Rientations. We focused on religiosity and associated values and acculturation orientations among acculturating Turkish Belgian adolescents using a extremely religious Islamic heritage culture (Turkey) who grow up within a highly secularised and increasingly anti-Islamic European society (Belgium). Our research aimed to establish and elucidate religious reaffirmation in acculturating adolescents by way of two-sided cross-cultural comparisons with most like (very same age and comparable SES) adolescents in each heritage and mainstream cultural contexts. Furthermore, we extended cross-cultural comparisons beyond distinct levels of religiosity to differential associations with cultural worth patterns, and supplemented group Diosmetin site differences with direct measures of acculturation orientations and ethnic identification inside the acculturating group. The cross-cultural findings establish and elucidate the reaffirmation of religion by adolescents inside a hugely secular PubMed ID:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21173414 and frequently less welcoming acculturation context, exactly where religious difference is marked by disadvantage and prejudice. In line with the initially hypothesis, Turkish Belgians were reportedly essentially the most, and Belgians the least, religious group, immediately after taking into account their gender and age and maternal education. Heightened levels of religiosity relative to both heritage and mainstream cultures accord with our expectation that religious traditions and ties are reinforced in response to a prevailing secular orientation in European societies. Notably, Belgians were the only adolescents to turn out to be much less religious with age, possibly reflecting their enculturation into a predominant secular orientation. This outcome contrasts with sustained religiosity into later adolescence for both Turkish samples, in line with a prevailing religious orientation specially in the less educated families of internal or international Turkish migrants. Our second hypothesis examined implications from the apparent reaffirmation of religion by acculturating adolescents for worth patterns linked with religiosity. The findings mostly supported reaffirmation, however they also added some qualifications. In line with a Turkish cultural model of interdependence, we predicted that far more religious Turkish and Turkish Belgian youth alike could be additional strongly committed to other-focused values, and more opposed to self-focused values, as compared with far more religious Belgian youth. Far more religious adolescents across cultural groups favoured other-focused conformity-tradition values extra (relative to significantly less religious peers), as expected, but Turkish Belgian religiosity was most strongly linked with conformity radition values. Conformity and tradition typically encourage the restraint of actions, inclinations, and impulses most likely to violate social expectations or cultural traditions. As adolescence can be a time of heightened concern with belonging and acceptance in like-minded groups, the typical cross-cultural pattern suggests a developmental part of religion inside the maintenance of social relationships and group cohesion (McCullough Willoughby, 2009), which may perhaps be reinforced inside the context of acculturation. Nevertheless, we also expected a stronger devaluation of self-direction ?hedonism as core self-focused values amongst highly religious Turkish and Turkish BelgianInt J Behav Dev. Author manuscript; offered in PMC 2012 November 13.G g et al.Pageadolescents relative to their Belgian peers. Expectedly, far more religious Turkish adolescents were much more opposed to se.