Final Report Summary - BICULTURALISM (BICULTURALISM: Social Correlates and Individual Differences)
With the support provided by this funding, the PI (Veronica Benet-Martinez) developed a 4-year program of research to apply, primarily in the European context, her accumulated expertise on the psychological study of culture and multiculturalism, while also developing a solid European network of collaborators on these issues. Broadly speaking, the funded research activities included two types of scientific endeavors: (1) Empirical studies to examine (by means of social-network, survey, and experimental methodology) some key social and individual factors involved in the development and management of biculturalism/multiculturalism among first and second-generation immigrants residing in Catalonia (Spain) and the United States; and (2) Training and disseminating activities related to the PI’s own research and that of other senior and junior European experts on acculturation and cultural psychology. A key component of the research program’s first phase (years 1-2) was a study which examined the links between immigrants’ habitual social networks (their composition, density, clustering) and their cultural self-identification(s), and how these two variables jointly predicted psychological and socio-cultural adjustment. The results from this study have been reported in a paper that will soon be submitted for publication. A significant portion of the second phase (years 2-3) was devoted to a large psychometric study to refine the measurement and understanding of the construct of Bicultural Identity Integration (BII), an individual difference variable capturing variations in bicultural identity. The paper resulting from this study is currently under review at Psychological Assessment. The third phase of the project (years 3-4) included important training and dissemination activities, such as the organization of a small-group conference on the topic of “Culture and Psychology: Insights from the European Context,” submitting a proposal to the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology for a special issue that will showcase the work presented at the aforementioned conference, and the development and publication of the Oxford Handbook of Multicultural Identity (edited by the PI).