” events and some to lead to “reinforcing” events. Not only must appropriate social behaviors (those the society reinforces) be learned-mainly by observation and imitation- but so must the reinforcement contingencies governing these behaviors, that is, the system of rewards and punishments specifically associated with the new behaviors. In short, to adapt to a culture, sojourners must learn both perceptual rules -the rules for interpreting their environment-and behavioral rules-the rules for comporting themselves within it.

A third family of models, equally linear, straddles the dividing line between cultural adaptation as a process of recovery and of learning. In use both for short-term sojourners and long-term immigrants (Gordon, 1971; Katcher, 1971), these “journey” conceptualizations view the process as a step-by-step psychological journey from the fringes to the center of a foreign culture, from a state of denial or ignorance to a state of understanding and empathy (e.g., Bennett, 1986; Gochenour & Janeway, 1977; Jacobson, 1963; Stewart, 1977).

The most interesting of these models is perhaps M. J. Bennett’s (1986), which is based on the principle of psychological dissonance. The journey is symbolized by the progression in cognitive “sensitivity” that occurs with increasing exposure to a culture, the various stages in sensitivity representing evolving ways in which sojourners respond to cultural differences. From what Bennett called the “ethnocentric” early days of adaptation, where such differences are denied outright, sojourners’ consciousness evolves to full “ethnorelativism,” where points of difference observed in the new culture are integrated into their own world view.

Although the U-curve and staged hypotheses still dominate descriptions of the cultural adaptation process, a few investigators have proposed a homeostatic mechanism (cf. Barna, 1976; Gudykunst & Ham- mer, 1987; Spradley & Phillips, 1972; Wong-Rieger, 1984). These

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“equilibrium” models, the fourth and last family of models for consideration here, implicitly construe cross-cultural adaptation as a dynamic and cyclical process of tension reduction. The basic premise is mechani- cal - that systems (including sojourners) operate in “steady-state” mode until dynamic events, upheavals, or disruptions push them out of equilibrium. In homeostatic terms, cross-cultural adaptation is a process of reducing the internal imbalance-variously labeled tension/drive/need/ uncertainty-that is unleashed by confrontation with the foreign culture, after which the sojourner is free to subside into normal operating mode.

The most fully developed homeostatic model expands on the physiological formulation by using explicitly cognitive principles for its basis (cf. Grove & Torbiorn, 1985; Torbiorn, 1982). The process of cross- cultural adaptation is viewed in terms of the changing relationships between an individual’s (perceptual) frame of reference, his or her behavior, and the ambient environment, these relationships all being evaluated by the individual’s personal criterion of adequacy. Changes in these tri- partite relationships, as perceived by the adjuster, govern progression through the (four) stages of Torbiorn’s “subjective adjustment” cycle; the engine is the individual’s level of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with his or her evolving adjustments. Attainment and nonattainment of the aspired-to level of functioning are construed as balance and imbalance, whereas a state of internal balance is viewed as inherently satisfying and imbalance inherently dissatisfying.

Although each of the groups of models just described holds a piece of the puzzle, individually none is fully satisfactory to account for the process of cross-cultural adaptation. Homeostatic models are reduction- ist and tend to be one dimensional: The individual appears to adapt more to internal tension or dissonance than to the external environment. Models of animal arousal or drive (viz., Spradley & Phillips, 1972) can perhaps be applicable to humans at the basic-needs level but make little reference to coping strategies or indeed to any cognitive activity at all. The Torbiorn model translates physiological tension reduction into thL cognitive concepts of satisfaction-dissatisfaction (at adjustive adequacy), but beyond this criterion, little of a cognitive nature appears to be in operation at all, notwithstanding the primordial role that cognitive factors play in human adjustments. Cognitive factors appraise events as threatening, positive, exciting, or benign (e.g., Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), in short, as events to be adjusted to or sailed through. The same object or event can be a dreaded threat to one individual and a ripe challenge to another.

A second shortcoming of the model is that the higher level activities human beings are involved in-learning, fulfillment, growth, and development -cannot be explained solely by homeostatic processes (cf. White, 1974, p. 53). Human beings do not only function to reduce stress


and imbalance. Many actively seek out tension and are revitalized by difficulty.

The learning-curve models do not tell the full story either. Undeniably, a difficulty facing sojourners physically or psychologically far from home may be an inability to read and respond appropriately to the events swirling around them. Their first task is indeed to learn the parameters of the new environment, its appropriate social behaviors, communication skills, and reinforcement contingencies. But adapting involves more than making the unfamiliar familiar: It means accepting the unfamiliar, accepting the uprooting and alien values, and the loss of loved objects and people, a much harder task.

The journey depictions of cross-cultural adaptation afford many interesting insights into the cognitive-perceptual processes underlying cultural adjustments, but they remain purely descriptive systems. As such, they reveal little about the form or dynamics of the adaptation process in all its multiple dimensions.

The recuperation models, finally, present particular problems. Not- withstanding (or perhaps because of), its primacy in contemporary treatments of cross-cultural experience, the term culture shock, is vague, overgeneralized, and not even specific to culture as we normally understand the term. It has been applied to an extensive range of situations, to everything from marriage to desegregated schooling to corporate reshuf- fles (cf. Main, 1984), with a remarkable variety of situations in-between. Even in cross-cultural studies, it has become little more than a catch-all phrase encompassing a host of different reactions to a host of different problems (Chang, 1985). Applying the epithet, culture shock to all these situations is misleading (cf. Furnham & Bochner, 1986), because it masks real differences in the magnitude and cause of the disorientation and emotions in evidence. In most of the situations cited, the common de- nominators have much less to do with culture than with radical environmental change coupled with unfamiliarity. Culture shock should more properly be labeled change shock, if shock it is to be. Change anywhere demands accommodations.

The depiction of cultural adaptation as hinging on a crisis or shock, and involving progressive stages in the overcoming of the crisis or shock, does not always accord with the facts either. Some investigators find no culture shock or crisis reported at all (cf. Byrnes, 1965; Lundstedt, 1963) or reported only a feeling of “general irritation” (Torbiorn, 1982, p. 170). The universal validity of the curve approach itself is dubious. It has long been known that some people never adapt; some slide inexorably into chronic alienation (Campbell & Yarrow, 1958); others adapt in a slow and steady linear pattern, without discontinuities (cf. Kim, 1978; Klineberg & Hull, 1979; Selltiz, Christ, Havel, & Cook, 1963). We still do not know why this is so.

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One reason for this ignorance may be the pragmatic approach that has generally been taken in the literature, largely American, to the study of cross-cultural phenomena. This may reflect what has been termed the American problem-solving approach to life (Stewart, 1972, p. 35), an approach epitomized in the belief that the basic problems of the world are technological and amenable to fixing (Abe & Wiseman, 1983; Mes- tenhauser, 1983; Stewart, 1977). Among sojourners, this attitude translates, for instance, into Peace Corps volunteers’ apparent expectations (cf. Harrison & Hopkins, 1967, p. 1) that their preliminary training would prepare them for the “total life” they would be living overseas (with consequent disappointment that it did not).

