Identifying with other Internationals: The Influence of Multicultural Personality on Social Identity Patterns of International Students

Social identity patterns have been shown to be an important factor in the experience of travelling abroad for study. In line with traditional acculturation literature, most scholars distinguish between international students’ home culture and host culture identities. However, more recently, it has become recognized that these individuals also strongly relate to other international students, together forming a diverse, cosmopolitan in-group that they identify with. This type of social identification requires negotiating between different cultures and/or languages, which is no sinecure. The present study examines whether multicultural personality traits, including cultural empathy, openmindedness, flexibility, social initiative, and emotional stability, may increase the likelihood of identifying with other internationals.

We surveyed a group of 189 first-year students in an international university program, and measured their multicultural personality trait and social identity patterns. Stress and life satisfaction were included as outcome variables. Our results confirm the importance of identifying with the group of international students: it explains more variance in stress and life satisfaction than identification with home or host culture. Furthermore, openmindedness and emotional stability predict identification with international students: these traits appear to be necessary to identify with such a diverse group. Home culture identification was predicted by flexibility only. Host culture identification was predicted by cultural empathy and emotional stability. Our findings confirm the importance of personality in the establishment of social identity patterns during a study abroad, as well as the importance of recognizing other international students as a possible source of identification.