A critical investigation of the effects of (in)congruence between host group’s own acculturation expectancies and the acculturation expectancies they perceive in immigrant groups: The decisive role of host group’s expectancies of acculturation

The present study investigates the effects of incongruence and congruence between host group’s (Flemings) acculturation expectancies and perceptions of Moroccan immigrant acculturation efforts on attitudes towards this immigrant group. The study is conducted among Dutch-speaking Belgian high-school students (N = 447). Incongruence and congruence effects were investigated with polynomial regression analyses. First, differential incongruence effects indicated that attitudes towards Moroccan immigrants were more positive when immigrants were perceived to do a bigger acculturative effort than expected, whereas attitudes were more negative when immigrants were perceived to fall short of the expectations. Second, differential congruence effects indicated that attitudes towards Moroccan immigrants became more negative when expectancies were more demanding. Last, conditional regression analyses indicated that, whereas the attitudes towards Moroccan immigrants of people with clear-cut expectancies (either high or low) are entirely determined by these expectancies, the attitudes of people with moderate expectancies are altered by their perception of immigrant efforts. These results suggest that acculturation expectancies have a greater impact on host group’s attitudes towards Moroccan immigrants than the acculturation expectancies they perceive in this immigrant group.