Zhang, R., & Li, L. M. W. (2014). The acculturation of relational mobility: An investigation of Asian Canadians

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published online 13 July 2014Journal of Cross-Cultural PsychologyRui Zhang and Liman Man Wai Li

The Acculturation of Relational Mobility: An Investigation of Asian Canadians

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Article

The Acculturation of Relational Mobility: An Investigation of Asian Canadians

Rui Zhang1 and Liman Man Wai Li1

AbstractIn this article, we extended the socioecological approach in cross-cultural psychology to the acculturation context. We focused on relational mobility among Asian Canadians and how it is related to their acculturation experience. Previous research shows that relational mobility, which is a feature of one’s social environment, is generally higher in North America than East Asia. In Study 1, we found that migration does not completely bridge the cross-national gap in relational mobility. Compared with European Canadians, Asian Canadians continued to perceive lower relational mobility around them. Study 2 explored the relations between relational mobility and Asian Canadians’ acculturation experiences. Relational mobility was correlated specifically with sociocultural adaptation, but not contact, acculturation orientations, psychological adaptation, or experience of discrimination. It was also uniquely associated with normative belief about relational mobility. Finally, we largely replicated the effects of relational mobility on self-esteem (Study 1) and close friendships (Study 2) in the acculturation context, with the latter effects further mediated by normative belief about relational mobility. Implications of our findings for relational mobility and acculturation research are discussed.

Keywordsrelational mobility, acculturation, socioecological approach, sociocultural adaptation, normative belief

With increasing intercultural contact afforded by the globalized world in which we live, the description “on the move” captures a common experience for many of the world’s population. The total number of migrants worldwide has increased from an estimated 150 million in 2000 to 214 million in 2010; 1 out of every 33 people in the world today is a migrant (United Nations Population Division, 2009). Thus, a curious question for researchers and laypeople alike is “Do people’s psychological orientations change after they move to a new culture?” The answer appears to be yes, as attested to by a growing body of evidence that immigrants become more similar to the majority group of the host country in attention (Kitayama, Duffy, Kawamura, & Larsen, 2003), emotion (De Leersnyder, Mesquita, & Kim, 2011; Elfenbein & Ambady, 2003),

1University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

Corresponding Author:Rui Zhang, Faculty of Health, Department of Psychology, York University, 214 Behavioral Sciences Building, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3. Email: [email protected]

542850 JCCXXX10.1177/0022022114542850Journal of Cross-Cultural PsychologyZhang and Liresearch-article2014

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personality (Eap et al., 2008), and self-esteem (Heine & Lehman, 2004). Thus, physical migra-tion also comprises a psychological recalibration to the local cultural frequency.

In this article, we extend the current research on psychological acculturation by applying the socioecological approach to understanding cultural differences. Migration entails, above all, moving to a host society that is often different in the structure of social ecology from the home society. These differences in social ecology include differences in the physical environment, economic institutions, or social networks. The overall objective of the present research is to examine a particular feature of social ecology termed relational mobility among Asian Canadians. Specifically, we examine whether Asian Canadians and European Canadians perceive similar levels of relational mobility around them. We also investigate whether Asian Canadians’ rela-tional mobility is associated with their acculturation experience. Finally, we test whether rela-tional mobility predicts psychological and interpersonal outcomes similarly among Asian Canadians as shown in previous research.

The Socioecological Approach and Relational Mobility

Social ecology comprises the physical, societal, and interpersonal environments people inhabit (Oishi & Graham, 2010). Recent years have witnessed a revival of interest in the influence of societal level factors on psychological tendencies and behaviors (Kitayama, Ishii, Imasa, Takemura, & Ramaswamy, 2006; Oishi & Graham, 2010; Uskul, Kitayama, & Nisbett, 2008; Yamagishi, 2011). One class of socioecological factors concerns the opportunities for movement between jobs, residences, groups, and relationships in a society (Adams, 2005; Chen, Chiu, & Chan, 2009; Oishi, 2010; Yuki & Schug, 2012). Here, we focus specifically on the potential movement in interpersonal relationships known as relational mobility. Relational mobility is the number of options available to individuals to form new relationships in a given society or social context (Yuki et al., 2007). As a socioecological construct, relational mobility does not refer to an attribute of an individual’s mind but a characteristic of the social environment that surrounds the individual.

Although relational mobility is a relatively new construct in psychological literature, a num-ber of studies have demonstrated that it could explain cross-cultural differences in a host of self-related and interpersonal processes (Falk, Heine, Yuki, & Takemura, 2009; Schug, Yuki, Horikawa, & Takemura, 2009; Schug, Yuki, & Maddux, 2010; Yuki, Sato, Takemura, & Oishi, 2013). From a socioecological perspective, culture-specific behaviors are adaptive strategies attuned to certain features of the local social ecology. In societies characterized by high relational mobility, individuals have ample opportunities to choose interaction partners and as a result, there is competition for pursuing the most desirable ones. Traits that increase one’s likelihood of being accepted by others, such as generalized trust (Yuki et al., 2007), physical attractiveness (Anderson, Adams, & Plaut, 2008), and self-enhancement (Falk et al., 2009), are more adaptive, thus making them more likely to be adopted. In contrast, in societies characterized by low rela-tional mobility, people are more embedded in stable social networks and boundaries between groups tend to be rigid. Thus, the same traits (e.g., generalized trust, physical attractiveness, and self-enhancement) confer less relational benefits.

Relational Mobility and Acculturation

The majority of the work on relational mobility compares what we call long-term residents, people who have lived in a particular society for generations, either across or within nations (Schug, Yuki, Horikawa, & Takemura, 2009; Schug, Yuki, & Maddux, 2010; Yuki et al., 2013). What is less understood is what happens when people actually move to a new social ecology that is very different from the old one. Some research has shown that people are responsive to



Zhang and Li 3

experimentally elicited change in mobility (Lun, Oishi, & Tenney, 2012; Oishi, Miao, Koo, Kisling, & Ratliff, 2012; Yuki et al., 2013). To answer the question about actually moving to a new social ecology, we focus on the acculturation of relational mobility in this article.

