Compatible or conflicting? Peer norms and minority and majority adolescents’ acculturation patterns

Minority and majority acculturation orientations (i.e., their preferences for minorities) show consistent intergroup asymmetries: Minority adolescents see heritage and mainstream culture orientations as compatible (i.e., positively correlated), whereas majority adolescents see them as conflicting (i.e., negatively correlated). It remains unclear (a) how minority and majority adolescents’ compatible versus conflicting acculturation patterns evolve over time; and (b) how peer acculturation norms in school affect evolving individual acculturation patterns. Multi-level autoregressive cross-lagged panel models with Turkish-/Moroccan-minority (N = 1147, Mage = 15.60) and Belgian-majority (N = 1716; Mage = 15.08) adolescents in the same schools (N = 69) revealed that mainstream and heritage culture orientations were partially compatible over time for minorities, yet conflicting for majority adolescents. Moreover, peer acculturation norms predicted individual acculturation orientations longitudinally, in line with existing asymmetric acculturation patterns across minority and majority adolescents.