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The Psychology of Culture Shock.

Colleen Ward, Stephen Bochner & Adrian Furnham.

Routledge. 2001.

ISBN: 0415162351.

The Psychology of Culture Shock organises culture shock research around three theoretical approaches:

• Affective (stress and coping). Culture shock as an emotional response to unfamiliar environments, involving stress, loss, and adaptation, drawing on stress-coping models.
• Behavioural (culture learning). The idea that sojourners struggle not because of psychological breakdown but because they lack the specific social skills and knowledge needed to navigate a new culture. Adjustment is treated as a learning process.
• Cognitive (social identification). How contact with a new culture affects identity, intergroup attitudes, and self-perception, drawing on social identity theory.

Colleen Ward is a social psychologist and one of the leading figures in cross-cultural and intercultural psychology. She is a Professor at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, where she founded and directs the Centre for Applied Cross-Cultural Research.

Her research focuses on culture contact, acculturation, immigrant and refugee adaptation, multiculturalism, and intercultural relations.

Stephen Bochner is a social psychologist known for his work on cross-cultural interaction, particularly the culture learning or social skills approach to understanding how people adapt to unfamiliar cultural environments. He was affiliated with the University of New South Wales in Australia.

Adrian Furnham is a psychologist, currently at University College London (and also affiliated with BI Norwegian Business School), known for wide-ranging research across social, organizational, and personality psychology, including culture shock, but also topics like workplace behaviour, personality assessment, and lay theories of everyday phenomena.

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Coram Deo — before the face of God. This blog reflects on Scripture, world events, science, music, psychology, and the human mind — always through the lens of Christian faith. All of life is lived before the face of God.