Given that cross-national differences in relational mobility are rooted in differences in the external environment, it may be tempting to predict that migration constitutes a swift and com-plete update on relational mobility in line with the host society. However, we maintain that while this convergence may be tenable in the physical environment, as in the case of pathogen preva-lence, social environment is inherently more dynamic and as a result differs from one group to another. Essentially, our point is that immigrants do not simply inherit a preexisting social envi-ronment but construct their own as they continuously interact with the host society. Our perspec-tive emphasizes the active role humans play in collectively constructing and maintaining a social ecology (Yamagishi, 2011). To the extent that the social environment constructed by the immi-grant group continues to be somewhat different from that of majority group’s, the cross-national difference in relational mobility may remain within the same society. This prediction was borne out by the only published study that examined relational mobility with the use of an immigrant sample (Falk et al., 2009). European Canadians were compared with Asian Canadians and Japanese in Japan in their perceptions of relational mobility surrounding them. It was found that European Canadians reported higher relational mobility than both Asian Canadians and Japanese. This was despite the fact that Asian and European Canadians were attending the same university.

If it is true that acculturation involves a continuous process of constructing a new social ecol-ogy, it is important to understand the various factors that influence the construction of Asian Canadians’ social environment that results in their lower relational mobility. We think the accul-turation of relational mobility is related to (a) how acculturating individuals relate to, adjust to, or are treated by the host society, (b) how they maintain and negotiate their cultural heritage, and (c) the specific meanings attributed to relational mobility. The host and heritage factors are rele-vant because immigrants and their offspring face the unique challenges of balancing allegiance to the host culture and the culture of origin (Berry, 1997; Tadmor & Tetlock, 2006). The third factor concerns the question of whether different levels of relational mobility maps onto different meanings of relational mobility. Although the socioecological approach underscores the societal or ecological origins of cultural differences, cultural traditions are typically maintained and transmitted across generations in the form of internalized values or beliefs (Leung & Bond, 2004; Schwartz, 1992). As such, previous research has not investigated the belief people hold about relational mobility. This is a potentially important issue to consider in the acculturation context because Asian Canadians’ belief about relational mobility may also be tied to their relational mobility experience.

To summarize, while we use dynamic construction as an umbrella term to refer to the pro-cesses involved in the acculturation of relational mobility, in the remainder of this article we unpack it into measurable variables that capture Asian Canadians’ experience of navigating between two cultural worlds and belief they have developed about relational mobility.

Overview of the Current Research

The first goal of the current research is to replicate the group difference in relational mobility with larger Asian and European Canadian samples. A number of studies have found relational mobility to be lower in East Asia than in North America (e.g., Yuki & Schug, 2012). Based on Falk et al.’s (2009) finding, we test whether such cross-national difference will be similarly observed between Asian and European Canadians in Study 1.

Our second goal is to investigate the correlates of relational mobility with acculturation-related measures among Asian Canadians. Study 1 also examines whether contact with the host society is associated with higher relational mobility among Asian Canadians. The relations




between relational mobility and Asian Canadians’ acculturation experiences are more systemati-cally explored in Study 2. We included acculturation measures based on four common approaches (acculturation orientations, adaptation, intergroup relations, and contact) that focus on distinct aspects of acculturating to the host society and maintaining ties with the heritage culture.

While examining how relational mobility relates to acculturation-related experiences, Study 2 also expands on how relational mobility is typically assessed. The standard method involves assessing one’s perception of the opportunities people in general have to move in and out of relationships or groups (Yuki et al., 2007). First, to tease apart the dual reference groups among Asian Canadians, we test whether specifying a reference group will make a difference in assess-ing relational mobility. Second, we go beyond the practice of asking people to describe relational mobility around them to ask them to evaluate how desirable it is as a way of measuring normative belief about relational mobility.

Another goal is to replicate the previously documented effects of relational mobility on per-sonal and interpersonal outcomes in the acculturation context. Study 1 tests whether relational mobility mediates the difference in self-esteem between European and Asian Canadians. Study 2 examines whether Asian Canadians higher in relational mobility will perceive more similarity with their close friends and are more likely to use self-disclosure as well. Finally, we extend the previous research by testing the mediating role of normative belief about relational mobility in predicting the two friendship outcomes.

Study 1

We tested the robustness of the previously documented difference in relational mobility between Asian and European Canadians in a larger student sample. We followed Falk et al. (2009) in recruiting participants from the same university, as it would rule out the possibility that group differences in relational mobility are due to regional differences within the same country (Yuki et al., 2013).

We also explored the influence of exposure to Canadian culture on the experience of relational mobility among Asian Canadians. The cultural psychological approach (Fiske, Kitayama, Markus, & Nisbett, 1998; Markus & Kitayama, 1991) highlights the importance of contact in facilitating psychological acculturation. This approach maintains that with repeated exposure to the host culture, immigrants come to acquire the dominant psychological characteristics of the host culture (Heine & Lehman, 2004). There is some evidence that immigrants with longer and more extensive engagement with the host culture are more acculturated in emotional experience (De Leersnyder et al., 2011) and personality (Güngör, Bornstein, De Leersnyder, Ceulemans, & Mesquita, 2013). By the same token, more contact with the host society may be associated with convergence in social networks as well. We thus tested whether Canadian-born Asians and for-eign-born Asians with longer residence in Canada would report higher relational mobility.

Finally, to unpack the explanatory power of relational mobility in the acculturation context, we also included a measure of self-esteem. Consistent with previous research, we predicted that European Canadians would report higher self-esteem relative to Asian Canadians (Heine & Lehman, 2004; Schmitt & Allik, 2005) and the group difference would be mediated by relational mobility (Sato, Yuki, & Oishi, 2007; see also Falk et al., 2009). As described above, in contexts characterized by high relational mobility, there tends to be competition for more desirable rela-tionships and groups. A positive self-regard is adaptive in this kind of open marketplace not only because as an indicator of one’s high relational value (Leary & Baumeister, 2000), high self-esteem makes one appear more desirable, but also because it enables one to approach other desir-able people with confidence, thus increasing the likelihood of being selected. Conversely, in contexts characterized by low relational mobility, relationships tend to be stable and group



Zhang and Li 5

memberships are relatively fixed. Having high self-esteem is less likely to affect one’s success in acquiring desirable relationship partners.

Method

Participants. Our data were obtained from a mass testing survey administered to students enrolled in introductory psychology classes at a Western Canadian university. Participants completed the survey in exchange for course credit. Only those who indicated their ethnicity as Asian or Euro-pean were included in our analyses. The final sample consisted of 2,075 participants, with 1,130 European Canadians (37.9% male; Mage = 19.35, SD = 2.42) and 945 Asian Canadians (40.4% male; Mage = 18.74, SD = 1.51; 63% self-identified East Asians). Among Asian Canadians, 377 (39.9% male; 63.5% East Asians) were born outside of Canada, whereas 568 (60.1% male; 66.1% East Asians) were Canadian-born. All European Canadians were Canadian-born.

