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The authors investigate how patterns of heritage and mainstream cultural identification and acculturative stress may explain how Iranians living in Malaysia demonstrate enhanced creativity in creative achievements and creative problem-solving. The sample included 328 Iranian students who were recruited using a cluster sampling method. The results r...
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Context 1
... participants were asked to fix a lit candle on a wall made of cork board in such a way that the candle wax would not drip onto the table below (Figure 1). The respon- dents were given a candle, a box of matches, and a box full of thumbtacks to complete the task by either sketching the image for the solution or writing down the solution. ...
Citations
... This can foster a deeper form of integration that correlates with increased creativity. Exposure to different cultures can inspire individuals to become more adaptable (Falavarjani & Yeh, 2018;Wei et al., 2016). Studies suggest that acculturative stress can contribute positively to the development of resilience, personal growth, and self-efficacy (Mendoza Griego et al., 2023). ...
Ensuring reliable measurement instruments is crucial for psychologists and practitioners. The Acculturative Stress Scale for International Students (ASSIS) is a widely used tool for assessing acculturative stress. An analysis of data from 100 international students in Indonesia demonstrated that the ASSIS met reliability standards, with AVE values between 0.50 and 0.63 and CR values between 0.73 and 0.91. The ASSIS also satisfied the criteria for content and construct validity. Additionally, the factorial validity of the ASSIS-1 CFA model met 5 out of 6 criteria, including RMSEA < 0.08, SRMR < 0.10, and NFI, CFI, and GFI values > 0.90, while the ASSIS-2 CFA model fulfilled all 6 criteria. Consequently, it can be concluded that the ASSIS is a valid and reliable tool for international students in the Indonesian cultural context.
... Meanwhile, the factors that were found to have influenced the psychological distance of indigenous English learners were language shock, high affective filter, and ego permeability. (Falavarjani & Yeh, 2018). In this study, this is catalyzed by unfamiliar vocabulary of the target language (ST1 and ST9), differences in word formation and syntactical rules (ST6), unfamiliar linguistic elements of the target language (ST10), difference in writing systems (ST5), cultural intricacies (ST6 and ST7), and contrasting cultural beliefs (ST3 and ST10). ...
This qualitative descriptive study aimed to identify the factors that contribute to social and psychological distance of indigenous English learners, their strategies to reduce these factors, and their insights about acculturation. To this end, ten indigenous English major students at the University of Mindanao were interviewed. Through thematic analysis, findings revealed that the factors involved in the social distance of the participants were incongruence and dissimilarity between 2LL and TL group, negative attitudinal orientation towards the TL group, and cohesiveness of the 2LL group, while the psychological factors were language shock, high affective filter, and ego permeability. To address these factors, the participants implemented the following strategies: positive intergroup relationship, accommodation of the TL, perceptual distortions in favor of outgroup vitality, cultivation of positive self-image, and development of TL skills. In terms of the insights of the participants, this study observed empowerment of indigenous community, enhancement of exposure to second language input, instructional scaffolding in L2 teaching, implementation of intercultural approach, immersion to the outgroup, and alleviation of affective filter. The results evinced how the acculturation dilemmas faced by indigenous English learners prevented effective second language acquisition. From this, appropriate solutions may be formulated to ensure successful acculturation in the classroom.
... Em experiências de intercâmbio cultural, vivenciadas por meio da aculturação, a criatividade pode ser nutrida (Bultseva & Lebedeva 2019;Cho & Morris, 2015;Falavarjani & Yeh, 2018;Goclowska & Crisp, 2014). A duração da experiência internacional, por exemplo, está relacionada ao êxito criativo. ...
... Ademais, a qualidade do processo de aculturação também está relacionada ao desenvolvimento da criatividade. Estudantes iranianos que viviam na Malásia e adotaram a integração ou marginalização bicultural apresentaram melhores soluções criativas em comparação com indivíduos que adotaram uma identidade monocultural, como a assimilação ou a separação (Falavarjani & Yeh, 2018). ...
