Peter F. Titzmann

Leibniz Universität Hannover · Department of Psychology

Acculturation unfolds over time, but research on acculturation often does not account for developmental processes. Recent studies introduced several novel temporal concepts of acculturation processes to understand more fully how immigrant youth adapt to new cultural contexts. In this review, we describe these new temporal concepts of acculturation:...

Investigating the adoption and use of the host language is one common method for studying acculturation among immigrants. What is less known is how this type of acculturation changes over time and how individual patterns of change can affect other adaptation processes in the host country, for example within families. This study investigated immigra...

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and the resulting infringements of day-to-day life have affected families through school closures and home-learning. Yet, little research investigated how adolescents and their families could be supported during this time. Our two-wave study had three aims. First, we examined life satisfaction and academi...

Despite the fact that acculturation has already been described in early definitions as a concept of change, few conceptual and theoretical advances have been made in how this change may be studied. This chapter highlights the dynamics in acculturation. We specifically introduce the temporal concepts of acculturative timing, tempo, pace, and synchro...

We draw upon developmental psychology theory to highlight the developmental process of acculturation in adolescent immigrants. First, we describe different ways in which development and acculturation have been combined in past research on immigrant youth. These studies mainly considered developmental and acculturation-related changes, predictors, a...

Acculturation processes are, by definition, processes of change over time. Yet, acculturation science is dominated by static and a-developmental theorizing that makes no specific assumptions about temporal change processes. This review paper presents concepts and methods that utilize a developmental science perspective and demonstrates how these co...

Understanding how adolescents integrate multiple cultures into their identity is a growing field of research in modern multicultural societies and requires psychometrically sound assessments tools. The Bicultural Identity Integration framework together with the Bicultural Identity Integration Scale 2 (BIIS-2; Huynh et al., 2018) offers an instrumen...

Acculturation processes are, by definition, processes of change over time. Yet, acculturation science is dominated by static and a-developmental theorizing that makes no specific assumptions about temporal change processes. This review paper will present concepts and methods that utilize a Developmental Science perspective and demonstrates how thes...

Being the target of discriminatory actions because of their ethnicity can lead ethnic minority students to disengage from school. Research has relied on cross-sectional survey data to show that students who experience more frequent discrimination are more likely to be disengaged from school (i.e., between-person associations). Less is known about w...

Research on adolescence from the Majority World possesses major hidden potential in contributing to global adolescent research and developmental science more broadly. In this commentary, the authors (1) describe the background and the process through which this special issue came into fruition, (2) introduce the emic approaches to study the influen...

Collective identification is vital for adolescents, fostering well-being and connection, but scant attention has been given to drivers of national identification and their contextual variations in youth. To address this, two longitudinal studies examined how values, as guiding goals defining what individuals consider important in their lives, relat...

Journal analyses have documented the historical neglect of research pertaining to the Majority World in psychological science, and the need for inclusivity is clearly articulated to ensure a science that is comprehensive and globally applicable. However, no systematic efforts have explored the perspectives of researchers working with Majority World...

The usage of the new language is a crucial aspect in immigrant youth adaptation. However, despite substantial inter- and intraindividual variability and dynamic changes, language usage has been studied primarily with a focus on static interindividual differences. This study utilized a recently introduced Temporal Model of Acculturative Change to te...

Investigating the adoption and use of the host language is one common method for studying acculturation among immigrants. What is less known is how this type of acculturation changes over time and how individual patterns of change can affect other adaptation processes in the host country, for example within families. This study investigated immigra...

In the present digital age, intrafamilial dynamics and adolescents’ support of their parents in media use (technical brokering, Katz, 2010) are increasing in attention. However, the significance of migration-specific processes in adolescents’ technical brokering is less understood. In immigrant families, adolescents’ technical brokering may help fa...

Das Ziel dieses Kapitels ist es, drei grundlegende Aspekte der Freundschafts- und Peerbeziehungen in Jugendalter darzustellen. Zuerst soll die Komplexität der Peerbeziehungen aufgezeigt werden, die sich in den verschiedenen Ebenen von dyadischen Freundschaften, in Cliquen, Crowds und der Jugendkultur ausdrückt. Als zweites soll das Ähnlichkeitsprin...

Perceived social support can help immigrant youth to deal with developmental acculturation: the simultaneous resolution of developmental and acculturative tasks. This person-oriented three-wave comparative study investigated perceived social support trajectories in two immigrant and one non-immigrant group. We investigated whether similar social su...