MaterialsRelational mobility scale. Participants completed the 12-item relational mobility measure (Yuki

et al., 2007; European Canadians: α = .84, Asian Canadians: α = .81) on a 6-point scale (1 = strongly disagree, 6 = strongly agree). Because relational mobility is a socioecological construct, the scale was developed explicitly to assess people’s views of the number of opportunities that exist in their immediate environment to meet and select new relationship partners. For this rea-son, participants were asked to report their perceptions of the levels of relational mobility for people in general rather than their own relational mobility (Yuki et al., 2007). In this study, we changed the reference group from “students from their own university” in Falk et al. (2009) to “people around them in Canada.” The scale consists of items reflecting opportunities for people to form new relationships and groups (e.g., “These people have many chances to get to know other people”; “It is common for these people to have a conversation with someone they have never met before”) and reverse-worded items that reflect the tendency for people to be bound to current relationships and groups (e.g., “Even if these people were not satisfied with their current relationships, they would often have no choice but to stay with them”).

Self-esteem. Participants completed the Rosenberg (1965) self-esteem scale (European Cana-dians: α = .74, Asian Canadians: α = .78) on a 6-point scale (1 = strongly disagree, 6 = strongly agree). Two sample items are “On the whole, I am satisfied with myself” and “I am able to do things as well as most other people.”

Demographic questions. We also asked a number of demographic questions such as where they were born, the age of immigration if they were born outside of Canada, and their length of residence in Canada.

Results

Group difference in relational mobility. A t test comparing European with Asian Canadians revealed a significant group difference, t(2073) = 6.42, p < .001, d = .28.1 As expected, European Canadi-ans (M = 4.45, SD = 0.67) reported higher relational mobility than did Asian Canadians (M = 4.26, SD = 0.67).2

The effect of exposure on relational mobility among Asian Canadians. There was no significant dif-ference between foreign-born (M = 4.25, SD = 0.67) and Canadian-born (M = 4.26, SD = 0.67) Asian Canadians in relational mobility, p = .81. However, among foreign-born Asian Canadians, we found that length of residence (M = 10.03 years, SD = 4.44) was positively correlated with




relational mobility, r(356) = .13, p = .01. Moreover, age of immigration (M = 8.89 years, SD = 5.05) was negatively correlated with relational mobility, r(352) = −.15, p = .004. In other words, longer and earlier exposure to Canadian culture was associated with higher relational mobility among foreign-born Asian Canadians.

Group difference in self-esteem. There was a significant group difference in self-esteem, t(2071) = 8.78, p < .001, d = .39. Consistent with our hypothesis, European Canadians (M = 4.33, SD = 0.78) reported higher self-esteem than did Asian Canadians (M = 4.02, SD = 0.81).

Indirect effect of relational mobility on self-esteem. Given the group differences in relational mobil-ity and self-esteem, we tested whether relational mobility would mediate the group difference in self-esteem using Preacher and Hayes’s (2008) bootstrapping procedure. Specifically, we regressed self-esteem onto group membership with relational mobility entered as mediator. The effect of relational mobility was significant, b = .20, p < .001. With 5,000 bootstrap resamples, the bias-corrected 95% confidence intervals (CIs) did not contain zero [0.02, 0.06], suggesting a significant mediating effect (see Figure 1). The direct effect of group membership, b = .31, p < .001, became less significant when controlling for relational mobility, b = .27, p < .001. We also tested the reverse mediation model in which self-esteem mediated the group difference in rela-tional mobility. This model was significant as well (CI = [0.03, 0.06]). While acknowledging the direction of causality cannot be resolved in a cross-sectional design (but see Yuki et al., 2013, for experimental evidence for the causal effect of relational mobility), we follow socioecological theorists in arguing that it is more logical for causality to flow from social structures to psycho-logical traits than the other way around. However, we return to the possibility of individual traits affecting the selection of low versus high relational mobility contexts in the general discussion.

Discussion

Study 1 replicated the relational mobility difference with larger Asian and European Canadian samples and showed that the former group perceived lower relational mobility (Falk et al., 2009). We also tested whether Canadian-born Asians and foreign-born Asians with longer residence in Canada would report higher relational mobility. The evidence was mixed. Consistent with the cultural psychological approach to acculturation, relational mobility increased with longer and earlier exposure among foreign-born Asian Canadians. However, inconsistent with the cultural psychological approach, there was no generational difference in relational mobility. Taken together, this pattern of results suggests that on one hand, relational mobility increases with

Group:Asian Canadians orEuropean Canadians

Perceivedrelational mobility

.19*** .20***

.27*** (.31***)Self-esteem

Figure 1. Indirect effect of group membership on self-esteem through perceived relational mobility.Note. Direct effect of group membership on self-esteem is shown in parenthesis. Numbers represent unstandardized regression coefficients.***p < .001.



Zhang and Li 7

greater exposure, albeit to a limited degree; on the other hand, such increase fails to carry beyond the first generation.

It was also found that relational mobility mediated the group difference in self-esteem, although the direct effect of group difference remained significant. Thus, one reason, although not the only one, why Asian Canadians have lower self-esteem is that they have fewer opportuni-ties to establish new relationships. The fact that relational mobility failed to fully account for the group difference is actually similar to the previous finding from the only study comparing these two groups (Falk et al., 2009). This may be because cultural differences in positive self-regard are multiply determined (Heine & Buchtel, 2009). It is also possible that relational mobility has a larger influence on regulating the extent to which members of different cultures base their sense of happiness on self-esteem (Yuki et al., 2013) than the absolute level of self-esteem across cul-tures. To summarize, Study 1 provides preliminary evidence that relational mobility has a similar consequence on self-esteem in the acculturation context but the magnitude of the effect is small.

Study 2

Study 1 confirmed that compared with European Canadians, Asian Canadians perceived lower relational mobility in their environment. We also found some support for the role of contact in increasing relational mobility among Asian Canadians. In this study, we further investigated the relations between Asian Canadians’ relational mobility and their acculturation experiences. To do so, we assessed different aspects of acculturation based on four influential perspectives in the acculturation literature.

First, acculturation research has concerned primarily with different modes or strategies of acculturation (Berry, 1997). That is, acculturating individuals differ in their attitudinal and behav-ioral orientations toward the two cultural reference groups. It is plausible that immigrants’ accul-turation orientations relate meaningfully to their relational mobility. For example, willingness to participate in the mainstream culture may be associated with the tendency to pursue new relation-ships outside of one’s ethnic communities, hence with higher relational mobility. As such, differ-ence in relational mobility between European and Asian Canadians may be related to some Asian Canadians being less (more) acculturated to North American (Asian) culture. Thus, according to the first approach, relational mobility would be positively correlated with orientation toward mainstream Canadian culture and/or negatively with orientation toward their heritage culture.