Among researchers, the pragmatic approach translates into a strong spotlight on cross-cultural training programs, methods and procedures, and the design of educational exchanges. Attempts to “solve” the problems of cultural adaptation appear to have generally sidetracked or su- perceded efforts to understand the “problem” itself. What scant research has been done on the mechanisms of the cultural adaptation process still tends to look at adaptation globally, as an input-output sequence, either symptomatically, concentrating on overt behavioral and emotional signs of distress (e.g., Harris, 1973; Hill, 1983; Latourette, 1966; Maslund, 1957; Thomson & English, 1964), or diagnostically, in terms of its etiol- ogy/causative factors (e.g., Parker & McEvoy, 1993; Weaver, 1993).

Another unfortunate characteristic of the published cross-cultural literature is the deep cleavage existing between research disciplines looking into cross-cultural adaptation. Although a natural enough phenomenon in an emerging field of study, cross-cultural investigators have nonethe- less analyzed their data in the light of their own professional interests, generally limiting themselves in addition to consideration of a particular type of subject group-exchange students, Peace Corps volunteers, business people, missionaries, and so forth. Different models lead to different definitions of adaptation, which lead to different findings, still giving rise to a broad noncomparability in results- the “disparate chorus” of findings, interests, and approaches in the area of cross-cultural studies that a Peace Corps researcher complained of over a quarter of a century ago (Arnold, 1967).

The cleavage between the separate disciplines interested in cultural adaptation has had a more deleterious effect: It has deprived the crossroads field of the vitalizing effects of cross-fertilization. The divisions between cross-cultural research disciplines in the largely American literature not only appear to be hermetic but are also isolated from the broad stream of psychological adjustment literature.

Most present-day cross-cultural literature, being alternatively pessimistic and inspirational in tone, has reified the construct of cultural adaptation. The predominant conception still tends to carry the specter


of culture shock (or an identity crisis) at its core, and it still reflects the view of cultural adaptation as an achievement (often a heroic one). The most that can usually be said about the intercultural experience is that it can be illuminating and has the potential to be character building. Com- ing across in some treatments even as a contemporary form of medieval ordeal, out of which the sojourner might hope to emerge unbowed but not unbloody, it has been taken far beyond the construct used, for instance, by America’s Northern neighbors (cf. Berry, Kim, & Boski, 1987; Hawes & Kealey, 1979), whose object of study is “overseas effectiveness” or “success.” Save for a few notable exceptions (cf. Bennett, 1977; Taft, 1987; Torbiorn, 1982), adapting has been forced out of the domain of the multitudinous life adjustments we make back home (e.g., to hospital or army routine, a new spouse or a new job) and has been elevated into the realm of monumental challenges.

It is time to break down the walls between disciplines exploring cultural adaptation and to span the gulf that has separated cross-cultural adaptation from the broad body of general adjustment studies. To the individual faced with the job of getting along in a new environment, any cross-cultural trials that do occur would be more understandable, even perhaps more tolerable, if they could be viewed in the light of previous life experiences (Bennett, 1977).

Being alive at home or abroad means having to cope with disruptive events, adjustive crises, such as at midlife, on the death of a child, or on entering a strange social group. It means being separated from the old, the known, and/or the familiar (Taft, 1987, p. 151). In its essence, cross-cultural adaptation is a commonplace process of learning to live with change and difference-in this instance, a changed environment and different people, different norms, different standards, and different customs. The essence of adaptive behavior is the recognition and ap- preciation of new contingencies (Mischel, 1973, p. 270). Intelligent behavior is defined from what living organisms do when confronted by these contingencies or from what they learn therefrom (Munn, 1955, p. 82). Protozoa have to and do adjust to changes in their environment. Protozoa are no more subject to this imperative than humans.

Cultural adaptation is a subcategory of what one cross-cultural writer (Bennett, 1977) called “transition experiences,” defined as responses to the significant changes in life circumstances that generate the “tensions and anxieties we face whenever change threatens the stability of our lives” (p. 45). Culture shock is more properly termed (cultural) “adjustment stress” (Weaver, 1993). As one trainer recently suggested, the ex- pression “being effective abroad” is more appropriate, even necessary, in order to replace the survival connotations of the prevailing cross-cultural construct (McCaffery, 1986, p. 163).

In this fast-approaching end of the 20th century in which change is

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“massive, perpetual, obligatory” (cf. Pearce & Kang, 1987, p. 38), we are all of us to some degree immigrants in this strange new world: A sort of “future shock” threatens to be our permanent portion.

A CROSS-CULTURAL ADAPTATION MODEL

To understand the facts and phenomenology of adapting to unfamiliar environments, we have to go beyond the confines of cross-cultural studies. The first item of business in this connection is to clarify the distinc-

tion between the terms adjustment and adaptation. In their classic work on sociopsychological adjustment, Shaffer and Shoben (1956, p. 56) defined adjustment as referring to the reduction or satisfaction of (short- term) drives, whereas adaptation is that which is valuable for (long-term) individual or racial survival. Adaptations may be maladjustive in the short term whereas adjustments may be maladaptive in the long, but both terms refer to the achievement of a fit between the person and the environment, although the objectives and time frames differ.

What do we know about how people react and adjust to massive change or radical difference? Why does adjustment “work” in some cases and not in others? The extensive findings from the fields of bereavement, migration, and critical life-event studies (cf. Ascher, 1981; Bowlby, 1961; Hogan, 1983; Litwach & Foster, 1981) have underscored the essential kinship between these areas of investigation and that of cross-cultural adaptation.

Bereavement is a useful phenomenon in studying the adaptation process because it is one of the most general and best described of all examples of the general principle of how we adjust to disruptive change (Marris, 1975, p. 23). A grief reaction has often been found to be a prominent accompaniment of the process of adapting to a strange culture. Bereavement is especially revealing about how we cope with the loss of the familiar-our family, support group(s), roles, language, values, and all the rest of our culture in which our individual identities are embedded (Briggs, 1983; Hall, 1976; Harris & Moran, 1979). Indeed mourning is a little-known aspect of migration: The uprooted immigrant grieves for the loss of a whole homeland (Cohen-Emerique, 1988; Garza- Guerrero, 1974).

Beyond phenomena of loss and grieving, at a more general level, major life events such as release from prison, a mental institution, or the throes of alcoholism, starting college, retirement, becoming literate, or returning home after war all involve disruptive transitions (Minkler & Biller, 1979) and are always stressful. All have as much potential as intercultural adaptation for leading to destabilizing crises.

Studies of the individual adjusting to a serious illness or even of a stranger dropped into the ingroup chatter of a neighborhood cocktail party could give us pointers about what adjusting to life in an unfamiliar


culture might be. Some individuals never adapt to the demands of a foreign culture or to major disruptive situations in their home culture.

