Our emotional lives continuously shape and are shaped by the social and cultural environments we engage with. This dissertation examines this dynamic in immigrant-origin minority adolescents, focusing on their emotional fit – the degree of similarity in an individual’s experienced emotions – with both majority and minority cultures. Prior research shows that immigrant-origin minorities with more contact with the majority culture tend to achieve higher emotional fit, indicating emotional acculturation towards the majority culture. However, acculturation can be bidimensional, allowing for multiple cultural ways of being. While those with more heritage culture friends show higher fit with their heritage culture, the question of whether and how they fit emotionally with both cultures, depending on their context, has not been explicitly tested. Additionally, the benefits of emotional fit with the majority culture, heritage culture, or both are not fully explored, despite the known positive association between emotional fit with one’s culture and well-being.

This dissertation investigates emotional acculturation as a bidimensional and situated process, and explores its implications for well-being among immigrant-origin minority adolescents in Belgium. The aims of this dissertation are: (1) to examine the potential coexistence of emotional fit with both majority and minority cultures (i.e., the bidimensional model of emotional acculturation); (2) to identify the sociocultural contexts that facilitate emotional fit with both cultures; (3) to investigate the variability of emotional fit across different sociocultural contexts; and (4) to assess the impact of emotional fit with either or both cultures on adjustment outcomes. 

Three empirical chapters address these aims. Chapter 2 analyzes the social networks of Turkish-origin minority adolescents to identify characteristics that facilitate emotional fit with both majority and minority norms, testing whether these adolescents can achieve emotional fit with both cultures. Chapter 3 examines emotional fit across daily sociocultural contexts, focusing on emotionally fitting with the norm of the cultural context (i.e., congruent frame-switching) and whether this benefits situational well-being. Chapter 4 explores individual differences in emotional acculturation, identifying subgroups with varying patterns of emotional fit in school and home contexts, and examining their adjustment outcomes. 

This dissertation provides a comprehensive examination of emotional fit among immigrant-origin minority adolescents, highlighting the complex interplay between emotional experiences and sociocultural contexts, and its implications for well-being.