Complementing the first approach is the adaptation approach that studies the psychological and sociocultural outcomes of acculturation (Searle & Ward, 1990). Although adaptation is typi-cally examined in the context of relating how people acculturate to how well they acculturate (e.g., Berry, Phinney, Sam, & Vedder, 2006), it may also be associated with relational mobility, particularly the sociocultural component of adaptation. Because sociocultural adaptation refers to acquiring the appropriate sociocultural skills to navigate the new environment effectively (Searle & Ward, 1990), more competent Asian Canadians may be better able to take advantage of the expanded opportunities available in the larger society as they are more confident and skilled in establishing new relationships. Thus, according to the second approach, relational mobility would be positively correlated with sociocultural adaptation.

The third approach takes an intergroup perspective that acculturation is also shaped by how immigrants are perceived and treated by the majority group (Bourhis, Moïse, Perreault, & Senécal, 1997; Dovidio & Esses, 2001). Specifically, the experience of being the victim of dis-crimination might be related to relational mobility. From an intergroup perspective, discrimina-tion can be interpreted as rejection from the majority group (Branscombe, Schmitt, & Harvey, 1999) and immigrants who are targets of discrimination might feel precluded from fully partici-pating in an otherwise mobile host society. Lower relational mobility could then be thought of as disengagement from the larger society. We also assessed one specific form of discrimination:




identity denial, the situation in which one’s claim to the mainstream identity is questioned because one’s physical look does not conform to the prototypical in-group image (Cheryan & Monin, 2005). Identity denial represents a common experience for people of Asian descent (Cheryan & Monin, 2005; Shimpi & Zirkel, 2012). To the extent that reduced relational mobility is a reaction to prejudice and discrimination, we expected relational mobility to correlate nega-tively with perceived discrimination and identity denial.

Last, given the mixed evidence for the cultural psychological perspective, we wanted to fur-ther investigate this issue. In this study, we included more subjective measures of contact: fre-quency of contact (Clément, Noels, & Deneault, 2001) and the ethnic composition of friends (De Leersnyder et al., 2011). Again, the cultural psychological approach predicted that relational mobility group would correlate positively with contact with the host culture.

In addition to assessing variables derived from the four acculturation approaches above, we also assessed relational mobility in two additional ways. First, as acculturating individuals have two cultural reference groups, the generic reference to “people around you” used in Study 1 may have been ambiguous to Asian Canadians. To tease the two reference groups apart, we asked Asian Canadian participants to report relational mobility for the European Canadian group and their cultural heritage group, respectively.

Second, we assessed the normative belief about relational mobility. Instead of a descriptive measure, the belief measure assessed one’s evaluation of relational mobility. Socioecological researchers make a distinction between cultural influence through socioecological structures (Schug et al., 2010; Yamagishi, Hashimoto, & Schug, 2008) and cultural influence through inter-nalized values and beliefs (Leung & Bond, 2004; Schwartz, 1992). In other words, cultural varia-tion in behaviors need not arise from inculcation of culturally shared beliefs but direct adaptation to a particular social environment. Although distinct, however, these two approaches are poten-tially complementary. A particular social ecology not only reinforces adaptive behavioral strate-gies but also tends to, although not always, foster values and beliefs that normalize these behaviors (Yamagishi, 2011). Despite this theoretical linkage, previous research has not directly measured belief about relational mobility. Therefore, we examined whether perceiving higher (vs. lower) relational mobility would correspond with evaluating it more (vs. less) positively.

To replicate the interpersonal outcomes of relational mobility in previous research, we assessed interpersonal similarity (Schug et al., 2009) and self-disclosure (Schug et al., 2010). Living in a social environment where relationships are more or less freely chosen makes it more likely for people to actually select similar others as friendship partners. Another feature of a high relational mobility environment is the relative ease of exiting unsatisfying relationships. Thus, relationship-strengthening strategies such as disclosing intimate information about oneself to signal commitment are more adaptive behaviors. Therefore, we hypothesized that relational mobility would predict higher interpersonal similarity and a stronger tendency to disclose inti-mate personal information in close friendships.

Finally, we investigated the proximal mechanism to account for the effect of relational mobil-ity on the interpersonal outcomes. As mentioned before, the socioecological approach to culture is proposed as potentially complementary to the canonical approach that emphasizes internalized values and beliefs. If it is true that a particular feature of a social environment gives rise to both adaptive behaviors and culturally shared beliefs, one way in which the two approaches converge may be that internalized belief explains how the socioecological effect of relational mobility is realized at the behavioral level. In other words, behaviors are bound to the typical level of rela-tional mobility in one’s surrounding because relational mobility is now internalized within the person as a normative force. In this study, we treated normative belief as an internalized norm regarding relational mobility and hypothesized that it would mediate the effect of perceived rela-tional mobility on interpersonal similarity and self-disclosure.



Zhang and Li 9

Method

Participants. To maximize the power for detecting general relations between acculturation and relational mobility, we opted for the extreme groups approach by selecting Asian Canadians who scored in the upper and the lower quartiles of the relational mobility scale measured in Study 1. We invited a subset of the Asian Canadian participants in Study 1 who fell into the upper and the lower quartiles to complete another survey for additional course credit. The final sample size was 80 (27 male; Mage = 18.89, SD = 1.45), with 37 from the low mobility group and 43 from the high mobility group. Of those born outside of Canada, there were no differences in age of immigration (high mobility group: M = 7.56 years, SD = 4.50; low mobility group: M = 10.12 years, SD = 5.45, t = 1.52, p = .14) or number of years in Canada (high mobility group: M = 11.79 years, SD = 5.42; low mobility group: M = 10.28 years, SD = 4.91, t < 1, p = .38).

MeasuresAcculturation orientations. To measure acculturation orientations toward their heritage culture

and the mainstream Canadian culture, we adapted the Vancouver Index of Acculturation (VIA; Ryder, Alden, & Paulhus, 2000). The scale was anchored on a 9-point scale (1 = strongly dis-agree, 9 = strongly agree). Sample items include “I often participate in my heritage cultural traditions” and “I enjoy social activities with typical Canadian person.” Separate scores for iden-tification with their heritage culture (α = .94) and the mainstream Canadian culture (α = .95) were calculated.