Many cross-cultural writers (e.g., Bennett, 1977; Coffman 8~ Harris, 1980; Selby & Woods, 1966) have remarked on the striking resemblance the “culture shock” syndrome bears to the distress reactions humans exhibit whenever confronted with major disruptive changes. The symptoms are similar as well-irritability, depression, lowered self-esteem, to name a few. All such phenomena as migration and uprooting, the loss of home or loved ones, sojourns in strange lands can be viewed more simply as particular instances of a general set of potentially stressful, sometimes “critical,” events all beings undergo in the course of their lives.

In contending that intercultural adaptation is conceptually identical to its intracultural version, the author does not wish to imply that it is necessarily no more difficult. Individual adjustments to a new culture, as to a new work routine, an earth tremor, or the loss of a loved one can be cataclysmic, a minor disruption, or so routine as to go unnoticed. In all cases, what is involved is a normal and temporary phylogenetic response to the stresses elicited by events or changes in circumstances (cf. Barna 1976; Lundstedt, 1963; Ryan & Trimble, 1978; Stewart, 1977).

Real-life adjustments involve working toward a fit between person and environment, regardless of how that fit is achieved (Berry et al., 1987; French, Rodgers, & Cobb, 1974). It is a two-way interactive process. Individuals both give to and take from their environments: Environ- ments make demands but also can be used to satisfy individuals’ needs (Lazarus, 1976, p. 47).

Adjustment from an adjuster’s standpoint means responding to the demands our environment is constantly making on us. Viewed from another angle, such demands can be construed as obstacles that present themselves in our paths. In the cross-cultural arena, environmental or situational demands could assail our values and beliefs, our interpersonal relationships or skills, or even our own physical appearance, for example, as a member of a “visible minority” (Coe, 1972, p. 11).

A classic text in the field of social psychology, referred to earlier, defines the psychological study of the adjustment process in these terms (Shaffer & Shoben, 1956, p. 9):

It can be described as a series of steps, beginning when a need is felt and ending when that need is satisfied. . . . The principal steps of a normal adjustment process are therefore the existence of a motive (l), the operation of some thwarting (2) that prevents its immediate satisfaction, giving rise to varied responses (3), and leading eventually to a solution (4). Point (5) is reached when satisfaction is achieved; point (6) when the need remains unsatisfied.

Figure 1 is a diagram of the psychological adjustment process borrowed directly from this text.

The model is based on long-established psychological drive theory. Its

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(6)

-151

FIGURE 1. The adjustment process.

crux is the presence of a thwarting condition (the obstacle). Adjustment is the generation of response(s) to neutralize the obstacle. Drive or motivation is needed to move an individual toward a goal. It is experiences of instability or imbalance that provide the necessary impetus spurring organisms to action.

Not everyone wishes to adjust to everything in his or her environment. Without impetus, without a reason to move, no movement (and no adjustment) will occur. Motives not only instigate behavior, they also direct it (Coe, 1972, p. 39). A sated but thirsty rat will race not to the cheese but to the water dish. If a goal is not perceived as a goal and an obstacle as an obstacle, no purposeful (goal-directed) movement and no obstacle-related (coping) behavior will occur.

For the newly arrived and inexperienced sojourner, virtually everything in the environment that can be seen, smelled, heard, touched, and tasted can constitute an obstacle around, through, under, or over which a way must be found. Hurdles do not only come from outside. The sojourner’s own internal states, a condition of paralyzing homesickness, for instance, could also constitute an obstacle to be overcome before the sojourner can do anything at all.

The term obstacle here is clearly used generically and could be applied to a steeplechase course or any figurative hurdle-a psychological dissat- isfier to be reduced or an absent satisfier to be attained (cf. McGuire & McDermott, 1987; Stewart, 1977), a state of internal disequilibrium/ tension propelling an organism to restore balance (cf. Torbiorn, 1982), and any other internal or external stressors that make demands that tax or exceed the adjustive resources of the individual (Lazarus, 1976, p. 47).

The model presented here is a cognitive one: It allows for contribu- tions from the individual’s thought processes. Sojourners do not proceed through adjustment stages like hungry rats through a maze on the trail of the cheese. It is sojourners’ perception of events in the environment


(and their appraisals of their defences against them) that drive their behavior. Because situations only have psychological significance to the individual as he or she appraises them, it is these appraisals that mediate the ensuing behavior (Lazarus, Averill, & Opton, 1974, p. 260). Individ- uals’ perceptions determine both what must be adjusted to and how adjustment should proceed. A foreign language is no barrier at all to the individual who speaks it.

Thwarting, or the delaying of an ongoing course of action (Lazarus, 1976, p. 49), can lead to frustration. Frustration can be triggered where coping resources are overstretched, particularly where the individual is repeatedly unable to satisfy a basic need to understand, control, or pre- dict behavior (Furnham, 1987, p. 46), such as is typical of the early days of a foreign sojourn. If the thwarting persists and no adequate way out is found, the whole gamut of classic frustration reactions can ensue, from anger, withdrawal, depression, regression to primitive behavior, all the way to exhaustion, numbness, and stupor.

These reactions are indistinguishable from symptoms in conventional descriptions of culture shock. The culture shock syndrome, where it does occur, is simply a complex of accumulating psychological frustration reactions, distressing without a doubt, but no stranger to the more common run of life’s adjustments. In the cross-cultural experience, frustra- tions may build up one upon the other until they overwhelm the individual, until he or she “cracks.” It is this breakdown that is commonly labeled culture shock.

In all situations of similar ambiguity, confusion and a sense of impo- tence in our surroundings, all species-from pigeons through cats, dogs, rats, monkeys, and all ages and kinds of humans-respond with frustration if the thwarting is acute and eventually with numbness or shock if it is chronic. When environments become unfathomable, even rats or pigeons can be considered to suffer from a kind of culture shock.

There are six general principles applying to cross-cultural adaptation that flow from the proposed model:

l it involves adjustments; l it implies learning; l it implies a stranger-host relationship; l it is cyclical, continuous, interactive; l it is relative; and l it implies personal development.

Principle I: Cross-Cultural Adaptation Involves Adjustments

The social skills model of cross-cultural “accommodation” (Furnham & Bochner, 1986) holds that sojourners are not expected to adjust themselves to a new culture. Instead, they learn “selected aspects for instru-

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mental reasons” (cf. Furnham, 1987, p. 52). Much of the cross-cultural adaptation literature (cf. Guthrie, 1975) exhibits a similar tendency to abjure the idea of adjustment and to equate adapting to a culture with learning it. Once the culture has been learned, the sojourner is supposed to have accommodated to it.

As we have seen, the truth lies elsewhere. The essential ingredients of the adjustment process are a motive, goal-directed movement, and an obstacle or thwarting. It occurs in response to a new work procedure, a new language or monetary system, a new social group, or a new world. Adapting to another culture requires more than learning the culture’s ways. It demands that their validity be accepted. All the social skills in the world will not eliminate feelings of loss, bereavement, faltering identity, or of values and beliefs besieged. Adaptation means coming to terms with them all.

