The neglected C of intercultural relations. Cross-cultural adaptation shapes sojourner representations of locals

Abstract

We investigated, by means of the Reverse Correlation Task (RCT), visual representations of the culturally dominating group of local people held by sojourners as a function of their degree of cross-cultural adaptation. In three studies, using three different methods (reduced RCT, full RCT, conceptual replication) with three independent samples of sojourners and seven independent samples of Portuguese and US-American raters, we gathered clear evidence that poor adaptation goes along with more negative representations of locals. This indicates that sojourner adaptation is reflected, at a social-cognitive level, in the valence of outgroup representations