Adaptation measures. To measure sociocultural adaptation, we used an adapted version of the Sociocultural Adaptation Scale (SAS; Ward & Kennedy, 1999). Participants indicated how much difficulty they experienced in 10 domains on a 5-point scale (1 = no difficulty, 5 = extreme difficulty). We excluded domains of acculturation that we thought would apply only to recent immigrants such as finding one’s way around, finding food that one enjoys, and using the trans-port system. Responses to SAS were averaged (α = .87) such that a higher score indicates more difficulty in sociocultural adaptation, hence lower sociocultural competence.

Two measures were adopted to assess psychological adaptation. Participants completed the 5-item Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS; Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985; α = .89) on a 7-point scale (0 = strongly disagree, 6 = strongly agree). The sample items include “In most ways, my life is close to ideal” and “I am satisfied with my life.” Participants also reported the frequency of their emotional experience on the Scale of Positive and Negative Experience (SPANE; Diener et al., 2009). The SPANE is a 12-item scale that includes 6 items to assess posi-tive feelings (e.g., positive, good, and pleasant; α = .93) and 6 items to assess negative feelings (e.g., negative, bad, and unpleasant; α = .86). The items were rated on a 5-point scale (1 = very rarely or never, 5 = very often or always).

Intergroup measures. Participants responded to three questions to indicate the frequency of experiencing or perceiving discrimination on a 4-point scale (1 = never, 4 = often; Vega, Zim-merman, Gil, Warheit, & Apospori, 1993; also see Yip, Gee, & Takeuchi, 2008). The questions were “How often do people dislike you because of your heritage background?” “How often do people treat you unfairly because of your heritage background?” and “How often have you seen your friends treated unfairly because of their heritage background?” (α = .83).

We also created three items to assess identity denial based on Cheryan and Monin (2005). Participants rated “Other Canadians see me as a foreigner,” “Other Canadians see me as a non-native English speaker,” and “I feel that other Canadians see me as less than fully Canadian” on a 5-point scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). The internal consistency was accept-able (α = .79), and thus responses to these items were averaged.




Contact measures. We assessed the frequency of contact with European Canadians and mem-bers of their heritage group, respectively. Participants indicated how much contact they generally had with the two groups in five situations, if applicable (in local community, at work, at school, at home, and when with friends), on a 7-point scale (1 = not at all, 7 = a lot). Separate scores for contact with the two groups were computed. Furthermore, following De Leersnyder et al. (2011), we included an item assessing the ethnic composition of participants’ friends on a 7-point scale (1 = heritage culture only, 7 = Anglo-Canadians only).

Relational mobility measures. For the purposes of Study 2, participants completed the modified relational mobility scale 3 times. The first time when it was presented, the reference group was changed from people in general to people from their heritage culture group (α = .85). The second time around, the reference group was changed to people from the European Canadian group (α = .89). Last, we assessed participants’ normative belief about relational mobility. For example, participants rated the extent to which they agreed with the statement “People should have may chances to get to know other people” rather than “People have may chances to get to know other people” (α = .85). All the responses were recorded on a 6-point scale (1 = strongly disagree, 6 = strongly agree).

Close friendship outcomes. We assessed perceived similarity and the likelihood of self- disclosure. Following Schug et al. (2009), participants reported their perceived similarity with their closest friends in five domains (i.e., personalities, hobbies, values, behaviors, and lifestyles; α = .84) on a 6-point scale (1 = not similar at all, 6 = very similar). In addition, participants com-pleted the self-disclosure scale adopted from Schug et al. (2010). They indicated how likely they would to tell their biggest secret, their most embarrassing experience, their greatest failure, their greatest worry, and the worst thing that ever happened to them to their closest friends (α = .91) on a 5-point scale (1 = not at all likely, 5 = extremely likely).

Results

Relational mobility and acculturation. Because preliminary analyses indicated that the effect of gender was not significant for any of the dependent measures, the data were thus collapsed across gender for the remaining analyses. To explore the relations between relational mobility and acculturation, we adopted the analytic strategy recommended by Preacher, Rucker, MacCallum, and Nicewander (2005) that best suits the extreme group approach. That is, we correlated the original relational mobility variable we used to select the high versus low groups with all the variables of interest in this study. Preacher et al. showed with Alf and Abrahams’s (1975) work that because the correlational strategy preserves the continuous data, it affords more statistical power than the perhaps more intuitive t-test strategy where the high versus low groups are com-pared on the acculturation variables.

Table 1 summarizes the main results based on this correlational strategy. It also lists the means and standard deviations of all acculturation variables between the high versus low groups. Among measures of acculturation orientations, neither Canadian nor heritage acculturation was signifi-cantly correlated with relational mobility. Similarly, among intergroup measures, neither per-ceived discrimination nor identity denial was significantly correlated with relational mobility. Moreover, our new contact measures (frequency of contact with European and Asian Canadians, respectively, and the ethnic composition of friends) were not significantly associated with rela-tional mobility. Finally, among adaptation measures, psychological adaptation (life satisfaction, positive and negative emotions) was not significantly associated with relational mobility, but sociocultural adaptation was such that Asian Canadians who perceived higher relational mobility reported experiencing less difficulty in sociocultural adaptation, r(80) = −.29, p < .01.



Zhang and Li 11

We also conducted auxiliary analyses to test whether the relation between sociocultural diffi-culty and relational mobility would hold after controlling for variables related to one or both of them. First, although no other acculturation measures showed significant associations with rela-tional mobility, those involving intergroup and psychological adaptation measures were in the predicted directions. In view of this, we controlled for each of the two types of acculturation measures and the relation was not attenuated, partial rs = −.25, ps = .03. In addition, given the results in Study 1, we also attempted to control for the effects of self-esteem, length of residence, and age of immigration. The relation remained significant after self-esteem was controlled for, partial r = −.25, p = .03. Because length of residence and age of immigration are relevant to foreign-born Asian Canadians only, the sample size available was quite small (n = 37). Within this subgroup, the bivariate relation between sociocultural difficulty and relational mobility was not statistically reliable, r = −.25, p = .14. Because of this, partial correlations were not computed.

Table 1. Means and Standard Deviations of All Variables Between High and Low Relational Mobility Groups and Correlations With Relational Mobility as a Continuous Variable in Study 2.