Some obstacles crop up early in the sojourn, others later, some charac- teristically appearing all the way through. In a cross-cultural situation, the major obstacles demanding sojourner adjustment could be subdi- vided into three categories:

1. There are differences in values, attitudes, and beliefs between the home and host cultures, particularly in the core values, those powerful, emotion-laden images that guide everyday acts (cf. Cohen- Emerique, 1988). Such value clashes put pressure on the individual’s very identity, which has hitherto been wrapped up in and defined by those selfsame values.

2. There is loss of the familiar and/or loved objects of the home culture, that is, all those objects that define one’s former self, one’s own familiar identity, which was inextricably tied up with the lost object(s) as much as with the lost values.

3. There is sojourner’s social incompetence, because newcomers to a social group have neither the perceptual sensitivity nor the behavioral flexibility to respond appropriately in the new setting (Mischel, 1973). The resultant sense of their own inadequacy can aggravate existing feelings of loss, homesickness, and of values under siege.

Principle 2: Cross-Cultural Adaptation Implies Learning

The fact that cross-cultural adaptation is more than culture learning does not mean that no learning enters into adjustments. On the contrary, in this process, learning and adjustment are interdependent and far- reaching. Upon arrival in a new culture, the first piece of information sojourners are often faced with is that the old rules for interpreting the environment and generating appropriate behavior no longer apply (Schild, 1962). They learn that even their specific technical, job-related


experience may be beside the point. Under these circumstances, problems will ensue that will require resolution.

Problem solving in any new situation means first learning the parameters of the situation then devising responses to problems presented and internalizing response alternatives as a function of the parameters learned. Learning and adjustment thus operate in a reciprocal process (Coelho, 1962).

An expanded representation of the model in Figure 1 is given in Figure 2, which also provides a graphic illustration of the relative roles adjustment and learning play in the adaptation process. In Figure 2, the sojourner is proceeding toward the goal as in Figure 1 and encounters an obstacle for which he or she has not the ready resources to surmount. Broadly speaking, there are four ways of reacting to the new situation: by changing the environment, by changing oneself, by doing nothing at all, or by walking away. A further and common type of reaction accompanying confrontation with an obstacle is emotional. Emotions such as frustration can act as obstacles or as motivators.

Following through Figure 2, let us say that the new culture’s language constitutes the obstacle (is a “language barrier”). If sojourners opt for changing themselves, say “yes” to the “change self’ option, learning may be needed to effect the change and make the adjustment. In this case, the individual could decide to learn the language. If the sojourner decides not to go that route and opts instead for changing the environment, learning may be required there too. For example, he or she may need to learn how to enlist an interpreter. In the cross-cultural context where the sojourner is a stranger in the house of a host, changing the parameters of the coping situation often means changing oneself.

FIGURE 2. The cross-cultural adjustment process.

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Although finding a way around the obstacle by changing the environment or oneself often requires learning, it is not reducible to it. Some obstacles can, through learning, be made to disappear outright, but not all are amenable to learning or even to direct behavioral attack.

Sojourners who decide and/or are able to change neither themselves nor the environment have only two options: to withdraw and relinquish aspirations to the goal or to do nothing. Doing nothing and remaining in place will catapult them into the loop between obstacle, negative decision (“no” to both environmental and self-change) and back on to the entry point to whirl once again around the circuit. Sojourners may travel this loop until exhaustion overcomes them, the obstacle is removed, or they physically withdraw.

Principle 3: Cross-Cultural Adaptation Implies a Stranger-Host Relationship

The third principle of cross-cultural adaptation, one that sharply distinguishes it from everyday life adjustments, is that it takes place in the context of a stranger-host relationship (Gudykunst & Hammer, 1987). Sojourners are strangers in two senses of the term-newcomers and mar- ginal persons (cf. McLemore, 1970; Schuetz, 1944). They are outsiders whose task it is to work their way inside. As “guests” in the “host” culture, they must modify their frame of reference to adapt to the culture of the group. As a minority of one, they must learn and adjust to at least enough of the salient features of the (majority) culture to get along in it (Schuetz, 1944).

Being a stranger in the just-mentioned dual sense has important cognitive-psychological effects. The sojourner’s knowledge of objects and events is an outsider’s knowledge without any recipes for interpreting and handling the world or for guiding interactions. Indeed the sojourner’s perceptual and social incompetence and sense of inadequacy can be highly motivating and a sharp spur to learning.

The effects of being a stranger are not only cognitive. There is inevitable emotional discomfort in being a foreigner, which is only partly made up of the fact that all the things that define and reinforce one’s identity, status, and role are missing (Kohls, 1984, p. 37). The distinction between host and visitor roles has important social implications too, which can strongly color stranger-host interactions. Some cultures make greater distinctions than others between insiders and outsiders. Some groups have mechanisms to facilitate the socialization of newcomers; others may have none and be antagonistic. The stranger-host relationship is often an insider versus outsider relationship, with strong pressures being brought to bear on the outsider to conform (Cohen-Emerique, 1984).


Principle 4: Cross-Cultural Adaptation Is Cyclical, Continuous, and Interactive

Figure 1 and its expanded version in Figure 2 depict the process of adjustment as involving the encountering and overcoming of an obstacle. Life in any culture, however, presents an unending string of obstacles. Countless times in the course of our lives, the person-environment inter- play throws up something that impedes our progress. This obstacle by definition must be adjusted to, the “problem” which it represents, “solved.” Possible solutions must be tried out; ineffective responses abandoned; and effective ones adopted, fine-tuned, and retried while new solutions are continuously being tested.

Environments are rarely static, whether in old familiar or new unfamiliar physical and social circumstances. Adaptation is a dynamic and interactive process where individuals influence and change their environments and are influenced and changed by them in return (Bowers, 1973). Whether we solve problems well or badly, it is a fact of life that we must keep coping with problems as they arise.

The term cross-cultural adaptation can be considered a grab-bag term, camouflaging a heterogeneous and complex reality. This reality is not of a gradually advancing accommodation to a “culture” taken as a whole, but a nonlinear and much more discontinuous process (Punetha, Giles, & Young, 1987; Szalay & Inn, 1987): It is the accomplishment of a string of (sub)adjustments to environmental or internal obstacles. In practice, cross-cultural adaptation is built up of adjustments to a too-slow pace, to local bureaucratic morasses, a country’s food, business hours, climate, telephones, to one’s own culture-specific inadequacies such as ignorance of the language, or to general inabilities- to handle the new job assignment or one’s loneliness, for instance. For most people, adaptation is a recursive and cyclical problem-solving activity. Adaptation to life’s challenging situations is not only a cyclical process where ends fade out into new beginnings, it is also often a ferris wheel or roller-coaster ride, with depression and elation, successes and failures in overcoming obstacles providing the hills and valleys. It is cyclical in a dual sense, therefore, of involving both ups and downs and repetitive sequences. If the obstacles encountered along the way are perceived as small, they are likely to be surmounted uneventfully, swiftly, and perhaps even imperceptibly. If they are perceived as mountainous, their neutralizing might demand great effort, generating concomitant risks of “culture” fatigue, burn-out, or even what is usually termed shock.

What Figures 1 and 2 depict should more properly be understood as just one cycle in the lifelong process of adapting to our changing and changeable environment. The difference in the cross-cultural situation, however, is that the environment may be unfamiliar from the start.

