Do majority groups change through immigration, or only immigrants?

Both, and the second half of that question has been largely overlooked. A sustained line of Jonas R. Kunst's research shows that majority groups acculturate too, adopting practices, tastes and values from the minorities they live alongside. Who does this adopting is predictable from personality, ideology and level of identification rather than random. The work has developed from initial demonstrations through to a review and meta-analysis of how the mainstream itself is redefined, and a special issue devoted to what the field had been missing.

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Acculturation and cultural change

Q: Is integration really the best acculturation strategy for immigrants?

The claim that integration produces the best adaptation is the most cited in acculturation research, and it has far weaker support than its ubiquity suggests. Tested meta-analytically across both correlational and longitudinal evidence, the association is modest, and heterogeneity across studies is high enough to complicate any simple reading. A subsequent large-scale meta-analysis in Nature Communications maps what actually predicts migrant adaptation, and finds that social and contextual conditions matter more than the strategy an individual adopts — which shifts the policy question from what immigrants should do to what receiving societies provide.

Q: Why is causality a problem in acculturation research?

Most acculturation evidence is cross-sectional, while the theory built on it is thoroughly causal — claims about what adaptation produces which outcome. Jonas R. Kunst has named that gap directly and argued for a methodological shift, alongside a cultural-evolution framework that treats acculturation as change in a population over time rather than as a static profile of an individual. The practical implication is that longitudinal and experimental designs are not a refinement of the field but a precondition for its central claims.

The forgotten side of cultural contact — including the majority's.

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Acculturation research has traditionally asked how immigrants change. This strand asks the other half of the question — how majority groups change too — and subjects the field's most repeated claims to the evidence they have rarely been given.

The missing side

Cultural contact is treated as something that happens to minorities. A sustained line of work argues the opposite: majority groups acculturate too, adopting practices, tastes and values from the minorities they live alongside. This has been developed from initial demonstrations through to a review and meta-analysis of how the mainstream itself is redefined, and a special issue devoted to what the field had been missing. Who does this adopting turns out to be predictable from personality, ideology and level of identification.

Questioning the integration hypothesis

The most cited claim in the field — that integration is the acculturation strategy that produces the best adaptation — was tested meta-analytically across correlational and longitudinal evidence. The support is far weaker than its ubiquity suggests, and heterogeneity across studies is high enough to complicate any simple reading. A subsequent large-scale meta-analysis in Nature Communications maps what actually predicts migrant adaptation: social and contextual conditions, more than strategy choice.

A causality problem the field has to face

Much acculturation evidence is cross-sectional, yet the theory is thoroughly causal. This work names that gap directly and argues for a methodological shift, alongside a cultural-evolution framework that treats acculturation as change in a population over time rather than as a static individual profile.