The main aim of this Marie Curie fellowship was to develop and investigate a novel route to meaningful intergroup contact among immigrant minority and majority members, which may positively impact minorities' well-being and thriving as well as the overall cohesion in society. I proposed that emotions – and, specifically, emotional similarity or ‘fit’ between minority and majority members – may play an important role because fit stands for shared attributions of events and shared intentions to act, it reduces stress and enhances social validation and belonging.
Building upon the vast literature on cultural differences in emotional experience (see Mesquita, De Leersnyder & Boiger, 2016 for a review) as well my previous work that has shown that the fit between immigrant minority and majority emotions increases when they interact (De Leersnyder, Mesquita & Kim, 2011; Jasini, De Leersnyder, & Mesquita, 2018) and that emotional fit with cultural is linked to well-being (De Leersnyder, Kim, & Mesquita, 2015; De Leersnyder, Mesquita, Kim, Eom, & Choi, 2014), the current project aimed to get insight into i) the micro-processes through which immigrant minorities come to fit with the emotions of the majority during intercultural interactions and ii) if emotional fit during intercultural interactions actually increases the quality of these interactions.
To meet these aims, I had proposed two studies in which I follow Turkish/Moroccan Dutch minorities’ learning of typical Dutch situation-emotion patterns after being exposed to these patterns repeatedly. In Study 1, minorities are instructed to mimic vs. not mimic the emotional expressions of their majority interaction partners; in Study 2, interaction partners are encouraged to negotiate ‘common ground’ on the meaning of emotional situations. In each study, I aimed to address my two research objectives.
The project is not only timely in terms of advancing both acculturation and emotion psychology, but also in terms of its potential societal impact as it speaks to one of the main challenges that Europe has been facing over the past few years: How can we allow (the increasing numbers of) immigrant minorities to thrive while simultaneously maintaining social cohesion in our multicultural societies? The current project explores a novel route to address this challenge: By focusing on emotional similarity, which decreases stress and increases belonging and social validation. By outlining the exact micro-processes (mimicry and grounding) that instigate emotional fit in intercultural interactions, it provides concrete targets for future interventions: Optimizing the circumstances that afford mutual understanding, from which many benefits may then follow.