308 L. E. Anderson

Adaptation is complex. In any era of life, particularly when adapting to another culture, it is unlikely ever to be a unitary phenomenon. All human adjustment takes place along three dimensions - affective/emotional, cognitive/perceptual, and (overt) behavioral. These three dimensions may be in synchronization in the adjustment process, one mediat- ing, potentiating, or accompanying the other. The dimensions may also be at war, producing dissonance and conflicts within the individual.

A third possibility is that they are quite independent of each other. In cultural-contact studies, it has been amply demonstrated, for example, that behavioral change following cross-cultural exposure does not auto- matically go hand in hand with emotional, attitudinal, or cognitive change (e.g., Amir, 1969; Amir & Garti, 1977; Basu & Ames, 1970; Selltiz & Cook, 1962). The levels of adaptation observed vary greatly with the dimension of adjustment considered.

Figure 3 spells out the dimensional nature of cross-cultural adaptation. It contains a flow diagram representing the recursive and linear processes of cross-cultural adjustments based on our obstacle model. The successive periods or moments of adaptation are displayed in the different nodes of the diagram, headed “Cultural Encounter,” “Obstacle,” “Re- sponse Generation,” and “Overcoming.”

The three cells in each node represent the different dimensions of adjustment. They contain a sampling from the profuse array of emotional, cognitive, and behavioral manifestations that have been attrib- uted over the past 30 years to the different periods of the adaptation process by a broad cross-section of investigators as well as in anecdotal accounts. Although the emotional, cognitive, and behavioral dimensions of sojourner adjustments are separated conceptually, in reality they in- terpenetrate and influence each other.

The first moment of the adaptation process, where initial “Cultural Encounter” occurs, is likely to end abruptly and will last only as long as the sojourner perceives nothing requiring his or her adjustment. This period is linear and time dependent. The next two nodes, labeled “Obsta- cle” and “Response Generation,” respectively, constitute an iterative loop, designated by the arrows connecting the two. The sojourner re- peats this sequence over and over as different obstacles (i.e., events necessitating the generation of responses) are perceived to block his or her path into the deeper recesses of the culture.

The final node, labeled “Overcoming,” is, like the first, linear and time based, in short, not cyclical. It is analogous to the recovery stage, which concludes the classic staged or curved models of culture-shock adjustment (cf. Adler, 1975; Jacobson, 1963). In the present model, the sojourner, having run through the obstacle-response generation loop nu- merous times, passes beyond the repetitive cycling and enters into a phase of relatively steady progression toward harmony with the new environment.


Looking at the cell describing emotional components of Cultural En- counter, we can see that the sojourner newly arrived in an unfamiliar culture may feel a mixture of opposing emotions and a blend of positive and negative attitudes to the sojourn, the culture, the people, and even the organization that sent him or her into the new setting. Sojourners may also be swinging back and forth between all the emotions. Not every sojourn begins with the “honeymoon” stage described in conventional portrayals of adaptation to a foreign culture.

One cell over in the Cultural Encounter period is the cognitive dimension. Significantly, as we saw, the cross-cultural adaptation experience is also a process of striving to reaffirm identity and self-image in the face of absent or weak environmental support. In these early days of the sojourn, the individual’s identity and reference groups are firmly grounded in the home culture. The adaptation is also a process of rising intercultural/perceptual sensitivity (viz., Bennett, 1986).

Sooner or later, following initial entry into the culture, sojourners will come up against an obstacle that blocks their progress. With their arrival at the Obstacle stage, sojourners have now taken a giant step across a culture’s threshold and have entered its antechamber. Now the cycles of repetitive coping begin. Obstacles are encountered that lead to the generation of responses, one of which leads to further progress that continues unbroken until the next obstacle intervenes.

It is important to bear in mind that the items and events appearing in the affective, cognitive, and behavioral cells for both the obstacle and response-generation periods may apply to the same sojourner sometimes simultaneously, sometimes sequentially. One obstacle may generate panic and confusion at one cycle and a confident, hopeful, coping reaction within the same individual at another. Different obstacles will produce different sets of cognitive, affective, and behavior events and responses. Some obstacles will be so minor that the responses they trigger will go unnoticed even by the individual responding.

An obstacle may remain the same between two iterations of the cycle, but a coping episode is never static. It changes in quality as a function of new information received and appraisals of the outcomes of previous responses made (Lazarus et al., 1974, p. 260). On each run through the obstacle/response-generation loop, obstacles are identified and responses devised, performed, and appraised. Potential obstacles are limit- less, and there is no shortage of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses to draw upon.

The cells under Response Generation give a sampling of the myriad thoughts, emotions, attitudes, and behaviors exhibited by sojourners attempting to cope with problems in their paths. In the early periods of intercultural adjusting, the number of responses generated tends to be large. The neophyte sojourner often has no orderly routines or ready- made repertoire of effective responses with which to meet the problem

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312 L. E. Anderson

situations as they arise. Thus, a characteristic feature of early adjustment attempts is that they proceed by trial and error.

Several generic coping alternatives are available, as we saw before. The first choice sojourners can make in response to an obstacle is to do nothing instrumental at all. Sojourners might decide simply to avoid the issues, mark time (hoping it will go away), or try to distract themselves from the problem by alcohol abuse or physical complaints, for example.

They could also reduce stress, if not the obstacle behaviorally, by attacking the obstacle, retaliating against it or against the hosts. They could also decide to refrain from any accommodations at all, ignoring obstacles, adhering to a role of “cultural ambassador” for their own country. Psychological defense of this sort can be adaptive in that it buys time during an acute crisis phase (Adams & Lindemann, 1974, p. 131).

Sojourners may decide that any directed action of this sort will be fruitless and opt for taking flight, physically withdrawing from the as- sault on their adjustive capacities if they can (e.g., by returning home), or, if they cannot, take flight by retreating psychologically into wish- fulfilling fantasies, books, or co-national ghettos, for instance.

These early runs through the obstacle-response generation loops present a number of critical crossroads to the sojourner, which can make or break the cross-cultural experience. It is here that the sojourner must take great care not just to bolt. A host of tantalizing inducements to flight present themselves throughout the adaptation process. They must be guarded against. If sojourners flee from the situation, they relinquish all aspirations to overcoming their outsider status. Many sojourns “break” at these junctions.

There are only two types of adaptive instrumental options available to the sojourner. Nothing but these will push him or her on and over the hump of the coping loops and into Overcoming. One option is to try to change the environment in order to eliminate the obstacle. If the situation appears to be amenable to change, adjusters might decide to tackle the object directly. The environment may not only be altered objectively by the sojourner, it may also be redefined conceptually. The meaning of the experience might be perceptually controlled in order to neutralize its problematic nature.

This holding position can in itself be salutory, because adaptation often calls for delay, strategic retreat, regrouping of forces, and aban- doning of untenable positions (White, 1974, p. 30). Controlling the environment in this way, however, may prove to be as impossible a response as temporizing, rationalization, fight, or flight.

