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IB DP Psychology — Sociocultural Approach | SL & HL | Paper 2 (Human Relationships)
🎯 Learning Intentions By the end of this note, you will be able to:
- Define acculturation and Berry's four acculturation strategies using IB-aligned terminology.
- Explain how integration, assimilation, separation, and marginalisation differ as responses to cultural contact.
- Describe the role of acculturative stress in shaping psychological wellbeing and human relationships.
- Evaluate research evidence for acculturation strategies using supporting and opposing studies in ACAS format.
- Apply acculturation concepts to a real-world case study from the sociocultural perspective.
- Discuss the extent to which Berry's model provides a complete explanation of how cultural contact affects human relationships and identity.
- Analyse acculturation research using relevant concept areas: Bias, Causality, Perspective, and Responsibility.
Introduction & Context
Imagine leaving everything familiar behind — your language, your food, your daily rituals, the unspoken rules of how people greet each other or show respect — and arriving somewhere entirely new. This is the experience of millions of people every year: migrants, refugees, international students, and expatriates who find themselves navigating life between two cultural worlds. The question that psychologists have long been fascinated by is not simply whether this transition is difficult, but how people manage it, and what choices they make about their cultural identity along the way.
When two cultures come into sustained contact, something happens to the people caught between them. Some embrace the new culture wholeheartedly. Others hold tightly to their heritage. Some try to live in both worlds simultaneously, while others feel excluded from both. These are not random outcomes — they reflect deliberate, if sometimes unconscious, strategies that individuals adopt in response to cultural contact. Understanding these strategies, and their consequences for psychological health and human relationships, is the focus of this topic.
🔄 Analogy — The New School Think about a student who transfers to a completely new school with a different culture, different social norms, and a different friendship group. Some students immediately try to fit in by adopting the new school's slang, fashion, and social rules — abandoning their old identity. Others refuse to change at all, sticking only with students from their previous school. Some manage to keep their old friendships while building new ones, thriving in both worlds. And a few feel rejected by both groups and end up isolated. These four responses mirror exactly the four acculturation strategies Berry identified — and the psychological consequences of each are strikingly different.
Core Concepts
Before we can understand the strategies people use when cultures meet, we need a precise term for the process itself. Cultural contact between groups is not a new phenomenon — it has occurred throughout human history through trade, migration, colonisation, and globalisation. But what happens psychologically to the individuals involved? The term that captures this process of change resulting from cultural contact is acculturation .
📖 Key Definition — Acculturation Acculturation refers to the process of cultural and psychological change that results from continuous contact between individuals