The Role of Intercultural Competence in First-Year Psychology Students’ Adjustment

There have been considerable developments in the research on internationalization, as well as the process of internationalization itself, in various domains such as education and the workplace. One manifestation of said developments can be seen in the increasing number of international students and staff that are abroad. According to the International Organization for Migration’s Global Migration Index (2018, p. 18), in 2016 alone, the total number of international students was estimated to be 4.8 million which has more than doubled since 2000; further, the number of migrant workers worldwide was estimated at 150.

3 million. The same manifestation can also be seen in the University of Groningen (UG), which prides itself as an international research university. Accordingly, the number of international students at the UG has increased from 11.8% to 22.6% within the span of six years and about one third of their academic staff is international (University of Groningen 2018, 2019). In addition, a majority of the UG’s degree programs are taught in English which further bolsters the university’s ambitions for internationalization.

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As a result of our increasingly internationalized society, different skills and traits tend to be prioritized and valued. Consequently, several reports have emerged indicating that intercultural competence (ICC) is a highly valued skill in the workforce for 2020 (British Council, 2013; Davies, Fidler, & Gorbis, 2011). More recently, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA; 2018) proposed a global competencies framework highlighting the importance of ICC in order to navigate effectively and thrive in our current, ever-changing global market. Thus, developing ICC is a necessary skill to be successful in the current society.

First, it is important to note that there is currently no consensus as to what the definition of ICC actually is. Existing reviews show that various researchers refer to and conceptualize ICC in slightly nuanced ways; e.g., cross-cultural competence, global competence, and global citizenship, in addition to ICC (Deardorff, 2006; see also Griffith, Wolfeld, Armon, Rios, & Liu, 2016; Leung, Ang, & Tan, 2014). For the purpose of this project, the term ICC will be used throughout, despite differing terminologies and conceptualizations, and will be defined according to Griffith and colleagues’ (2016) working model based on Grossman, Thayer, Shuffler, Burke, & Salas’s (2015) critical social thinking theory. Griffith et al.’s approach, analyze, and act framework, referring to the three stages of intercultural interactions, was selected as it provided the clearest and most comprehensive definition of ICC relative to existing paradigms.

Each stage will be further delved into in the following sections. To start with, the approach stage consists of an underlying attitudinal component which affects whether an individual willingly engages in contact with their culturally-different counterpart and how the individual subsequently handles this contact – essentially, adopting a general open-mindedness to the intercultural experiences, a favorable evaluation of one’s abilities to interact with those of different cultures, and persisting in the face of uncertainty and stress that are often characteristic of new intercultural experiences (Caligiuri & Tarique, 2012; Griffith et al., 2016; Terrell & Rosenbusch, 2013). Specifically, Griffith and colleagues (2016) propose that this stage concerns: a positive cultural orientation, cross-cultural self-efficacy, and tolerance for ambiguity. The following stage, analyze, comprises a multitude of cognitive subcomponents and refers to an input-and-output process of cultural information in an unbiased manner. That is, perceiving the self as an individual being but also as part of a particular culture (i.e., their own), inferring relevant cues/knowledge from the environment to gauge one’s cognitions and guide future behavior efficiently, and doing so while processing the information systematically without personal bias (Boksem, Ruys, & Aarts, 2011; Griffith et al., 2016).

The various concepts related to this stage include: self-awareness, social monitoring, judgement suspension, perspective taking, and application of cultural knowledge. These aforementioned concepts, as a whole, relate to a more comprehensive notion of metacognition – i.e., thinking about how one thinks (Flavell, 1976, 1979) – and has been previously linked to ICC (Earley & Ang, 2003; Lane, 2007). Earley and Ang (2003) proposed the cultural intelligence paradigm, yet another conceptualization similar to that of ICC, and later developed the Cultural Intelligence Scale (CQS) consisting of four subscales – one of which is metacognitive cultural intelligence and is closely related to ICC (Ang et al., 2007; Leung, Lee, & Chiu, 2013). Leung and colleagues (2013) found that application of appropriate cultural meta-knowledge resulted in more successful interactions between culturally-different counterparts. There are additional constructs closely tied to metacognition, ICC, and the analyze stage of Griffith et al.’s (2016) working model; however, those will be discussed in more detail in a later paragraph. Shifting now to the final (i.e., act) stage of Griffith and colleagues’ (2016) proposed framework; this stage involves behavioral and emotional regulation and ultimately integrates the previous two stages, translating the gathered input into an appropriate behavioral and emotional output (or a lack thereof).

Research has shown that individuals who can effectively regulate their emotions and behaviors when engaging with culturally-different others can, in turn, result in more effective interactions (e.g., Ang et al., 2007; Haslberger et al., 2013). Namely, tailoring appropriate behaviors and expression of emotions to the situation at hand, and inhibiting inappropriate behaviors and emotions from being displayed. Having said that, it seems not only important knowing exactly what to do in certain intercultural situations (i.e., having cultural meta-knowledge) but also knowing how to translate said knowledge into behavioral and emotional displays through metacognition such that it makes for meaningful intercultural interactions (Klafehn, Li, & Chiu, 2013; Leung et al., 2013). As previously mentioned, Griffith et al.’s (2016) conceptualization of ICC is closely related to metacognition pertaining to cultural knowledge, in that they both involve similar metacognitive processes: self-awareness, self- and social monitoring, perspective taking, suspending judgment, self-regulation, critical thinking (Ang et al., 2007).

Interestingly, many of these metacognitive skills are well-investigated, especially in the educational and cognitive psychology domains (Klafehn et al., 2013), and are even implemented into the formal curriculum of some degree programs as learning outcomes – for instance, the Psychology bachelor’s English program at the UG (n.d.) offers a course in the first year, Academic Skills, which promotes the use of and development in the aforementioned metacognitive skills. This is of great importance as the present paper will look at how the metacognitive aspect of the Academic Skills course at the UG relates to ICC and how these two work together and impact the first-year international students.