Sojourners may conclude that their only hope is to start changing themselves- the other instrumental option-such that the obstacle is no longer an obstacle for them. At the cognitive level, they could try to neutralize it by modifying personal beliefs and values to accord better


with those of the host culture, set or reset priorities, and lower expectations and standards for their own behavior or that of others. The particular responses generated at any time depend on the problems encountered.

In the real world, there are many situations where no instrumental option is available, situations that can only be met with compromise or even resignation. This produces what Lazarus and Folkman (1984) called “emotion-focussed” coping. It leaves the obstacle objectively untouched and targets only its emotional, motor-behavioral, or psychological effects. Sojourners can try to reduce the stress engendered by the obstacle by deceiving themselves about it or by trying to make the best of the situation as it is. The obstacle might simply be accepted as a cross to be borne. Although emotional components of personality appear to be the major contributors to adjustment efforts at the beginning, it is the intel- lectual components that tend to come into play in the later periods (Al- dasheva, 1984).

If in the extreme case there is no solution whatsoever, the solution remains ineffective, or the obstacle persists, sojourner coping mechanisms can rapidly find themselves overwhelmed, which may lead to exhaustion, burnout, and dropping out. This could degenerate into a full- blown frustration syndrome or, in traditional parlance, “culture shock.”

There is no magic formula that will break the sojourner free of the meshes of coping and into the relatively calm seas of overcoming. The sojourner can only continue adjusting. There are, however, a number of “engines” that can push the sojourner further on toward overcoming. Once a critical momentum has been reached, the sojourner’s forward motion becomes self-sustaining. There are three such engines: (a) a willingness to open oneself up to new cultural influences, (b) a willingness to face obstacles head-on by the use of instrumental strategies, and (c) and perhaps most crucial of all, a resolve not to run away.

What fuels these engines, in addition to a heavy dose of time, is, significantly, the support of peers. Our approach to solving problems and our resolve to continue doing so are strongly reinforced when we feel approved of and secure in the esteem of our circle, however we define it. We may seek social support in one person or a multitude, among co-nationals or host culture natives. Securing or carving out a supportive environment by a steady concentration on expanding social interactions is the central task of outsiders working their way in. Lack of environmental support may be the chief curse of the intercultural sojourner (cf. Guthrie, 1975; Smith, Fawcett, Ezekiel, & Roth, 1963).

We all develop adjustment habits. We move against obstacles, work around them, or run from them. Some people habitually deny situations of threat, others intellectualize. One may appraise a given situation as stressful, another as an invigorating challenge. Some individuals consti- tutionally feel helpless against an all-powerful environment; others be-

314 L. E. Anderson

lieve in their own masterfulness in the face of environment events (cf. Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Some feel threatened by change or difference and refuse even to see it (“cognitive freeze”). Others, perhaps more secure in their sense of self, may actively seek it out, either as detached spectators or eagerly, ever on the look-out for the exotic or bizarre.

How any of us responds at any moment depends on our current appraisals of the stimulus situation. These appraisals in turn depend on both personal and situational factors (cf. Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). The pattern and strength of our motivations, our current emotional state, commitments, beliefs and expectations, the degree of our interaction with host country inhabitants, and the relative power of our personal resources, for instance, all have an influence on the coping responses that are chosen. They interact with such features of the situation as its novelty, imminence, potency, or uncertainty to induce selection of a particular response to a particular stimulus at a particular time.

The sojourner in an unfamiliar culture, like the newcomer to any unfamiliar situation, is not a horse in a steeplechase being flogged along by its rider. Some hurdles will be flatly rejected; sometimes sojourners will decide to bolt from a bad situation; the same obstacle that is viewed as a challenge and leapt to with alacrity on one cycle may be recoiled from on another. In coping, the time dimension is all important. Situa- tion parameters are constantly changing and so are the sojourner’s cogni- tions and emotions. Reappraisals, clearer thinking, or a burst or renewed vigor may point ,to different responses as being more effective or appropriate than ones tried earlier.

It is likely that many if not most individuals swing back and forth between the two extremes of positive and negative thoughts and emotions, that most try out a number of both adaptive and maladaptive, adjustive and maladjustive behaviors, particularly during the first three periods of the adaptation process. Responses generated can range from the most flexible and mature down to total rigidity and psychotic disintegration.

Adaptation begins when the sojourner acknowledges the obstacle situation and decides on a consistent strategy of instrumental solutions. It is impossible, however, to pinpoint a particular endpoint in adaptation to a dynamic environment, whether in familiar surroundings or in unfamiliar ones. Moreover, the identity building that occurs in cross-cultural adaptation can never be viewed as a final, static achievement; it is a process that is continually being re-edited (Garza-Guerrero, 1974). That is why the last moment of the adaptation process is called “Overcoming,” with the emphasis placed on the progressive nature of the action. At this last period, adjusters who stand on the threshold to overcoming are on the home stretch, but the location of the finish line is unique to each individual.


The final stage in attaining competence in another culture is defined by each individual-it is when adjusters feel that they fit into their environment without chafing. Each individual’s definition of fitting will be as different as his or her adjustment will be unique and personal (Coe, 1972; White, 1974). People do not fit identically into their home cultures.

The sequence of person-environment transactions sojourners have been involved in almost from their first cultural encounter has wrought changes in both themselves and their surroundings. Their attempts to change self or environment in each adjustment cycle have smoothed their edges and rounded off their corners. They are no longer pure products of their home culture. They have fashioned a fit and attained transcultural maturity.

Sojourners have entered the overcoming stage when they start to feel a lessening of stress and tension in the person-environment interactions. Significantly, as in most adjustment or problem-solving situations, individuals tend only to recognize having got over the worst when it is already behind them. There are few signposts that the trying times are largely over beyond a dawning awareness, when looking back, that the coping cycles have begun to decrease in frequency and in amplitude. The heights of the hills and depth of the valleys have started to level off.

Cognitively, sojourners begin to see the reality of the new society as it is more than as they would have it. They have either modified their self-image and identity as a function of experience in the new culture or have reconfirmed the old ones.

Affectively, sojourners are settling down to a more even keel; objects and events confronting them have become less emotionally charged. They begin to enjoy the differences of the new culture, to be satisfied with their relationships and experiences in it. One measure of the com- pleteness of former outsiders’ sense of belonging is whether they can now, with impunity, reveal nonconformity in their behavior, express divergent opinions, or criticize aspects of the host culture without jeop- ardizing their standing in it (Gardner, 1952).

Behaviorally, sojourners are functioning more and more as autono- mous beings, with an ever-expanding behavior repertoire that is becoming more and more self-driven and indistinguishable from that of host natives.

It is clear from Figure 3 that there is no single outcome of the cultural adaptation process. The degrees and modes of adjustment, or maladjustment for that matter (cf. McGuire & McDermott, 1987), will depend on the individual doing the adjusting and on the situation within which the adjustments evolve. Some people never get beyond initial cultural encounter. They may bolt, apply ineffectual solutions, or be hobbled by lack of social support. Some remain but function forever as cultural “tourists” or impervious cultural “ambassadors,” merely observing the passing scene from a comfortable remove.

