Coping with unfamiliar cultures: Adjustment or culture learning?

Abstract

Persons exposed to novel and unfamiliar cultural environments include migrants, foreign students, refugees, tourists, business persons, international guest workers. Coping with unfamiliar cultures has been regarded in the literature as a matter of adjusting the “culture travellers” to their new cultures, within a clinical framework based on the assumption that sojourning in foreign places causes “culture shock.” The adjustment model is rejected on the grounds that exposure to a second culture is essentially a learning process, in particular acquiring the social skills of the new culture. Emphasizing intra‐psychic determinants of behaviour stigmatizes those experiencing difficulties in “adjusting.” A culture learning formulation avoids implications of relative culture superiority, assimilation, and culture erosion inherent in the concept of adjustment. The culture learning model also has specific implications for the design, implementation and evaluation of culture training programs, particularly those whose aim is to produce mediating persons. Finally, the distinction between adjustment and culture learning has theoretical, socio‐political and practical consequences for the development of multicultural societies.