INRODUCTION
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Venture into unfamiliar cultural terrains
Even relatively short time sojourners must at be at least minimally concerned with
building a healthy functional relationship to the host environment in a way similar
to the native population
Confrontation of cross cultural predicaments
1. People adapt naturally and continually as they face challenges from their
environment / a drastic and disorienting experience leads to transformation of
one’s life sense of agent / internal changes/ human is never a finished product, but
instead is in the business of growing and maturing
2. Adaptive changes in the view of input and out messages – intentionalunintentional, verbal-nonverbal. Individual adaptation activities occur as long as
one lives. Grounded in the theory of Watzlavick et al. (1967) that “one cannot not
communicate.”
3. Co-participation between a person and his/her environment for the goal of a
person’s adaptation / this adaptation is has multiple dimensions and facets /
change in one part is likely to have functional consequences in many other parts.
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This approach goes beyond to applying independent and dependent variables to
explaining cross-cultural adaptation based on the underlying assumption of linear
causality (response to the U curve model)
Uses broad and abstract terms  cross-cultural adaptation
strangers
heuristic and parsimonious concepts
for analyzing the social processes of individuals
who confront a new and unfamiliar milieu
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SCOPE OF THE THEORY / BOUNDARY CONDITIONS
- the strangers must have had a primary socialization in one culture or
subculture and have moved into a different and unfamiliar culture or
subculture
- the strangers are at least minimally dependent on the host environment
for meeting their personal and social needs
- the strangers are engaged in continuous firsthand communication
experiences with that environment
THE PROCESS OF CROSS-CULTURAL ADAPTATION
CULTURE:
An imprinted pattern of knowledge attitudes values mindsets perceptions and a set of
behaviors that permeate all life activities.
Culture has a pervasive role in shaping individual behavior
 ENCULTURATION: culture gives status and assigns the role of an individual in
the life of the community
 ACCULTURATION: the process of learning and acquiring the elements of the
host culture
 UNLEARNING/DECULTURATION: losing or putting aside some of the old
cultural habits / new responses are adopted in situations that previously would
have evoked old ones
STRESS-ADAPTATION-GROWTH DYNAMIC
STRESS:
Personality disintegration because of the experiences of acculturation and deculturation /
the generic response that occurs whenever the capabilities of the individual are not
adequate to the / demands of the environment  personality disintegration, state of
disequilibrium manifested in many emotional lows, uncertainty, confusion anxiety 
activation of a defensive mechanism to minimize the effects of the disequilibrium 
selective attention, denial, self-deception, avoidance, withdrawal, or, hostility, cynicism,
compulsively altruistic behavior
Adaptation: stress is temporary; it leads to adaptation because strangers strive to meet
and manage the challenge by acting on and responding to the host environment
Growth: internal transformation / creative responses to new circumstances  the stressadaptation experiences bring about change and growth  a crisis once managed by the
strangers presents an opportunity for a strengthening of their coping abilities
 Overtime the stress-adaptation-growth dynamic plays out not in a smooth linear
progression, but in a cyclic and continual draw-back-to-leap pattern
 Dialectic relationship between push and pull, engagement and disengagement in
the psychological movements of strangers
 Even those who interact with the natives with the intention of confining
themselves to only superficial relationships are likely to become – given sufficient
time – at least adapted to the host culture “in spite of themselves
INTERCULTURAL TRANSFORMATION:
 As strangers experience a progression of internal change they are likely to
undergo a set of identifiable transformations in their habitual patterns of
COGNITIVE AFFECTIVE and BEHAVIORAL responses