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The “endpoint” of adaptation is not a point but a continuum. Al- though the adjustment cycle, in theory, has one entry point, it contains multiple exits. Individuals may emerge in any period and on any dimension. For the sake of simplicity, we have adapted the Sargent model cited in the CIDA Briefing Centre (1986) manual and arbitrarily divided the disparate population of individuals emerging from the adjustment cycle, following initial cultural encounter and first confrontation with an obstacle, into six discrete categories.

The Returnees are those who withdraw at an early stage, who never learn to cope, much less to overcome. Cognitively, behaviorally, and emotionally at odds with their surroundings, they may develop problems that can result in repatriation. Unable or unwilling to face or master the obstacles, they bolted. Never progressing beyond outbursts of aggression against what they perceived to be a hostile environment alternating with impromptu flights from it, the responses generated brought them little success. If any instrumental strategies were tried, they were not effective, and all attempts to cope were subsequently abandoned.

The Escapers remain but are motivated by the urge to get away. They might at times have attempted to fight their surroundings but were de- feated. As a result, they slumped into a strategy of retreating, of waiting and hoping it will all go away. They avoid, hide, blame others, and immerse themselves in activities that distract them from the need to cope and from the unpleasant reality outside. Both Returnees and Escapers may never progress beyond functioning at a “tourist” or “cultural ambassador” level.

The Time Servers are what have been referred to as “brown outs” (Lanier, 1979). These are people who stay the course, have coped as well as they were able, appear to be functioning passably in their job, but who emotionally and cognitively are in reality just “serving their time” (Szanton, 1966, p. 53), mildly but chronically discontented, their condition over the longer run showing up most frequently as depression (Men- ninger & English, 1965). Such individuals avoid issues and fly from major obstacles encountered. Not even making an attempt to fight the situation, much or all of their concentration goes into enduring it. Time Servers can be found working at low capacity, exhibiting poor productiv- ity in their assignments and minimal participation in their work and social lives. Their every waking moment is spent looking dimly ahead to the day they will return home.

These three categories of sojourner may have a support group sur- rounding them, may even be willing to some degree to embrace cultural relativity, but their readiness to bolt from their situation and their neglect of instrumental strategies make it all but impossible that they will ever overcome their outsider status.

The Beavers are the counterparts of the Escapers. Whereas Escapers


cope with their situation by hiding from it, Beavers, conscious of a poor fit with their environment, cope by burying themselves up to their necks in task-related aspects of it. These people are often rated as high achievers. In their interpersonal relations, however, outside of their work, their very busyness keeps host nationals, culture, and events at bay.

Only the last two categories of sojourner come within sight of overcoming. The Adjusters are those who are making do, are mixing with host culture members, are more or less satisfied with their experience, have come to an understanding of the culture and country intellectually, and are behaving appropriately. What sets them apart from genuine Participators in the society is that they are still trying to fit in. Adjusters may alternate between “times-out,” spending most of their free time with fellow expatriates, and “times-in,” devoting themselves effectively to melding with the new culture in social or professional/academic spheres. Adjusters are still (actively) coping: Adjustments have not yet become effortless.

The final case is the Participators, those who are effective, involved, high performers. They have stood up and faced the obstacles thrown at them, have run the gauntlet of successive obstacle-response generation loops and emerged headfirst. Cognitively, affectively, and behaviorally, they are full-fledged participants in the society. Hanvey (1987) told of two Peace Corps volunteers in the Philippines who were rated as highly successful both by the Peace Corps and by host-country nationals. In Hanvey’s own words:

Did the two volunteers “go native”? In a sense. Perhaps the most important respect in which this is true lies in the acceptance of the worth and authority of the local community’s standards of conduct. These volunteers participated in Filipino life. (p. 17)

What makes a Participator is a willingness, even an eagerness, in the new situation to learn, to shift awareness, to admit a new cultural perspective, and to search for new meaning and reference groups. The process of becoming a Participator is considerably handicapped without a positive, determined, and hopeful attitude.

All of these categories and particularly the last obviously cover a wide range of forms and modes of adaptation: from the total conversion of a Lawrence of Arabia to the multicultural individual endowed with multiple-role capabilities who would behave effectively and appropriately in either culture. This brings us to the fifth principle of cross-cultural adaptation, one that is paramount to full understanding of it.

Principle 5: Cross-Cultural Adaptation Is Relative

Most investigators tend to focus on the extreme outcomes of the adjustment process: the nonadapters, who “fail” and withdraw psychologi-

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tally or physically, and the adapters, who “succeed” and emerge into the sunlight of cultural adaptation acting and feeling like insiders. Adapta- tion to another culture, however, is not as simple a matter as of “coping” or else “copping out” in Harris and Moran’s terms (1979, p. 85), or even of “surviving” or “growing” (Harris & Moran, 1979, p. 163).

The great majority of adjusters probably fall between the two extremes, making some sort of peace with the local culture (Szanton, 1966, p. 53). Even after decades in a foreign environment, sojourner adaptation is almost never a complete process, in the sense of an individual functioning exactly like the person who has been socialized into that culture from birth (Broome, 1985, p. 15).

From a survey of the literature, it is clear that there are probably as many degrees, kinds, and levels of adaptation as there are situations and individuals adapting. Adaptation may take place at the behavioral, cognitive, or affective level or at any combination thereof (cf. Thuy, 1980). In a particular cross-cultural situation, all that may be required is behavioral change (Schild, 1962). By far the most common form of adaptation is attitudinal-simply empathy (Bennett, 1986, p. 185).

It is clear from the cultural adaptation model that adjusters produce and create their own adaptation; they do not swallow it like a bitter pill. Although the theoretical model outlines a methodical and complete process of adjustment (or maladjustment), moving the sojourner like a game piece on a board through successive iterations involving subadjustments to a “culture’s” obstacles, it is clear that sojourners are no more hapless victims of an outrageous culture than they are bloodless autom- ata lockstepping their way through it.

Adjustment involves a set of alternatives (Berry, 1990). Sojourners can balk, bog down, or regress. They can submit to their cross-cultural experience or model it like clay, actively seeking out solutions to problems in their paths. Sojourners can appropriate or devise strategies, develop aids and mental dispositions that will assist them in their coping. They can work to build environmental support, secure a host country ally, lower expectations, participate actively in the new culture, or create a “home,” all of which are “adjustable” factors in overseas “success.” The choice is theirs -They can tackle situations head-on or drift with the push and pull of events.

The six categories of sojourn outcome given in Figure 3 could be considered discrete labels for different degrees and/or patterns of adaptation at different exit points from the adjustment cycle. At the logical optimum of these categories, representing the “ideal” type of adjuster, is perhaps someone like Gardner’s (1952) “universal communicator” or La Brack’s (1985) charnelon-like “protean man,” if such a being exists.

The model of cross-cultural adaptation proposed in these pages is certainly not new, and the perspective it takes is not particularly novel.


