Bicultural Identity of Vietnamese Czechs: Link between Cultural Orientation, Acculturative Stress and Personality Traits

Recently groups of people with different cultural backgrounds move between countries and enter multifaceted exchanges between their original and new culture. Thus an important issue is how bicultural individuals experience and organize their bicultural identity. Using the sample of 430 Vietnamese Czech biculturals we examine how particular Big Five personality traits, acculturative stressors, ethnic and mainstream cultural orientations impact the process of bicultural identity formation. Bicultural identity was operationalized as two separate constructs: perception of distance (vs. overlap) and perception of conflict (vs. harmony) between one´s two cultural identities (Benet-Martínez & Haritatos, 2005). Path model showed that cultural conflict and cultural distance have distinct personality and acculturation antecedents. Cultural conflict was predicted by acculturative stress, Neuroticism, low level of both Agreeableness and orientation to the Vietnamese culture. Cultural distance was predicted by low Openness to Experience and low level of Czech cultural orientation.