Activation of the culture-transmission motive in immigrants: A factorial survey experiment

According to the theory of cultural transmission in minorities (Mchitarjan & Reisenzein, 2014a), sociocultural groups desire to maintain their cultural system and transmit it to the next generation. We report a factorial survey experiment that tested a central assumption of the theory: The culture-transmission motive is activated by perceived threats to cultural transmission and motivates pedagogical actions designed to cope with those threats. Young adults imagined that they decided to emigrate to a fictitious country with their partner and child. The degree of threat to cultural transmission was manipulated by varying the description of the immigration country on six dimensions representing favorable or unfavorable conditions for cultural transmission, while the strength of the participants’ culture-transmission motive was measured. As predicted, (1) obstacles to cultural transmission (e.g., different values and norms) increased participants’ anxiety about losing the culture of origin and their intentions (behavioral self-predictions) to engage in culture-preserving actions (e.g., living cultural values in the family); (2) the effects of the obstacles generally increased with the strength of the culture-transmission motive; (3) the combined effects of obstacles and the culture-transmission motive on intentions to engage in culture-preserving actions were partly mediated by anxiety about the loss of culture.