A Theory of Sociocultural Models: Conceptual Analysis, Mechanisms, and Explanatory Power

Sociocultural models (SCMs) are a structured set of prescriptions of how to interpret and experience the world, other people, communities, and oneself and a set of scripts for acting in accord with these interpretations. These models are developed and prescribed by people’s home cultural communities, and then learned and internalized by its members as validated recipes for lives and actions. Members of communities continuously co-construct their SCMs by enacting them through their everyday interactions. Culture is described as a distributed network of specialized SCMs that serve the purpose of guiding community members’ lives in all domains: childrearing, parenting, education, health care, work, gender relations, etc. After being internalized, these models become taken-for-granted semi-conscious regulators of these people behaviours. When a person with internalized models moves to another cultural community, which is guided by different SCMs, he or she may experience a culture shock and acculturation stress because of discrepancies, even clashed, between the two sets of SCMs: one rooted in the home culture and another in the host culture. According to the theory of SCMs, in order to fully understand the nature of acculturation challenges, researchers have to study these two sets of models and then find a way to help migrants reconcile their discrepancies. To study SCMs researchers use person-centered ethnography and interviewing and/or experimental methods. This theory can also be applied to monocultural studies on investigating cultures of corruption, violence, rape, or bullying that exist in particular communities or societies.