Don’t you like us? Don’t you want us? The influence of immigrants’ acculturation strategies on cognitions of rejection in host community members

Host nationals typically perceive immigrants who acculturate by using the separation strategy less positively than those using the other strategies of assimilation, integration, or marginalisation, which result from different combinations of host culture engagement and original culture maintenance. It is possible that seeing the separation strategy, where immigrants avoid the host culture and maintain the original culture, leads to host nationals feeling rejected. We conducted three studies of Australian citizens (total N = 863) to test this experimentally. In each study, participants viewed a vignette portraying an immigrant adopting one of the four acculturation strategies and then rated their cognitions of rejection (CoR) and other outcome variables. All studies revealed a causal effect of acculturation strategy on CoR, with separation producing the highest CoR. In Study 1, CoR then mediated an effect of acculturation strategy on affect towards the immigrant. In Study 2, perceived identification with Australia and CoR, in serial, mediated the effect of acculturation strategy on affect towards and trust of the immigrant. Study 3 demonstrated a generalisation effect where CoR mediated a relationship between acculturation strategy and affect towards immigrants generally. In each study, separation produced the most negative responses. Together, these results show affective consequences of immigrants’ acculturation strategy, where feeling rejected due to acculturation strategy leads to less positive emotions towards the immigrant, less positive stereotyping, and reduced trust.