پنج عامل بزرگ شخصیتی و انتقال فرهنگی در خوداثربخشی بین فرهنگی اجتماعی دانش آموزان ویتنامی در استرالیا

The aim of this study was to test an integrative model of intercultural social self-efficacy using a sample of 124 Vietnamese migrant university students in Australia. According to the model, Asians’ intercultural social self-efficacy in western societies would be predicted by three of the five Big Five personality factors (higher levels of extraversion and openness, and a lower level of neuroticism), three cultural relocation variables (a weaker ethnic identification, a higher level of fluency in the host language, and a longer period of residence in the host country), and their co-ethnic social self-efficacy. As well, the model tested if co-ethnic social self-efficacy would mediate the effects of the personality variables on intercultural social self-efficacy. Subsequent path analysis results partially supported the model tested. There were significant total effects of co-ethnic social self-efficacy, weak Vietnamese ethnic identification, English fluency, extraversion, and openness on intercultural social self-efficacy. The effect of extraversion was mediated by co-ethnic social self-efficacy. The results highlight the relevance of not only cultural relocation factors, but also the possession of relatively stable personal resources (in the form of characteristic social efficacy, extraversion, and openness), to acculturating Asians’ social efficacy in interacting with host nationals. Methodological limitations of the present study and implications of the findings for both the sociocultural adjustment literature and training for migrant students are discussed.

The demands of cultural relocation on refugees, migrants, expatriate workers, and internaional students are well-documented (Furnham & Bochner, 1986; Nesdale, Rooney, & Smith, 1997; Stening, 1979; Taft, 1977), and can be classified into the broad categories of psychological and sociocultural adjustments (Ward & Chang, 1997). The present paper is focussed on the joint contributions of personality and cultural relocation factors in intercultural social self-efficacy, an important dimension of sociocultural adjustment, among migrant students from a socially disadvantaged ethnic community background. Migrant students from a minority racial group may find social interactions to be particularly challenging owing to their non-English speaking background (NESB), their newcomer immigrant status, in some cases the prejudice of the people around them, and possibly their personality dispositions (Smither & Rodriguez-Giegling, 1982; Ward, 1996). However, effective interactions with peers, academic faculty members, and general staff members constitute an important determinant of tertiary students’ mastery of academic work and their social integration and well-being in the educational setting (Bandura, Barbaranelli, Caprara, & Pastorelli, 1996; Tinto, 1990). Recent Australian research suggests that overseas-born NESB university students are more likely to report social difficulties in both academic and everyday social encounters (Barker, Child, Gallois, Jones, & Callan, 1991; Edmond, 1996; Pe-Pua, 1994), and a lower level of social self-efficacy (Fan & Mak, 1998), than the Australia-born. Fan and Mak (1998) have adapted Bandura's (1977) concept of self-efficacy to investigate migrant students’ belief that they can successfully perform or complete target behaviors in academic or everyday situations involving social interactions. The relevant self-efficacy expectancy enables individuals to produce the desired outcome through their own actions. It is a powerful factor in behavior change because it determines the initial decision to perform a behavior, the effort spent, and persistence in the face of difficulties (Bandura's (1977), Jerusalem & Schwarzer (1986) and Bandura (1997)). Moreover, self-efficacy has been found to buffer the experience of stress; those with low self-efficacy are at risk for a dramatic increase in threat and loss appraisals, and are more likely to report acculturative stress (Jerusalem & Schwarzer, 1992; Zheng & Berry, 1991). Bandura (1977) has pointed out that people's belief in their own ability can have more to do with their performance in a given situation than their actual ability to perform. Perceptions of social self-efficacy in situations such as cross-cultural encounters will thus have an effect not only on individuals’ social performance, but also on their decisions as to whether to become involved in particular types of social events. According to Bandura's (1977), Jerusalem & Schwarzer (1986) and Bandura (1997), there are four sources of self-efficacy that can be targeted for intervention to achieve positive changes. They are mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, social persuasion, and physiological arousal. Translated into the domain of social self-efficacy in a cross-cultural context, migrants and sojourners can seek to increase this aspect of self-efficacy through mastering intercultural social interactions, watching similar models’ successful social performance, obtaining encouragement and positive feedback for