... Nesse sentido, levanta-se a hipótese de que o retorno ao país de origem e a possibilidade de reativar a identidade materna favorece o biculturalismo e, consequentemente, a criatividade. Muitos estudos empíricos sobre o desempenho criativo avaliam os multiculturais durante a experiência no exterior (por exemplo: Falavarjani & Yeh, 2018). Nesse sentido, este estudo pode ser considerado um avanço para as pesquisas por comparar a criatividade de indivíduos multiculturais que viveram com os que estão vivendo a experiência internacional. ...
A criatividade é um fenômeno multidimensional que envolve elementos individuais e ambientais. O ambiente cultural no qual o indivíduo se insere e a forma como ele se acultura podem influenciar seu desempenho criativo. Neste estudo foram investigadas criatividade, aculturação e vivência internacional de jovens multiculturais. Participaram 39 crianças e adolescentes, que já haviam vivido em pelo menos dois países, sendo 22 (56%) do gênero feminino e 17 (44%) masculino, com idade entre 6 e 15 anos (M= 11,07, DP= 2,56), além de seus responsáveis (23 mães, sete pais e nove casais). Empregou-se três instrumentos: Curta Escala de Aculturação, Teste de Criatividade Figural Infantil e questionário sobre a experiência em outras culturas. Os multiculturais obtiveram índice de criatividade superior à média, impulsionado pelos fatores de Emotividade e Aspectos Cognitivos. A maioria teve altos índices de aculturação e adotou estratégia aculturativa de integração. Foram mais criativos os participantes com altos índices de aculturação e que haviam regressado ao país de origem após a experiência no exterior. Crianças e adolescentes que haviam vivido em mais de quatro países tiveram melhor aculturação. A escola, a família, os relacionamentos sociais e o idioma foram os aspectos mais indicados como facilitadores na vivência internacional.
... Students' creativity is a kind of ability with which the individual can function flexible, unique, progressive characteristics in the supportive environment through the process of thinking to produce divergent views, endow things unique, novel meaning, and gain the results not only make themselves, but also make others satisfied. For students majoring in music, their creativity is of great value to their own creation, especially improvisation (Falavarjani and Yeh, 2018). And individual creativity is diverse and variable, and should not be limited to the innovation idea itself, but should also include the generation of innovative ideas, content, implementation, promotion and development to ensure that innovative ideas can be implemented effectively in the music creation (Torrance and Myers, 1970;Zhou and George, 2001;Rossetto and Chapple, 2019). ...
... This study has several theoretical contributions. First, the main contribution is to the literature on creativity, where an amount of research argued that creativity is influenced by personality, Big Five factors, inspiration, training and learning, collaboration, information and communication technologies and psychology (Stolaki and Economides, 2018;Huang, 2019;Lai et al., 2019;Liu et al., 2020;Hsia et al., 2021;Rahimi and Shute, 2021;Roth et al., 2021), but little attention is paid to the impact of emotions (Falavarjani and Yeh, 2018). This study is one of the cutting-edge research to investigate how students in music education can deal with creativity to influence their performance. ...
Artificial intelligence (AI) era challenges the use and functions of emotion in college students and the students’ college life is often experienced as an emotional rollercoaster, negative and positive emotion can affect the emotional outcomes, but we know very little about how students can ride it most effectively to increase their creativity. We introduce frustration tolerance as a mediator and emotion regulation as a moderator to investigate the mechanism of creativity improvement under negative emotion. Drawing on a sample of 283 students from professional music colleges or music major in normal universities, we find that negative emotion are generally associated with a lower creativity, while frustration tolerance can mediate the relationship between negative emotion and creativity, but these effects depend on the emotion regulation. Cognitive reappraisal exerts a negative effect on the relationship between negative emotion and creativity, while expressive suppression has the opposite effect. Our study contributes to the literatures on student’s emotions and creativity in music education and to the emotion regulation literature.
