The role of cultural concerns and 'grounding' in emotional acculturation (with reservation).

Within the Centre for Cultural and Social Psychology, the PhD student will focus on investigating the underlying constructs that drive the process of emotional acculturation. Emotional acculturatio1 is the process by which ethnic­cultural minorities share common patterns of emotional experiences of ethnic-culturaI majorities in a country in such a way that they exhibit an increasing degree of similarity, or fit. How does emotional acculturation come about and how is it that we 'acculturate emotionally'? One of the constructs that could answer the first question is grounding: through repeated contact and exchange of emotional information, people form a con mon ground for future emotional situations. The aim would be to explore this process through an experimental set-up which would also be a continuation of an earlier and related Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship project. In order to better understand the genesis of emotional fit, we also re-analyze existing datasets in which we analyze the link between the acculturation of emotions and the acculturation of 'concerns', i.e. matters of importance to a person. Previous research suggests that acculturation of 'concerns' between people from different ethnic-cultural backgrounds can be one of the driving forces behind the process. Finally, the Ph.D. student will choose a work package related to emotional acculturation within the ERC Advanced grant project of Prof. Dr. Batja Gomes de Mesquita for the rest of her Ph.D. This will be determined in a later stage