The psychological model from which it is drawn is an old one, and other investigators well before now have asserted their conviction that cross-cultural adaptation should be viewed as an instance of the critical “life events” that dog the human condition. The model is simply the outcome of a wide-ranging survey of existing intercultural literature to which a somewhat different and perhaps broader perspective than is customarily the case has been applied. It reconnects cultural adaptation with its roots in sociopsychological adjustment theory. It illuminates it with the lights of the extensive literature available on human behavior, development, and adaptation, with its classic concepts of drives, motivation, needs, frustration, perception, and situational stimuli.

Having culled its data from the disparate chorus of findings in cross- cultural studies, the model has the potential of unifying much of the present and past depictions of cross-cultural experience. Being based on principles of sociopsychological adjustment, it also has application to many if not all of life’s significant events, beyond the case of prolonged cross-cultural exposure. The particular melodrama of the culture-shock specter haunting conventional models is swept away. The “shock” is no more than a frustration reaction syndrome, a syndrome that can be evidenced on a multitude of levels, from a child’s tantrum brought on by continued physical restraint all the way to the uprising of a nation repeatedly repressed by its rulers.

The model can apply to all categories of sojourners, long and short term, regardless of the range or depth of their social encounters or their degree of exposure to host culture people and events, and regardless of the obviously great differences there are between, for example, tourist and refugee. All newcomers to a social group enter at the Cultural En- counter stage. Where they diverge is where they embrace different dimensions in their responses and cover different distances through the adjustment periods.

The technical expert may live and behave throughout the tour at the “Cooke’s tour” or Cultural Encounter level, observing people and events as detachedly as in a kaleidoscope, having performed few or no cycles to adjustment. The tourist, although the rare one, could by the same token penetrate deeply into the psyche of a country and its people (Pool, 1958), if motivated to do so and if gifted with seeing eyes.

Principle 6: Cross-Cultural Adaptation Implies Personal Development

Major life adjustments such as are required in childhood, aging, or in adapting to a strange environment can all be construed as developmental events (Jacobson, 1963; Lazarus, 1976; Miller & Sollie, 1980). Personal development does not arise out of the performance of habits. Develop-

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mental events function as challenges that push the individual to devise coping strategies to overcome them, after which, obeying the law of entropy (Reiss & Oliveri, 1980), the individual can, probably gratefully, subside into the more orderly routines of daily life.

Adapting to one’s environment, especially a new one, is a dynamic process that can be an all-day, 7-day-a-week affair (Szanton, 1966, p. 47). Similarly, the identity building and rebuilding it involves are virtually unceasing. It is not surprising, therefore, that the process of adapting to a new culture, when it does occur, is more than the sum of the adjustments that build it, from the moment of initial cultural encounter to the moment overcoming is under way. The string of adjustments accomplished can produce marked changes in the sojourner, which can lead to a significant outcome. The cultural sojourn is a voyage that can end in the resocialization of the sojourner.

Primary socialization has always meant, in essence, making children fit to live in society by persuading them to learn and accept its codes (cf. Watts, 1957, p. 19). The ensuing development is the product of learning and adjustment. The child, by sequential accommodations to unfamiliar sociopsychological circumstances, is deemed to internalize the values, beliefs, and attitudes of his or her reference social group. In this way, he or she acquires the potential to generate appropriate behaviors in response to environmental events (Green & Johns, 1966; Mischel, 1973), but no child is an empty sponge. Each child creates the degree and form of his or her adaptation to the social group that befits his or her nature. By devising a particular fit, he or she develops into a unique adult.

Whether cultural adaptation occurs the first time around, to the child in the form of primary socialization, or the second time, to the adult as secondary socialization, the socialization process continues lifelong. As an adult-learning process, however, it is a more conscious and probably more arduous exercise, not the least because it implies some resocialization. The individual needs to unlearn at least some of the norms and rules that were acquired during initial socialization (Spradley & Phillips, 1972). Adult socialization also involves role learning. Individuals cannot be prepared during childhood for all the complex roles they will be called upon to play later in their lives, such as upon entering school, adulthood, or old age (Brim, 1971).

The position of adults sojourning in an alien social system who must learn and adjust to its customs and values is little different from adults experiencing social mobility or encountering disruptive changes in society at large or in their own lives (Holmes & Rahe, 1967; Sewell, 1963). The onset of long-term disability, for example, requires significant shifts in identity, references, attitudes, and behavior (Oberg, 1960; Salinger, 1977).

Complete adult resocialization of the order of primary socialization


may never occur, or occur only where conditions of motivation and reward are very great. There are also limits, obviously, that are set by the individual’s biological capacities and by the effects of early learning or lack of it (Brim, 1971; Condon & Yousef, 1980). Certainly not everyone who undergoes an intercultural experience achieves a quantum leap in learning and skills or in personal growth. Many refuse new cultural adjustments or see only identity dilution, cultural betrayal, or even personal abasement in embracing new socialization events.

CONCLUSION

Not all writers paint an unremittingly black picture of cross-cultural adaptation. Indeed, there is one profound effect of prolonged intercultural exposure about which many investigators have remarked. Emerging on the far side of an experience of coming to terms with a strange culture has been observed to produce some remarkable alterations in individuals’ consciousness, even to have changed their lives. Subjects frequently ob- serve that the process was like a personal religious experience in pro- foundness, sublimeness, and personal significance (cf. Adler, 1987, p. 30; Guthrie, 1975, p. 100). Such individuals appear not only to have grown substantially but even to have been reborn by their transcultural experience.

Cross-cultural adaptation, like all adjustment, is a dialectical process. It has the potential for being as positive an experience as negative. Obsta- cles and crises encountered may trigger a developmental process or symptoms of psychological disturbance. For one thing, the individual’s firm sense of self, being grounded in stable self-esteem and individual identity, can be sorely battered during the early days of adjustment. It is for this reason that the process has been viewed as essentially one of rebuilding personal identity in the face of environmental disturbance (e.g., Ad- ler, 1975; Garza-Guerrero, 1974; Minkler & Biller, 1979). Sojourners can just survive, remaining at the discomfort side of the dialectic, but they can also decide to work through it, by sticking to the task, carving out a support system, implementing instrumental coping strategies, and accepting new norms, values, and attitudes as valid.

Many writers focus on the “shock” and the alienation, a few on the exhilaration and the self-actualization (cf. Clarke, 1974). In the reports of culture shock, identity crises, and rampant cross-cultural evils, there is certainly a good deal of evidence to support the pessimistic view. The question that arises, however, is to what extent the pervasive bias toward reification of the intercultural adaptation construct is responsible for perpetrating and propagating that view. Instead of construing cultural adaptation as a mental health concept, a more appropriate conception

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might be simply as the development of competence in response to challenges (Smith, 1966, p. 565).

It is hoped that the present cultural adaptation model, by providing a more broadly focused and interdisciplinary approach, might be a small step in a more fruitful direction for research into the process of adaptation as well as into ways to smooth its course. Attention to the time- honored principles of social and psychological adjustment theory should reveal other truths about how people come to terms with unfamiliar cultures, countries, or peoples.

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