... A bicultural self is thought to be associated with many cognitive benefits, such as cognitive flexibility and creativity (Crisp & Turner, 2011;Lu & Yang, 2006). Yet, most evidence for this hypothesis come from biculturals who have identified themselves with two cultures when living abroad (Falavarjani & Yeh, 2018;Tadmor et al., 2012). Extending these insights to the domain of self-construals, we also focus on the role of distinct values as moderators between bicultural (vs. ...
... Conceptualizing biculturalism in terms of high identification with home and host cultures while living abroad, Tadmor et al. (2012) found that bicultural MBA students, as compared with monocultural ones, had higher self-reported and rater-assessed creativity. Falavarjani and Yeh (2018) replicated these findings among Iranian students in Malaysia both by using Duncker's Candle Problem (designing the matchbox as a candle holder) and by assessing students' self-reported creative achievements. Thus, a bicultural identification gave advantage to creativity across individualist and collectivist groups and in different contexts. ...
Creativity has traditionally been associated with high independence and low conformity. The present study investigated the moderating role of collectivist (conformity) and individualist (self-direction) values in the link between self-construals and creativity in a collectivist cultural context. We hypothesized that (1) creativity would be related to both independent and interdependent self, and (2) creativity would be higher when individual values fit with cultural norms. We also investigated whether a bicultural self, characterized by high independence coupled with high interdependence, benefits creativity more than nonbicultural combinations and whether values moderate these relations. The task-specific perceived and actual creativity scores of 201 undergraduate students in Turkey showed expected relations with self-construals and values: First, both independence and interdependence were positively related to higher creativity. Second, high interdependence benefitted creativity more when coupled with high conformity or low self-direction. Finally, people with a bicultural self were more creative, especially when they were also high on conformity. Overall, our study provides first evidence for the interplay between self-construals, values, and the larger cultural context in affording or limiting individuals’ creativity. The results were discussed in terms of the implications for cultivating creativity in educational and intercultural settings.
... Acculturative stress is also a psychosocial result of the individual's lacking familiarity with the customs and social norms of the host culture [97,98]. Hence, one of the focuses of the investigation in this study is the acculturative stress experienced by international students in the Malaysian context [99][100][101]. ...
... The measure is effective in examining international students' cross-cultural adjustment, specifically the extent to which they find their involvement in everyday social situations as difficult due to cultural differences. ASSIS is widely used in studies on international students' acculturative stress in Malaysia, and the scale is also highly reliable and valid as reported in early research [29,32,66,[101][102][103][104][105][106]. The overall score for the ASSIS is in the range of 36 to 180. ...
Background:
Universities around the world, including Malaysia, have attracted many international students from different countries. Research has reported that acculturative stress resulting from international students' attempts to adjust to the cultures of host countries is one of the most challenging issues that affects their lives in general and academic lives in particular.
Objective:
This study aims to examine the effectiveness of an educational intervention on acculturative stress among new postgraduate international students joining Malaysian public universities.
Methods:
A cluster randomized controlled trial design with Malaysian public universities as the unit of randomization will be used in this study. Public universities will be randomized in a 1:1 ratio to be either in the intervention (educational program) or control group (waiting list). Participants in the intervention group will receive 7 sessions in 9 hours delivered by an expert in psychology and the researcher. The control group will receive the intervention once the 3-month follow-up evaluation is completed.
Results:
The data will be analyzed using the generalized estimation equation with a confidence interval value of 95%; significant differences between and within groups are determined as P<.05. The results of the study underlie the effectiveness of educational program in decreasing acculturative stress of new international students and enabling them to cope with a new environment. The results of this study will contribute to previous knowledge of acculturative stress, acculturation, and adjustment of international students. Furthermore, such results are expected to play a role in raising university policy makers' awareness of their postgraduate international students' acculturative stress issues and how they can help them avoid such stress and perform well in their academic life.
Conclusions:
We expect that the intervention group will score significantly lower than the wait-list group on the immediate and 3-month postintervention evaluation of acculturative stress and achieve a higher level of adjustment. Results will have implications for international students, policy makers at universities, the Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education, and future research.