Due to acculturation and deculturation old cultural habits are replaced by new
habits
 three interrelated aspects of the strangers’ intercultural transformation are specified in
this theory as the outcomes of the cross-cultural adaptation process
1. INCREASED FUNCTIONAL FITNESS:
Synchrony between their internal responses and the external demands in the host
environment through repeated activities resulting in new cultural learning and
internal reorganizing
Successfully adapted strangers have accomplished a desired level of proficiency
in communicating and developing a satisfactory relationship with the host society
2. PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH
Ability to communicate and the accompanying functional fitness in host society
Concentrates on the emotional feeling of the stranger
3. INTERCULTURAL IDENTITY
Adversarial cross-cultural experiences
Individuals
 Redefine the sense of connection to their original cultural
groups
 Accompany growth
ADLER: intercultural identity is based not on belongingness which implies either
owing or being owned by a single culture but on a style of self-consciousness that
situated oneself neither totally a part of nor totally apart from a given culture
INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION:
 the capacity of strangers to appropriately and effectively receive and process
information (decode) and to design and execute mental plans in initiating or
responding to messages (encode)
 host communication competence facilitates their cross-cultural adaptation
process in the most direct and significant way. It serves as an instrumental,
interpretive and expressive means of coming to terms with the host
environment
SOCIAL COMMUNICATION:
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HOST INTERPERSONAL COM: every host social communication event
offers the stranger an opportunity for cultural learning. Crucial importance of
host interpersonal activities in facilitating cross-cultural adaptation. In some
case the degree of the host interpersonal communication has been accepted as
an indicator of cross-cultural adaptation itself
Opportunities for more personalized and thus meaningful involvement with
members of the host culture  feedback
quick exchange of information is maximal.
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HOST MASS COMM: participation in vicarious learning through “parasocial” interactions with the host environment at large beyond the ordinary
reaches of their daily lives.
Governed by a lesser sense of mutual obligation and effort facilitates early
phases when host communication competence is low.
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ETHNIC INTERSPERSONAL AND MASS COM SYSTEMS: provide
strangers with access to their original cultural experiences
Serve adaptation-facilitating for new immigrants or sojourners during the
initial phase of their adaptation process.
They compensate for the lack of support they are capable of obtaining from
host nationals
Easy, stress free communication  offer refuge
Beyond the initial phase ethnic social communication has been to be
important for group identity maintenance and negatively associated with
adaptation to the host country.
ENVIRONMENT:
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The host society exerts influence on adaptation
The nature of that influence is shaped by the various characteristics of the host
society.
THREE ENVIROMENTAL CONDITIONS
are identified as affecting the individual strangers’ adaptation process
1. HOST RECEPTIVITY:
The degree to which a given environment is structurally and psychologically
accessible and open to strangers. Different locations in a given society may offer
different levels of receptivity toward different group of strangers.
2. HOST CONFORMITY PRESSURE:
The extend to which the environment challenges strangers to adopt the normative
patterns of the host culture and its communication system.
Expectations the natives have about how strangers should think and act / tolerance
to strangers and their cultural characteristics.
3. STRENGHT OF THE STRANGER’S ETHNIC GROUP:
In the long run a strong ethnic community is likely to exert stronger social
pressure to conform to its own cultural practices and to maintain the strangers’
ethnic group identity.  discourages their participation in the host social
communication activities that they are necessary for their adaptation to the larger
society
PREDISPOSITION:

The process of cross-cultural adaptation is affected by the internal conditions of
the strangers themselves prior to resettlement to the host society.
PREPAREDNESS:
Mental, emotional and motivational readiness to deal with the new cultural environment
including understanding of the host language and culture
Formal and informal learning activities prior to moving
Media exposure / positive expectations / willingness to participate voluntary
Individual experiences with members of the host culture / prior intercultural adaptation
experiences
ETHNICITY:
The term is used inclusive here and refers to various characteristics of strangers
pertaining to their distinctiveness as a people
Ethnicities affect the ease or difficulty with which the stranger is able to develop
communication competence in a given host society and participate in its social activities.
Strangers of different ethnic backgrounds embark on their cross-cultural journey with
different levels of advantage or handicap (see also privileged-disadvantage dialectic,
Martin & Nakayama).
PERSONALITY TRAITS:
Resources that would help the strangers’ adaptation by enabling them to endure stressful
challenges and to maximize new learning both of which are essential to their intercultural
transformation
OPENNESS: minimizes resistance and
maximizes a willingness to
attend to new and changed
circumstances / less rigid
ethnocentric judgments /
optimism and affirmative
orientation in the stranger’s basic
outlook on life / self trust in the
face adverse circumstances /
helps strangers to acquire
compatibility with the natives.
STRENGTH:
Resilience, risk taking, hardiness, persistence, patience, elasticity, resourcefulness /
strangers’ inner quality that absorbs shock from the environment and bounces back
without seriously damaging them.
Inner resources for working toward developing the host competence so as to facilitate
strangers’ intercultural transformation and growth.
CONCLUSION:

This theory portrays cross-cultural adaptation as a collaborative effort in which a
stranger and a receiving environment are engaged in a joint venture
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Cross-cultural adaptation is ultimately the gift of the individuals
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Cross-cultural adaptation is not an extraordinary phenomenon that only exceptional
individuals can achieve. Rather, it is a simply incident of the normal human
mutability manifesting itself to the work of ordinary people stretching themselves
out of the old and familiar