Das Kapitel betrachtet aus entwicklungspsychologischer Perspektive die Akkulturation von jugendlichen Migrant*innen. Typische Entwicklungsaufgaben im Jugendalter umfassen die zunehmende Autonomie von Eltern und Familie, den verstärkten Aufbau von Beziehungen zu Gleichaltrigen, die Entwicklung von Wert- und Moralvorstellungen als Leitfäden für Verha...

Previous studies have observed high levels of family support of migrant adolescents. However, whether culture, context or migration explain this phenomenon remained unclear. This study investigated family support in high SES migrant and native families and identified family support subgroups and predictors as well as implications of subgroup-member...

This research note addresses the current and potential future role of psychologists in the study of international migration. We review ways in which psychologists have contributed to the study of migration, as well as ways in which psychological scholarship could be integrated with work from other social science fields. Broadly, we discuss four maj...

This study examined whether the association between immigration and bullying victimization differed across immigrant generation, age and national and school context. Data were used from the 2013-14 Health Behavior in School-Aged Children study among nationally-representative samples of young people in 26 countries/regions. Multilevel logistic regre...

Youth in Superdiverse Societies brings together theoretical, methodological and international approaches to the study of globalization, diversity, and acculturation in adolescence. It examines vital issues including migration, integration, cultural identities, ethnic minorities, and the interplay of ethnic and cultural diversity with experiences of...

This 3-wave study of Swedish majority adolescents (N = 659; MageT1 = 13.41; MageT3 = 17.33) examined the effects of parents' and peers' attitudes on changes in youth attitudes toward immigrants as well as an interplay between parent, peer, and school context. The results of multilevel analyses revealed that within-person fluctuations in youth attit...

This 3-wave study of Swedish majority adolescents (N = 659; MageT1 = 13.41) examined the effects of parents’ and peers’ attitudes on changes in youth attitudes towards immigrants as well as an interplay between parent, peer, and school context. The results of multilevel analyses revealed that within-person fluctuations in youth attitudes were posit...

Dieser Beitrag befasst sich mit psychologischen Prozessen der Entstehung von Delinquenz bei Jugendlichen mit Migrationshintergrund. Dabei beleuchten wir insbesondere die Frage, ob sich diese Prozesse zwischen einheimischen Jugendlichen und Jugendlichen mit Migrationshintergrund unterscheiden. Wir präsentieren dazu theoretische Überlegungen zusammen...

The mastering of developmental tasks in adolescence is a prerequisite for long-term positive adaptation and can enhance individuals’ resilience when confronted with life stressors and challenges. There is evidence that immigrant adolescents are confronted with additional opportunities and challenges when dealing with developmental tasks. We present...

Migration is a critical issue for child development in the 21st century. We expand on García Coll et al.’s (1996) integrative model of minority child development by drawing from principles of attachment theory and interpersonal relationships research to offer new insights into how youth manage and respond to migration experiences. Immigrant and ref...

Jugendliche sind mit diversen biologischen, psychologischen und sozialen Veränderungen konfrontiert - in einer Lebensphase, in der maßgeblich die Weichen für den weiteren Lebensweg gestellt werden. Dieses Buch stellt den aktuellen Forschungsstand zum Jugendalter in verständlicher Weise vor und beleuchtet die Entwicklungen, die in diesem prägenden L...

Intergenerational value mismatch in immigrant families, also termed acculturation gap, is well documented. However, in increasingly diverse societies, the generalizability of this phenomenon across immigrant groups, across dimensions and domains of acculturation, and across different receiving societies is questionable. This comparative study inves...

Intergenerational value mismatch in immigrant families, also termed acculturation gap, is well documented. However, in increasingly diverse societies, the generalizability of this phenomenon across immigrant groups, across dimensions and domains of acculturation, and across different receiving societies is questionable. This comparative study inves...

The chapter presents a comparative study on immigrants’ cultural identification with the majority in their country of settlement and with their minority background. We focused on diaspora immigrants who after the fall of communist regimes left the former USSR and immigrated either to Germany (i.e., ethnic Germans) or to Israel (i.e., Russian Jews)...

Migration is a critical issue for child development in the 21st century. We expand on García Coll et al.’s (1996) integrative model of minority child development by drawing from principles of attachment theory and interpersonal relationships research to offer new insights into how youth manage and respond to migration experiences. Immigrant and ref...

Immigration is a critical issue for adolescent development as migration around the world continues at an increased pace. This essay provides insights into the opportunities and challenges in this area of research, but also spotlights important work that can serve as the foundation for future investigations. Our focus is on adolescent immigrants, as...

Self-efficacy is a key personal resource in individual development and successful adaptation, and it can serve innumerable purposes. Our study investigated levels and change rates in self-efficacy among newcomer and more experienced immigrant adolescents and tested whether acculturation-related and developmental variables explained inter-individual...

