Acculturation and adjustment among international college students: The moderating role of perceived second language proficiency

Objectives: This study was aimed at examining the relationship between acculturation strategies and both psychological and socio-cultural adjustment, while concurrently assessing the moderating role of perceived second language proficiency. The premise was that proficiency in the host country's language could potentially facilitate successful acculturative outcomes. Method: We used self-report measures to collect data on a sample of 237 international students in Los Angeles. A General Linear Model was applied for data analyses. Results: Overall, integration emerged as the most adaptive acculturation strategy, whereas marginalization was identified as the least adaptive. Noteworthy, moderating effects were observed in the relationships between marginalization and life satisfaction, integration and socio-cultural adjustment, assimilation and psychological problems, as well as socio-cultural adjustment. Conclusions: Our findings lend support to the Integration Hypothesis, highlighting that adopting integration is associated with superior adaptive outcomes, also pointing out that the pattern of associations between acculturation strategies and both psychological and socio-cultural adjustment could fluctuate depending on the level of perceived second language proficiency.

Forgiveness weakens women's counter-empathy both in the stage of self-oriented and other-oriented emotional responses

Counter-empathy may have more serious negative effects on women than on men. Sixty-four female Chinese university students participated in this study. Based on the counter-empathy model in a competitive setting, we examined how forgiveness affects counter-empathy. We manipulated the degree of participants' forgiveness toward their opponents by changing the type of information they received from their opponents. We also measured counter-empathy through self-reported pleasantness caused by opponents' facial expressions (smiles or frowns). We found that forgiveness can effectively alleviate women's counter-empathy, restraining their emotional experience from being inconsistent with the offender and enhancing their empathic concern toward the offender. We preliminarily explored how forgiveness works on counter-empathy and provided insight into the use of forgiveness to maintain global women's emotional health.