Low relational mobility group

High relational mobility group Correlations

with relational mobility M SD M SD

Contact measures Frequency of contact (European

Canadians)4.56 1.34 4.75 1.40 .00

Frequency of contact (Asian Canadians)

4.63 1.55 4.86 1.35 .09

Ethnic composition of friends 3.81 1.61 3.49 1.42 −.15Intergroup measures Perceived discrimination 2.20 0.63 2.05 0.59 −.16 Identity denial 2.67 1.02 2.40 1.18 −.12Adaptation measures SWLS 2.98 1.32 3.52 1.69 .19†

SPANE—positive emotion 3.39 0.78 3.67 0.83 .17 SPANE—negative emotion 2.89 0.79 2.80 0.83 −.12 Sociocultural difficulty 1.73 0.61 1.46 0.49 −.29**Acculturation orientations VIA (heritage culture) 6.30 1.80 6.67 1.93 .12 VIA (mainstream Canadian

culture)6.67 1.61 6.94 1.85 .06

Relational mobility measures Relational mobility (European

Canadians)4.42 0.77 5.17 0.47 .47***

Relational mobility (Asian Canadians)

3.64 0.69 4.26 0.66 .47***

Belief about relational mobility 4.73 0.79 5.35 0.55 .37**Close friendship outcomes Interpersonal similarity 4.17 1.22 4.62 0.86 .19†

Self-disclosure 3.91 1.14 4.47 0.81 .24*

Note. SWLS = Satisfaction With Life Scale; SPANE = Scale of Positive and Negative Experience; VIA = Vancouver Index of Acculturation.†p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.




Relational mobility and normative belief. Relational mobility was positively correlated with norma-tive belief about relational mobility, r(80) = .37, p < .001. The same auxiliary analyses as shown above were performed. The relation remained significant while controlling for intergroup mea-sures, partial r = .39, p < .001; psychological adaptation, partial r = .39, p < .001; or self-esteem, partial r = .37, p = .001. Among foreign-born Asian Canadians, the bivariate relation between relational mobility and normative belief was also significant, r = .37, p = .04. It became weaker after controlling for length of residence, partial r = .33, p = .06, or age of immigration, partial r = .30, p = .09.

The effect of reference group on relational mobility. Another goal of this study was to test the effect of reference group on how Asian Canadians reported relational mobility. First, we compared Asian Canadians’ perception of relational mobility for European versus Asian Canadian refer-ence group. European Canadians (M = 4.82, SD = 0.73) were perceived to be higher in relational mobility than other Asian Canadians (M = 3.97, SD = 0.74), t(79) = 9.53, p < .001, d = 1.16. Consistent with the result of Study 1, there was consensus among Asian Canadians over Euro-pean Canadians’ higher levels of relational mobility. Second, we correlated the two relational mobility measures of specified reference groups with the general relational mobility measure. Asian Canadians’ perception of general relational mobility was positively correlated with their perception of relational mobility for both Asian (r = .47, p < .001) and European (r = .47, p < .001) Canadians. That is, regardless of which reference group was chosen, our Asian Canadian participants were quite consistent in their perception. Those perceiving higher (vs. lower) rela-tional mobility in general also perceived higher (vs. lower) relational mobility for both European and Asian Canadians around them.

Close friendship outcomes and indirect effects of relational mobility. The final goal of our study was to examine the effect of relational mobility on the experience of close friendships and whether normative belief about relational mobility and self-esteem would mediate these relations. Con-sistent with our hypotheses, those who perceived higher relational mobility tended to report more similarity with their closest friends, r(80) = .19, p = .09. Those who perceive higher relational mobility were also more likely to self-disclose to their closest friends, r(80) = .24, p = .03. Thus, we successfully replicated the effect of relational mobility on the experience of close friendships (Schug, Yuki, Horikawa, & Takemura, 2009; Schug, Yuki, & Maddux, 2010) in the acculturation context.

Given the replications and the association between relational mobility and normative belief shown earlier, we then tested whether the effect of relational mobility on similarity and self-dis-closure would be mediated by normative belief. We used the same mediation procedure as in Study 1 by regressing each friendship outcome onto perceived relational mobility with belief about relational mobility as mediator. Normative belief significantly predicted both outcomes (similarity: p = .004; self-disclosure: p = .001). With 5,000 bootstrap resamples, the 95% CIs did not contain zero (similarity: [0.04, 0.33]; self-disclosure: [0.04, 0.39]), suggesting significant mediations (see Figure 2A and 2B).

As true mediation cannot be established in a correlational design, we tested a few other media-tion models to rule out alternative possibilities. First, it is possible that relational mobility was the mediator instead of normative belief. That is, it was relational mobility that mediated the effect of normative belief on similarity and self-disclosure. When the direct effect of normative belief was controlled for, however, relational mobility did not significantly predict similarity (p = .58) or self-disclosure (p = .39). As a result, the 95% CIs contained zero (similarity: [−0.07, 0.20]; self- disclosure: [−0.05, 0.17]). Second, as relational mobility was also found to be associated with sociocultural difficulty, sociocultural difficulty could be the mediator. When the direct effect of relational mobility was controlled for, sociocultural difficulty significantly predicted similarity



Zhang and Li 13

(p = .005) but not self-disclosure (p = .09). The 95% CIs indicated a significant mediation on simi-larity [0.02, 0.27] but not on self-disclosure [0.00, 0.18]. In view of this finding, we tested another model in which the effect of relational mobility on similarity was mediated by both normative belief and sociocultural difficulty. Results showed that both independently mediated the effect (normative belief: [0.04, 0.30]; sociocultural difficulty: [0.02, 0.26]). Last, we tested whether self-esteem would mediate the effects of relational mobility on similarity and self-disclosure. When the direct effect of relational mobility was controlled for, self-esteem failed to significantly predict similarity (p = .26) or self-disclosure (p = .12) and hence the 95% CIs contained zero (similarity: [−0.01, 0.14]; self-disclosure: [0.00, 0.12]).