This special section on “Explaining Positive Adaptation of Immigrant and Minority Youth across Cultures” is the result of an expert meeting organized by the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD), the European Association of Developmental Psychology (EADP), and the European Association for Research on Adolescence (EARA). The aim of this s...

Intergenerational adjustment theories suggest that immigrant adolescents may be particularly influential in their families, as they take on family obligations and serve as language brokers. Empirical research in this regard is, however, scarce. One aim of this study was to test whether adolescents’ linguistic competence in German adds to the explan...

The establishment of mutual and supporting friendships is considered to be a major developmental task during the adolescent years, and both immigrant and native majority adolescents have to deal with it. Immigrant adolescents, however, often face additional challenges, such as discrimination and prejudice, and experience different cultural norms an...

This longitudinal study aimed to differentiate between acculturative and developmental processes by (a) comparing levels and change rates in victimization among ethnic German immigrants and native German adolescents in Germany and Russian Jewish immigrants in Israel and (b) testing whether inter-individual differences in victimization among immigra...

Despite beneficial effects of minority members’ contact with majority members, studies have repeatedly shown minorities’ tendency of having predominantly intraethnic social contacts, a phenomenon called ethnic homophily. This study aimed at examining ethnic homophily among mothers belonging to minority groups in Germany and Israel. Mothers from fou...

Research and practice in the field of acculturation psychology is continually on the rise. Featuring contributions from over fifty leading experts in the field, this handbook compiles and systemizes the current state of the art by exploring the broad international scope of acculturation. The collection introduces readers to the concepts and issues;...

Despite beneficial effects of minority members' contact with majority members, studies have repeatedly shown minorities' tendency of having predominantly intraethnic social contacts, a phenomenon called ethnic homophily. This study aimed at examining ethnic homophily among mothers belonging to minority groups in Germany and Israel. Mothers from fou...

In modern multicultural societies more and more individuals deal with 2 or more cultures due to the unprecedented increase in international migration. This special section brings together research about immigrants' adaptation to various life domains, about the demands of dealing with different cultural scripts and about how immigrants can successfu...

We recommend that policies and practices in receiving countries concerning immigrants should: • Be informed by research and interventions that have been shown to have beneficial results. • Promote non-segregated, welcoming environments and opportunities for intercultural communication and collaboration at all ages. • Provide economic opportunities...

Immigrant adolescents have to navigate through a complex social environment consisting of, at least, both a native and a co-ethnic community. This study used a multi-level framework to consider two research questions involving this complexity. The individual-level associations of acculturation orientations and acculturative hassles (language and so...

Recent research demonstrates that intergenerational differences in immigrant families' adaptation can be detrimental for family functioning. However, most of the findings originate from immigrant groups in North America who face different situations compared with European Diaspora returnees. This comparative study investigated whether ethnic German...

Increasingly, adolescents are growing up in multiethnic multicultural societies. While intergroup prejudice can threaten the multicultural societal cohesion, intergroup friendships are strong predictors of reduced prejudice. Thus, more research is needed to fully understand the development of intergroup friendships and their relations to less preju...

Technology developments have changed immigrants' adaptation patterns in modern societies, allowing immigrants to sustain dense, complex connections with homeland while adjusting in the host country, a new phenomenon termed transnationalism. As empirical studies on immigrant transnationalism are still scarce, the purpose of this study was to investi...

Research has shown that immigrant/cultural minority groups differ considerably in their identification with the cultural majority in their country of settlement and their respective minority culture. Comparative research systematically testing for such differences and relating them to factors at the country, group, and individual level, however, is...

Research repeatedly showed that immigrants’ and cultural minority members’ identification with the cultural majority and minority relate to acculturation-related adaptation (e.g., in terms of their language knowledge, contact attitudes, involvement in social contacts, language usage, media consumption). However, the majority of studies focused on s...

Diaspora or 'ethnic return' migrants have often been privileged in terms of citizenship and material support when they seek to return to their ancestral land, yet for many, after long periods of absence - sometimes extending to generations - acculturation to their new environment is as complex as that experienced by other immigrant groups. Indeed,...

Recent research suggests that cultural groups comprise subgroups differing in the combination of their self-identifications with their heritage and host cultures and following distinct trajectories of acculturation. This study aimed at identifying such subgroups, predicting group membership by pre-migration factors, and testing for acculturation-re...

Although interethnic friendships are among the best indicators of social adaptation to a new cultural context, adolescent immigrants form friendships predominantly within their own ethnic community, a phenomenon called friendship homophily. In this article, I focus on the acculturation of immigrant adolescents and on the factors that lead them to f...

