Acculturation vs Assimilation: What’s the Difference?

The difference at a glance

Acculturation is the exchange of features while maintaining separate cultural identities. Assimilation is the complete absorption into a dominant culture.

What does Acculturation mean?

noun · /əˌkʌl.tʃərˈeɪ.ʃən/

The process of psychological and cultural change that results from sustained contact between cultures. Acculturation can occur in both directions — the dominant culture is also changed, though rarely as profoundly. It involves adoption, adaptation, and sometimes loss.

Acculturation in a sentence

Second-generation immigrants experience acculturation differently from their parents — born between two worlds, belonging fully to neither.

Acculturation is not the same as assimilation: it doesn't require one culture to disappear into the other.

What does Assimilation mean?

noun · /əˌsɪm.ɪˈleɪ.ʃən/

The process of taking in and fully understanding information or ideas. Also: the social process by which a person or group adopts the culture of another group, often at the cost of their own. Assimilation is both learning and loss.

Assimilation in a sentence

Her family had assimilated so thoroughly that she only learned their origin country from a DNA test.

The assimilation of new information takes time — you have to let it settle before you understand it.

Frequently asked questions