Discussion

We found relational mobility within Asian Canadians to be uniquely associated with two vari-ables. First, it was associated with less sociocultural difficulty. Because sociocultural adaptation reflects the cultural learning perspective on acculturation, in which the acquisition of culture-specific skills is seen as crucial to adaptation (Masgoret & Ward, 2006), this finding suggests that the development of cultural competence is tied to the expansion of relational mobility for accul-turating individuals. The fact that the relation held even after controlling for psychological adapta-tion, which typically exhibits positive correlations with sociocultural adaptation (e.g., Ward & Kennedy, 1999), provides unique support for the role of sociocultural competence in relational mobility. Second, relational mobility was associated with more positive evaluation. This provides evidence for the first time that observations of one’s immediate environment as more or less rela-tionally mobile are to some extent internalized as personal norms. Furthermore, the effects of these two variables were found to be largely independent of a number of control variables. The only exception was that when age of immigration or length of residence was controlled for, the two associations became either marginally significant or virtually nonexistent. Although these

A

B

Perceived relationalmobility

Belief aboutrelational mobility

.31** .52**

.11(.27*)Self-disclosure

Perceived relationalmobility

Belief aboutrelational mobility

.31** .48**

.08(.23†)

Interpersonalsimilarity

Figure 2. Indirect effects of perceived relational mobility on (A) similarity with closest friends and (B) self-disclosure to closest friends through normative belief about relational mobility.Note. Direct effects of perceived relational mobility on friendship outcomes are shown in parenthesis. Numbers represent unstandardized regression coefficients.†p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01.




findings should be interpreted with caution due to a very small foreign-born Asian Canadian sam-ple, they may indicate that the process of acculturation covaries with all three variables.

The remaining acculturation measures showed a lack of significant associations with rela-tional mobility, although some were in the predicted directions. Perhaps the most noteworthy null findings concerned our new contact measures. Although we found evidence for the role of con-tact assessed by age of immigration and length of residence in Study 1, there was little support for the role of contact assessed by the current frequency of contact and proportion of the ethnicity of friends.

The adaptation of the relational mobility scale to distinguish two cultural reference groups revealed two findings. First, on average, Asian Canadians perceived European Canadians to be higher in relational mobility than their own group. Thus, Asian Canadians were aware of the group difference in relational mobility and given the actual difference found in Study 1, their perception appeared to be somewhat accurate. More importantly, Asian Canadians’ perception of relational mobility was unaffected by which reference group was used to anchor their responses. If they perceived the European Canadians around them to be higher (vs. lower) in relational mobility, they also perceived the Asian Canadians around them to be higher (vs. lower). Based on this finding, we are more confident that Asian Canadians’ responses on the general relational mobility scale were not biased by reference groups.

Finally, we were able to replicate two additional effects of relational mobility found in previ-ous research: interpersonal similarity (Schug et al., 2009) and self-disclosure (Schug et al., 2010). We also uncovered the novel role of normative belief in mediating these effects. Comparisons with other potential mediators indicated that only sociocultural difficulty also mediated the effect on interpersonal similarity but it was independent of normative belief. However, two limitations should be noted. First, the mediation tests were based on only correlational data. Second, because the direct effect of relational mobility on interpersonal similarity was relatively weak to begin with, the mediation needs to be replicated in a larger sample.

General Discussion

In this article, we extended the socioecological approach to the acculturation context and inves-tigated the relations between relational mobility as a feature of an external environment and acculturation experience among Asian Canadians. In Study 1, we found robust evidence that migration does not completely eliminate the preexisting cross-national difference in relational mobility. Similar to East Asians, Asian Canadians perceived lower relational mobility relative to European Canadians. Study 2 found sociocultural adaptation and normative belief to be associ-ated with relational mobility among Asian Canadians. Finally, consistent with previous research, relational mobility seemed to serve similar psychological and behavioral functions among Asian Canadians.

Implications for Relational Mobility Research

Beyond replicating the effects of relational mobility in a previously uncharted territory, our results have some implications for the relational mobility research. One remaining issue in this line of research is the effect of change in social ecology. Needless to say, migration is one of those contexts of change. A novel contribution of our research is to demonstrate that differences between groups from societies varying in relational mobility are not completely eliminated when they come together. Our findings demonstrate that people do not respond passively or uniformly to change in the social ecology into which they or their family members move. Instead, Asian Canadians in our studies have constructed their own, which turns out to differ



Zhang and Li 15

from the high relational mobility environment characterizing European Canadians. Specifically, the construction of relational mobility is influenced by both how much Asian Canadians have adjusted to the Canadian society and the cultural understanding of how much mobility is deemed desirable.

Sociocultural competence was found to associate positively with relational mobility. One interpretation is that because interpersonal communication is particularly challenging across cul-tures (Gudykunst, 2005), not fully understanding the mainstream culture inclines some Asian Canadians toward self-selecting themselves into segments of the larger society that are lower in relational mobility. In high relational mobility contexts, there is competition for selecting interac-tion partners with desirable traits. By extension of this logic, for those who happen not to possess them because of their newcomer status or culture, they will be preferred less as interaction part-ners. Those individuals may thus end up in a social environment with fewer opportunities to form new relationships. Thus, Asian Canadians’ construction of relational mobility may be partly influenced by their acculturation to the Canadian society, especially with regard to the difficulty some of them experience.

Another implication of this finding is that there might be bottom-up processes by which psy-chological characteristics influence the construction or selection of niches with differing rela-tional mobility. This possibility is consistent with the reverse causality in Study 1, in which self-esteem is argued to mediate the group difference in relational mobility instead. As there is a general East–West difference in self-esteem and high self-esteem is more adaptive in more mobile societies, the initial lower levels of self-esteem among some Asian immigrants or their children may carry the consequence of confining them to an immediate environment lower in relational mobility that continues to afford such tendency.

Relational mobility was also associated with the tendency to evaluate relational mobility more positively. In this case, environment and normative belief go hand in hand. We interpret this association to mean internalizing what occurs in the social environment in the form of personal norms. However, it is plausible that normative belief simply reflects internalization of Asian culture and/or that inhabiting a high versus low relational mobility environment is the conse-quence of holding different beliefs about relational mobility. Regardless of which interpretation is true, it seems clear that cultural meaning comes into play in the construction of relational mobility. Once a less positive evaluation of relational mobility is formed, such belief could per-petuate the collectivistic social networks that are characteristic of a low mobility environment. The finding that normative belief mediated the effect of relational mobility on similarity and self-disclosure in Study 2 further suggests that cultural belief can also reinforce behavioral strate-gies attuned to a lower mobility environment.

Although it seems intuitive that people inhabiting a certain environment develop beliefs compatible with the features of that environment, it is less straightforward whether beliefs adapt immediately in the wake of a changed environment. The occurrence of a socioecological change, such as change over time in the same society and migration to a different society examined here, draws attention to the broader issue of the stickiness of cultural heritage (Hamamura, 2012). One argument against rapid cultural change is that cultural traditions tend to persist over time. Once culture is sustained in the form of values or beliefs, its influence may be here to stay despite change in the ecological conditions it was originally adapted to (Cohen, 2001; Nisbett, 2003). In view of this issue, our research provides some evidence that the amount of relational mobility that exists in one’s social environment and the associated behav-ioral strategies can both be maintained in the form of internalized norms. These internal psy-chological structures could act as a long-term mechanism against complete convergence of the external environment such as relational mobility between European Canadians and at least some Asian Canadians.