Trial registration:
Clinical Trials Registry India CTRI/2018/01/011223; http://ctri.nic.in/Clinicaltrials/showallp.php?mid1= 21978&EncHid=&userName=Muhamad%20Hanafiah%20Juni.
International registered report identifier (irrid):
PRR1-10.2196/12950.
... Moreover, these fi ndings are consistent with earlier studies. For instance, Brand et al. (2011), Falavarjani andYeh (2017) investigated negative association of stress with creativity among adolescents and Iranian immigrants, respectively. In Pakistani context, Naseem (2017) also found the similar results. ...
Th e aim of this research was to examine the impact of job stress on performance (creativity and in-role performance) of employees working in tourism sector of Pakistan. Over and above the direct eff ect of stress on performance, this study also proposes and empirically tests the moderating eff ects of social support and perceived organizational politics. Social support is proposed to have positive moderating eff ect such that higher level reduces, whereas lower level of social support enhances the adverse eff ect of stress on performance. Contrary to this, perceived organizational politics is suggested as negative moderator where a greater level of perceived organizational politics increases the negative eff ect of stress on performance. Data were collected from 322 employees working in tourism organizations of Pakistan and were analyzed using hierarchical regression analysis. Findings suggest that employees with higher level of stress perform poor on both creativity and in-role performance. Further, if employees are provided low social support at workplace, it increases the detrimental eff ect of stress on employee creativity and in-role performance. In addition to that, the fi ndings highlight that higher level of organizational politics catalyzes the detrimental eff ect of stress on performance. Findings imply that tourist fi rms can foster employee creativity and in-role performance by providing social support and facilitating workplace environment to cope with stress and organizational politics.
... However, in their meta-analysis of acculturation studies conducted in the USA and Canada, Gupta et al. (2013) report a significant negative relationship between assimilation and depression. Moreover, bicultural integration did not lead to positive outcomes for many international students ( Ramos et al. 2015Ramos et al. , 2016Mason 2017;Falavarjani and Yeh 2018a). In addition, Berry failed to recognize the fact that most acculturation research is about immigrant cultures interacting with European-American cultures in the USA, Canada, Australia, Britain, and New Zealand (e.g., Ramanathan 2015), internal migrations (e.g., Chen 2011) and migrants who move back to their country of origin (e.g., Muggeridge and Doná 2006). ...
... In addition, acculturation research does not always consider the unique experiences of international students who live temporarily in a specific country (Yeh and Inose 2003). Recent thinking on the contextual nature of acculturation asserts that the process of change and adoption is more complex than responding to a dominant culture along two dimensions (Falavarjani and Yeh 2018a;Calzada et al. 2016;Rudmin 2006). In fact, researchers contend that acculturation takes place within a broad global context. ...
... Culturally, Malaysia consists primarily of Malay, Chinese, and Indian cultures, each sustaining a distinct cultural identity, endorsing a separationist ideology (Stauth 2015). Historically, Iranians, especially international students, have a strong presence in Malaysia, shown for example, by the existence of more than 300 Persian words in Malay language (Falavarjani and Yeh 2018a); this presence in recent years has been expressed more than any time before in history through Persian language magazines and the launch of Iranian oriented Internet TV. According to recent estimations, more than 100,000 Iranians are currently living in Malaysia (Bani Kamal and Hossain 2016). ...
The authors seek to extend acculturation research, which traditionally focuses on acculturation experiences in high-status countries, such as the USA. In contrast, we investigate migration between countries with similar social statuses using a unique sample of international students. Structural equation modeling was employed to investigate a complex mediation-moderation model of acculturation. Participants were 154 students from Iran who attended various universities in Malaysia. The results indicated that (1) home cultural orientation positively predicted depression; (2) perceived social support in the host culture negatively predicted depression; (3) perceived social support from the home culture positively predicted home cultural orientation; (4) acculturative stress mediated the association between home cultural identification and depression; and (5) perceived social support, either from the home or host culture, did not buffer the acculturation-depression relationship. Moreover, the moderating role of acculturative stress indicated that immigrants are predisposed to negative health outcomes when stressful events intensify. The results provide support for an alternation model of the acculturation-depression association, in which biculturalism is not the most effective orientation for adapting to the host culture.