their own performance, and managing to focus on action instead of being frozen by emotional arousal in intercultural situations. We feel that Bandura's conceptual framework on self-efficacy and its implications for achieving positive behavioral changes would support the utility of assessing intercultural social self-efficacy as a useful indicator of sociocultural adjustment. Fan and Mak's (1998) research has further revealed considerable variation in migrant students’ social self-efficacy in interacting with local Australians. Yet, it is unclear if low social self-efficacy scores among students from a culturally different background are primarily the manifestation of a relatively stable disposition of being diffident in social encounters (regardless of whether they involve co-ethnics or host nationals), or largely represent social difficulties due to cultural relocation, or both. In the case of the first scenario, the disposition may reflect a general lack of social efficacy beliefs, which may in turn be determined by some basic personality factors. The present study began with the proposal that individual migrants’ superordinate personality dimensions (such as the comprehensive and parsimonious Big Five personality framework provided by Costa and McCrae (1985)) and their cultural relocation situation (including ethnic versus host identification, fluency in the host language, and length of residence in the host country), may both contribute to the migrants’ intercultural social efficacy. To date, there has been no other research in the field of cross-cultural adaptation on either the predictors of migrants’ intercultural social self-efficacy, or the utility of applying the otherwise widely researched Big Five personality factors to understanding variation in sociocultural adjustment. 1.1. Big Five personality factors and sociocultural adjustment Among the Big Five personality factors, namely, neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness (Costa and McCrae, 1985), extraversion is the only variable that has been used fairly extensively by various researchers to attempt to predict cross-cultural adaptation (Ward, 1996). Ward's review suggests that while there is no conclusive evidence suggesting that the more extraverted will adapt more easily to a new society, extraversion among Asia-born students studying in western countries was consistently related to fewer social difficulties (e.g., Searle & Ward, 1990; Ward & Kennedy, 1993b). Ward and her associates (Searle & Ward, 1990; Ward, 1996; Ward & Chang, 1997) explained this pattern of findings in terms of the notion of “cultural fit”. That is, individuals whose personality traits resemble more closely the social norms of the host culture will adapt more easily to the new culture. Given that western societies tend to value behaviors consistent with extraversion (Searle & Ward, 1990), migrants and sojourners who demonstrate extraversion behaviors in a western host society can be expected to fit in more easily. Along the lines of the notion of cultural fit, we surmise that openness is another behavioral characteristic valued in western societies, and that greater openness among Asian migrants may be predictive of more successful sociocultural adaptation in western countries. Compared to those born in western societies, the Asia-born are raised in a relatively collectivistic culture that values a more subtle and implicit, and higher-context communication style (Gudykunst & Ting-Toomey, 1988). Kim (1988) has suggested that the characteristics of open-mindedness, tolerance for ambiguity, gregariousness, and extraversion could facilitate communication competence. Also related to openness is the finding by Cui and Awa (1992) that personality flexibility is a major factor in intercultural effectiveness. In contrast, individuals high on dispositional neuroticism or trait anxiety may find the challenges of intercultural social interactions to be anxiety-provoking and opt for the coping response of social avoidance instead of honing their skills in sociocultural adjustment. Chataway and Berry (1993) and Furukawa and Shibayama (1994) found that neuroticism was a significant predictor of maladjustment in Japanese students studying in the United States. Chataway and Berry (1989) also found that higher levels of neuroticism were associated with greater social avoidance among Chinese sojourners in Canada. Putting aside the benefits from cultural fit, personality dispositions may be considered enduring individual resources (or in some cases, liabilities) important for helping (or sometimes making it difficult for) migrants and sojourners cope with the wide-ranging challenges of cross-cultural adaptation (Chataway & Berry, 1989; Pedersen, 1995; Zheng & Berry, 1991). Smither and Rodriguez-Giegling (1982) found that Vietnamese refugees in Americans high on the personality characteristics of likeability (which can result from the individuals’ expression of agreeableness) and conscientiousness were more acculturated to the host country, and that refugees’ personality factors were more useful than demographic background in predicting their acculturation. However, there is a lack of research investigating the direct relationships between agreeableness and conscientiousness on the one hand, and social efficacy and skills in a cross-cultural context on the other. The present study tested the hypotheses that higher intercultural social self-efficacy among Vietnamese Australians would be predicted by greater extraversion and openness (along the lines of the notion of cultural fit), and lower neuroticism (on the basis of previous research). The research also provided an opportunity to explore the possible contributions of agreeableness and conscientiousness to intercultural social self-efficacy. 