Turkish majority members' acculturation: the predictive role of ethnocultural empathy

An expanding field of research has just begun to examine the acculturation experiences of majority-group members in increasingly diverse societies. Nonetheless, there remains a significant gap in understanding the acculturation of majority-group members, particularly in non-Western contexts. We aimed to expand the current literature on majority group-members' globalization-based proximal-acculturation - the extent to which they prefer to adopt aspects of other cultures and/or maintain their national culture- to a Mediterranean sociocultural context. Using data from 532 Turkish participants (M = 27.87, SD = 10.29), we initially examined the relationships between Turks own acculturation strategies and their acculturation expectations of Syrians, their ethnocultural empathy, contact quantity, and life satisfaction levels. We then used a person-centered approach to determine whether majority Turks could be grouped into different acculturation strategies and examined the predictors of these strategies. Multicultural adoption was positively related to segregationism, integrationism, individualism, and ethnocultural empathy, but negatively related to assimilationism. Additionally, national culture maintanence was positively related to exclusionism, segregationism, integrationism, and life satisfaction, but negatively to cultural transformation. The two-step cluster analysis identified two distinct acculturation strategy clusters: "integrated" (endorsing both national culture and other cultures) and "separated" (endorsing national culture). The logistic regression analysis findings indicated emphatic perspective-taking was associated with an increased likelihood of belonging to the integrated cluster. The results highlighted the need for further research involving diverse groups in various contexts. Additionally, ethnocultural empathy has surfaced as an important trait among majority members that warrants consideration in acculturation studies.