... It also represents an experience of immigration that is characterized by two countries' (Iran and Malaysia) that have similar status levels which include lenient visa policies, similar religious backgrounds, belonging to the developing country, having culturally heterogeneous people, and the availability of Iranian culture through local media and communities. There are also very few studies that focus on the lived experiences of Iranians in general (Arbabi, Yeh, Mahmud, & Salleh, 2016;Falavarjani, 2018;Falavarjani & Yeh, 2018). Finally, we seek to identify and define six important themes in the acculturation process that highlight possible identities, adaptability, and emergent acculturative strengths. ...
Acculturation as a lived experience refers to cultural learning and adaptation in the context of continuous cross-cultural experience through the way acculturating individuals live in the real world. Retrospective phenomenological research and self-observation analysis in cross-cultural contexts may contribute to the field in various ways including theory development, counter narratives, and innovative interventions. The current phenomenological case study focuses on emergent acculturative strengths of adaptability and possible identities: 1) cultural colonialism; 2) climate of the new culture: 3) conscious and unconscious imitation: 4) freedom from social norms; 5) paradox of language competence; and 6) concept of marginality. Implications for new approaches to acculturation theory development and
research are addressed.
... Acculturative stress is also a psychosocial result of the individual's lacking familiarity with the customs and social norms of the host culture [97,98]. Hence, one of the focuses of the investigation in this study is the acculturative stress experienced by international students in the Malaysian context [99][100][101]. ...
... The measure is effective in examining international students' cross-cultural adjustment, specifically the extent to which they find their involvement in everyday social situations as difficult due to cultural differences. ASSIS is widely used in studies on international students' acculturative stress in Malaysia, and the scale is also highly reliable and valid as reported in early research [29,32,66,[101][102][103][104][105][106]. The overall score for the ASSIS is in the range of 36 to 180. ...
BACKGROUND
Recently, various universities worldwide, including Malaysia have attracted many international students from different countries. Research has reported that acculturative stress resulting from international students’ attempts to adjust to the cultures of host countries is one of the most challenging issues affecting their life in general and academic life in particular. Therefore, the current study aims to examine the effectiveness of educational intervention on acculturative stress among new postgraduate international students joining Malaysian public universities.
OBJECTIVE
The general objective of current study is to develop, implement and evaluate the effectiveness of educational intervention on acculturative stress among new international postgraduate students joining public universities, Malaysia.
METHODS
The study will be conducted in Malaysia and employ a cluster randomized controlled trial design. Public universities will be randomized in a 1:1 ratio to be either as the intervention (educational program) or as the control group (waiting list). In this study, acculturation and acculturative stress models will be adopted to guide the development of the educational intervention. The primary outcome of the trial is the students’ acculturative stress which will be assessed using an acculturative stress scale (ASS), while the secondary outcome is represented by their adjustment and intention to drop out. Outcome data will be collected in the pre-and post-intervention period and the two-month- follow up through questionnaires administered to the international postgraduates in both the control and intervention groups.
RESULTS
The study is expected to contribute to previous studies and existing knowledge about the challenges and barriers faced by postgraduates joining higher education in Malaysia. As an experimental study, the results of the study will inform us of what stressors leading to acculturative stress are and what strategies used by international postgraduates to adapt to the new environment. Such results will provide good insights into this important topic and will be of a value for international postgraduates, academics, authorities and policy makers in higher education as well as researchers who are interested in exploring issues and challenges among postgraduates in different higher educational contexts.
CONCLUSIONS
Acculturative stress negatively affects university students’ health as well as academic achievement. Students can cope successfully with such stress, especially if they are provided with models and effective intervention programs on how to cope with such stressful challenges and issues faced by them.
CLINICALTRIAL
The trial was registered with the Clinical Trials Registry - India (CTRI) on 10/01/2018: (registration number CTRI /2018/01/011223)