Research on immigrant families often has suggested that the process of immigration can lead to a distancing of adolescents and their parents. This study examined the actual agreement of immigrant and native mother-adolescent dyads in their reports on children's disclosure as an indicator for a trusting mother-child relationship. The research questi...

Jugendliche Migranten übersetzen häufig für ihre Eltern, was auch als Language Brokering (LB) bezeichnet wird. Ziel dieser Studie war es, herauszufinden inwieweit demographische, akkulturative und familiäre Prädiktoren mit LB in Zusammenhang stehen, inwiefern LB mit internalisierten Verhaltensproblemen verbunden ist, und ob das Alter der Jugendlich...

On the basis of general theories of delinquency and the specific situation of immigrants, this longitudinal study investigated predictors of initial levels and rates of change in delinquency among 188 male ethnic German Diaspora immigrants from the former Soviet Union (FSU) in Germany, 237 male native German adolescents, and 182 male Jewish Diaspor...

This longitudinal study compared immigrant and native adolescents' expectations concerning the timing of conventional socially acceptable and oppositional less socially acceptable forms of autonomy. Based on normative development and a collectivist background among immigrants, both developmental and acculturative change was expected. The sample con...

Young women in advanced industrial countries have been outperforming young men in educational attainment at the same time that their labor market outcomes are still lagging. Sex segregation in education and the labor market is identified as an important source of this imbalance.

Future‐ and school‐related stressors are salient for adolescents from different regions of the world, and they cope with these stressors competently.

The ability of schools to serve young people may be jeopardized if their approaches to parental involvement do not evolve to reflect the growing diversity of their students brought on by long‐term demographic changes.

Long‐term studies monitoring the process of young people adopting new media patterns of social interaction and communication with parents and peers are needed to better understand how young people cope with perpetual peer communication, how parents and adolescents deal with intergenerational conflicts, and the outcomes of these practices and confli...

Academic well‐being and expectations change in educational transitions during economic downturn.

Parents and educators should be more concerned about uncertainty in educational aspirations than uncertainty regarding career choice among adolescents. Moreover, the impact of uncertainty on young people's attainment varies by socio‐historical context, the timing of uncertainty, the available resources, and individual characteristics of the adolesc...

The well-being and productivity of immigrant youth has become one of the most important global issues of our times as a result of mass migration and resettlement. In this unique volume, leading scholars from multiple nations and disciplines provide a state-of-the-art overview of contemporary research on immigrant youth and delineate the most promis...

This longitudinal study investigated friendship homophily (i.e., the preference for intra-ethnic over inter-ethnic friends) among immigrant adolescents in Israel and Germany. Based on acculturation theories and known differences between Israel and Germany in the establishment of Russian-speaking immigrant communities in these countries, it was hypo...

This study examined language shift from speaking Russian to German longitudinally in a sample of 229 adolescent immigrants (Mage = 16.14, Mlength of residence = 6.26, 67% female). Our aims were to test whether language shift can be found in adolescent first generation immigrants and to test whether variables indicative of (a) linguistic adaptabilit...

Perceived discrimination is a substantial challenge for immigrant youths trying to adapt to a new home. The present study examined the independent and interactive relations between individual- and school-level variables in determining perceptions of discrimination in ethnic German migrant (Aussiedler) youths from the former Soviet Union. Six hundre...

Stress-and-coping frameworks predict increasing psychological adaptation of immigrants over time, but although previous studies found evidence for this assumption in adult samples, this temporal pattern was hardly found among adolescent immigrants. The authors argue that in adolescent immigrants an acculturation-related increase in psychological ad...

Positive attitudes toward contact with members of the host culture, host-culture language usage, and social relations with natives are frequently used criteria for assessing immigrants’ host-culture participation. Precursors of these criteria are, however, rarely studied, especially from a longitudinal perspective. We expected that a strong identif...

In times of globalization, modern societies' labor markets have been marked by an increasing segmentation and growing social inequality. Youths in particular have experienced a worsening of their employment chances in the past three decades. However, what will the future bring?

Parentification (adolescents' adoption of adult family roles by providing instrumental or emotional support for their parents) is assumed to be higher in immigrant than native families. An often discussed reason for parentification is the adolescent-parent acculturation gap in immigrant families whereby immigrant adolescents acculturate faster and...

This study compares the adaptation of diaspora immigrant adolescents from the former Soviet Union, ethnic Germans in Germany, and Russian Jews in Israel, using a new measure of acculturation-related hassles, which were defined as minor negative experiences originating from being an immigrant. Participants, who were 16 years of age on average in bot...