Implications for Acculturation Research

The present research also has implications for the cultural psychological approach to accultura-tion. As stated before, this approach emphasizes the role of contact in facilitating psychological acculturation. We found some evidence for relational mobility increasing with contact among Asian Canadians in Study 1. Foreign-born Asian Canadians who had spent a larger proportion of life in Canada (more years in Canada or younger age of immigration) perceived slightly higher relational mobility. However, there was no difference in relational mobility between foreign- and Canadian-born Asians; relational mobility was not correlated with frequency of contact with European Canadians or a larger ratio of European Canadian friends in Study 2. Overall, the evi-dence for contact was rather limited.

One reason for these results may be that relational mobility is related more to some than other dimensions of contact. As relational mobility is a characteristic of an environment rather than an individual’s mind, contact might facilitate the expansion of one’s relational mobility only insofar as it expands one’s social network. In other words, the reason why frequency of general contact and proportion of European to Asian friends were not associated with Asian Canadians’ relational mobility could be that they are poor indicators of the extent to which Asian Canadians participate in the more mobile social network characterizing the mainstream Canadian society. Contact mea-sures such as the absolute number of acquaintances and friends from the majority groups or one’s heritage group may do a better job of capturing the formation of broader networks that seem central to increasing relational mobility. These possibilities await future investigation. There may nonetheless be some merit to the role of contact in expanding one’s social networks and hence increasing relational mobility.

The association between adaptation difficulty and relational mobility attests to the usefulness of sociocultural competence beyond the context in which it is typically assessed. In the accultura-tion literature, psychological and sociocultural adjustments have been treated as acculturative outcomes, which are then influenced by a variety of social, situational, and personal factors (Berry et al., 2006; Wilson, Ward, & Fischer, 2013). Our studies suggest that adaptation variables can be situated in a broader context of psychological change during acculturation (cf. Chirkov, 2009a). As sociocultural competence is indicative of the self-assessed capacity to fit in a new culture, it may be generally associated with a host of changes, socioecological, psychological, or behavioral, that occur during acculturation.

Limitations and Future Research

As our research is the first to raise the question about group differences within a high relational mobility society, it is not without limitations. The most important one is the correlational nature of our data. Although we found two correlates of relational mobility among Asian Canadians, it remains ambiguous whether sociocultural competence and normative belief are the consequences or the antecedents of relational mobility. Only longitudinal designs can clarify the causal direc-tion. We think, however, in all likelihood, relational mobility, on one hand, and sociocultural competence and normative belief, on the other hand, are mutually reinforcing. We have specu-lated on the interaction between top-down processes emanating from socioecological factors and bottom-up processes beginning with psychological characteristics. Such reciprocal relations need to be considered in future research.

Second, we measured relational mobility in terms of people’s perception of their immediate environment (Yuki et al., 2007). Such operationalization is consistent with research on how inter-subjective reality influences people’s psychology and behaviors (Chiu, Gelfand, Yamagishi, Shteynberg, & Wan, 2010). However, one potential drawback is that it is at best an indirect



Zhang and Li 17

measure of people’s actual relational mobility. Although it seems reasonable to assume that the micro-environment surrounding people directly influences their actual levels of relational mobil-ity, we do not have data that could support this assumption (but see Schug et al., 2010). Thus, future research needs to include measures of both personal and perceived relational mobility to show more definitively that Asian Canadians actually experience lower relational mobility.

Next, it should be noted that although we did not find relational mobility to correlate signifi-cantly with some acculturation measures, the generality of these null results should be interpreted with caution. To begin with, the sample size in Study 2 was small. Although we adopted an ana-lytic strategy that maximizes power (Preacher et al., 2005), it is nonetheless possible that some of the null results will reach significance with an adequate sample size. In fact, given that many nonsignificant correlations were in the predicted directions, a more appropriate conclusion is that these relations do exist but their effect sizes are rather small. Thus, our exploratory approach highlights the larger effects, but more targeted work needs to be done. Moreover, given the com-plexity of “who, where, and how” of acculturation (Chirkov, 2009b; Weinreich, 2009), the rela-tions between relational mobility and these acculturation measures might become stronger in other acculturation contexts. One example is the experience of discrimination. The reason for the null findings may be that our Asian Canadian university students reported relatively few instances of discrimination. Moreover, our simple measure of identity denial may not have captured its nuances (Cheryan & Monin, 2005; Noels, Leavitt, & Clément, 2010). Therefore, to the extent that overt or subtle forms of discrimination are more salient for certain ethnic groups in particular contexts, it remains to be determined whether these groups are pushed to inhabit a less mobile environment as a result.

Finally, acknowledging that lower mobility among ethnic minorities is multiply determined, more systematic comparisons with the majority group are needed. Inclusion of personality vari-ables associated with acculturation (e.g., need for closure; Kosic, Kruglanski, Pierro, & Mannetti, 2004) and additional sociostructural variables (e.g., group status and permeability of group boundaries; Johnson, Terry, & Louis, 2005) will help shed additional light.

Conclusion

Does migration bridge the gap in relation mobility observed in cross-national research? For Asian Canadians at least, it does not completely. The cross-national difference continues to exist in the form of ethnic difference within the same society. Our research found two types of experi-ence to be associated with relatively lower relational mobility among Asian Canadians. Asian Canadians with lower relational mobility experienced more difficulty adjusting to the larger sociocultural environment. They also evaluated relational mobility less positively, which served to reinforce and validate their lowered mobility experience.

Acknowledgment

We would like to thank Masaki Yuki and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.




Notes

1. In Study 1, we also found significant effects of gender on both relational mobility, t(2044) = −6.77, p < .001, d = .30, and self-esteem, t(2051) = 4.93, p < .001, d = .22. Male participants reported lower relational mobility (M = 4.24, SD = .70) but higher self-esteem (M = 4.30, SD = 0.78), compared with female participants (relational mobility: M = 4.44, SD = 0.65; self-esteem: M = 4.12, SD = 0.83). However, the Gender × Ethnicity interactions were not significant, ps > .29. Given our focus on the ethnic rather than gender difference, gender was not discussed further.

2. A similar pattern was observed when we only included East Asians. European Canadians (M = 4.45, SD = 0.67) continued to perceive higher relational mobility relative to East Asian Canadians (M = 4.19, SD = 0.67), t(1505) = 4.91, p < .001, d = .39.

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