Flexible Cultural Patterns: How International Students Navigate Daily Multicultural Social Worlds [Seed Funding]
International students face unique challenges navigating multiple cultural contexts, impacting their mental health. This project employs innovative experience sampling methods to investigate daily fluctuations in cultural patterns and their relationship with mental health outcomes.
51% of students experience mental health issues, including loneliness and pressure to achieve. Yet, little is known about the effect of navigating different cultural demands on young adults’ mental health. Dr. Jessie Hillekens and colleagues argue that cultural orientations develop during daily social interactions and differ from moment to moment. Therefore, it is their aim to understand how multicultural individuals successfully navigate different cultural demands in daily life.
This project employs longitudinal experience sampling methods with 100 international students to explore daily cultural variability and its impact on mental health. The study serves as a foundation for future research efforts, enabling the application of similar techniques to other populations, such as multicultural adolescents and young adults. Additionally, it aims to shed light on the relationship between cultural variability and mental health outcomes, paving the way for interventions to improve international student’s well-being.
Team Composition
- Jessie Hillekens (DP) conducts research drawing from developmental, social, and cultural psychology. She aims to understand human development within its sociocultural contexts with a specific emphasis on diversity and inclusion in education. Her research strives to ensure inclusivity and support for all youth, irrespective of cultural, familial, or individual differences.
- Marieke van Egmond (Tranzo) works on topics of diversity and inclusion and their relationship with health and wellbeing. She is interested in the roles of identity and social belonging for the mental health and health behavior of adolescents and adults in real-world settings as well as cultural differences in these processes.
- Michael Bender’s (SP) research delves into the connections between personality motivation, autobiographical memory, and cross-cultural psychology, exploring questions like why individuals articulate their life experiences differently across cultures.
Cross-cutting themes
The Herbert Simon Research Institute for Health, Well-being, and Adaptiveness is a research center devoted to carrying out excellent, state of the art research in order to contribute to healthy and resilient people. We have selected three themes, which involve the collaboration between various Departments and address actual themes in need of both fundamental and applied research.