Monocultural vs Multicultural Academic Acculturation

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EXCEED THE SPACE PROVIDED. DESCRIPTION Academic psychology has historically been monocultural. Moreover, academia itself is a culture and those who receive academic training become acculturated to it. Acculturation involves the changes that groups and individuals undergo when they come into contact with another culture. Mental health research training in psychology has acculturated trainees toward a monocultural, European American worldview. The purpose of this proposal is to compare the benefits of multicultural training in clinical psychology with monocultural training. The proposed project will focus on ethnic minority undergraduates who are interested in graduate training in clinical psychology. The program will help trainees to recognize differences in the behavior of multiple ethnic groups, as well as differences within these groups. One long-term objective is to identify mental health research training components that will effectively meet the needs of trainees to understand culturally diverse populations. A second long-term objective is to increase the availability of multicultural research training that will be more relevant to the mental health needs of culturally diverse populations. It is hypothesized that: (1) Students who have completed the proposed Multicultural training program will be more likely than students in the Monocultural training program to apply to graduate programs based on multicultural considerations; (2) Ethnic minority participants in the proposed Multicultural training program will exhibit a greater commitment to the profession of clinical psychology because the multicultural emphasis will make clinical psychology a more viable career than in the other condition; and (3) Participants in the proposed Multicultural training program will exhibit greater multicultural awareness and knowledge than the participants in the other conditions, as a function of the training content. PERFORMANCE SITE ========================================Section End===========================================