Immigrants face an array of disruptions, including changes in social and religious contexts, values, norms, beliefs, behaviors, that are constantly threatening their self and social identities. How they manage those threats is crucial to their adaptation to the new cultural context, and is the main investigation of this research. Specifically, we investigated how Muslim immigrants react when they see themselves transgressing one of their cultural values. Results of Study 1 provide full support to our hypotheses that when people see themselves transgressing their in-group values, they are more concerned when the transgressing behavior is witnessed by an out-group than an in-group member. In other words, they demonstrate to be more worried in preserving the in-group image in front of an out-group member than in preserving their self-image in front of an in-group member. Further results of Study 1 also showed evidence of a new type of value affirmation mechanism. The negative emotional reaction to the transgressing behavior was reduced when the out-group member was said to have endorsed the transgressing-related cultural value.

Through the theoretical lens of self-concept and by conducting 27 in-depth interviews, the study shows that social media provides an arena for the development, negotiation and maintenance of home and host identity self-schemas, as well reducing negative emotional effects. However due to simultaneous online surveillance from multiple agents, maintaining disparate expectations is found to result in social anxiety and the practice of self-regulation.