The verification of causal relationship between acculturative stress and bicultural acceptance attitude using autoregressive cross-lagged modeling

Acculturative stress and bicultural acceptance attitudes are important predictors of adaptation and success in multicultural adolescents, and the two variables seem closely related. Furthermore, clarifying the causal relationship between the two variables may be important in the development of strategies to facilitate their adaptation to South Korean society. we used an autoregressive cross-lagged model to examine the causal relationship between Acculturative stress and bicultural acceptance attitudes based on the data of 1635 adolescents from the Multicultural Adolescents Panel Study. Autoregressive analysis indicated that acculturative stress and bicultural acceptance attitudes remained stable over time. Cross-lagged analysis showed that bicultural acceptance attitude negatively affected acculturative stress, while acculturative stress had no significant effect on bicultural acceptance attitudes. Bicultural acceptance attitudes decrease acculturative stress. Thus, in order to reduce the acculturative stress experienced by multicultural adolescents during acculturation and to prevent psychological and emotional problems, personal and social efforts are needed to increase bicultural acceptance attitudes.