Cultural Variability among Remotely Acculturating Biculturals in Jamaica: An Asset in Managing Potentially Conflicting Cultural Identities?

How do biculturals navigate the daily experience of having two cultural identities? Do they alternate or blend identities (Benet-Martínez & Haritatos, 2005; La Fromboise et al., 1993; Szabo, Ward et al. ongoing)? Or, do they agentically play up and down the day-to-day influence of each cultural identity, as the concept of cultural variability (CV) proposes (Ferguson, Nguyen, & Iturbide, 2016)? Our prior research in Jamaica showed that remotely acculturating biculturals feel somewhat “conflicted”/“caught” between Jamaican and American identities and experience psychological distress. CV could possibly be an asset in navigating these identity conflicts but CV has not been studied in remote acculturation contexts. Therefore, as an initial step, we explore the experience of CV in remote acculturation.

Approximately 72 remotely acculturating seventh graders and mothers in Jamaica completed individual 7-day diaries. Participants daily reported how much they were influenced by their “Jamaican side” and “American side” (both %s summed to 100% daily; SD of scores for each identity created CV scores). Participants did, indeed, play up/down both identities across time. Statistically significant paired-samples t-tests showed that adolescents experienced significantly more CV in their Jamaican identity vs. American identity (28,18) whereas the reverse was true for mothers (15,29). In other words, adolescents kept their American identities more stable whereas mothers kept their Jamaican identities more stable. Additionally, for adolescents only, CV across the two identities was positively correlated (r=.38, p<.05). Ongoing coding of open-ended responses will shed light on the context and conflicts of CV, a useful construct for biculturalism research.