1.2. Cultural relocation and sociocultural adjustment Recent research suggests that sociocultural adjustment is influenced by various cross-cultural variables, such as amount of contact with host nationals, length of residence in a new culture, cultural identity, cultural distance, and host language ability (Ward, 1996; Ward & Kennedy, 1993a; Ward & Kennedy, 1993b), more so than by extraversion (see Ward & Chang, 1997). We will refer to this constellation of variables as cultural relocation factors. The pattern of results obtained by Ward and her associates is consistent with applying the work by Argyle and his associates (Argyle, 1969; Trower, Bryant, & Argyle, 1978) on learning of social skills to the domain of acculturation. They have highlighted the significance of experience and the effectiveness of training, modelling, and social interaction in social skills acquisition. Furnham and Bochner (1986) have further indicated that with increased time in the host country, individuals tend to be more interested in interacting with and befriending people from the host culture, and have more opportunities for acquiring its characteristic social skills. Among migrants from a linguistic and cultural background very different from that of the host society, sociocultural adjustment demands are substantial. However, having a strong host identification, possessing greater fluency in the host language, and being in the host country for a longer period of time, can lead to both increased opportunities for contact with host nationals and better sociocultural adjustment. Various recent studies (Ward & Searle, 1991; Ward & Kennedy, 1993b; Ward & Kennedy, 1994) have shown that strong host identification was associated with fewer intercultural social difficulties. Rotheram-Borus and Phinney's (1990) study found that black and Mexican–American children with a strong ethnic identification tended to report less positive attitudes towards cross-cultural contact, report greater ethnic pride, engage in less cross-ethnic contact out of the educational setting, and speak English less, than those with weaker ethnic identification. Anderson's (1994) review of the cross-cultural adaptation literature highlights the importance of host language competence in social adjustment. Not surprisingly, host language fluency was found to be associated with increased interaction with members of the host culture (Gullahorn & Gullahorn, 1966) and reduced sociocultural adjustment problems (Sano, 1990; Ward & Kennedy, 1993a). Longer settlement in the host country allows newcomers to acquire the social skills and knowledge of the new culture and thus reduce feelings of incompetence felt in the initial stage of cross-cultural contacts (Moghaddam, Taylor, & Wright, 1993). A longer period of residence in the host society was generally found to be associated with more participation in the new country and higher sociocultural competence (Daly & Carpenter, 1985; Ranieri, Klimidis, & Rosenthal, 1994; Ward & Kennedy, 1994; Yum, 1988). Ward (1996) presented evidence from her longitudinal investigations on sojourner adjustment that showed that sociocultural difficulties peaked during the initial stages of transition, and dropped as the period of residence increased. 1.3. Viet Nam-born in Australia Issues of social acceptance and integration are of particular concern to Vietnamese migrants in Australia. According to Coughlan (1997), by early 1997 the Viet Nam-born were the fifth largest overseas-born birthplace group in Australia, comprising about 155,000 individuals, most of whom had arrived after the fall of the South Viet Nam government in 1975 as refugees to Australia. Until 1991, almost 80% of the arrivals were from refugee camps (Viviani, Coughlan, & Rowlands, 1993), and many had begun their lives in Australia in migrant hostels (Bureau of Immigration and Population Research, 1994). Nguyen and Ho (1995) observed that the Vietnamese community sees itself as possessing all the characteristics of a refugee rather than an immigrant community. Moreover, the 1991 Australian census data clearly demonstrated that the Viet Nam-born represented a socially disadvantaged group in terms of their remarkably low levels of proficiency in spoken English and income, relatively poor educational attainment, high concentration in blue-collar occupations among the employed, and a high level of unemployment of around 30% (Bureau of Immigration and Population Research, 1994). Vietnamese Australians are also a frequent target of racial prejudice in Australia. The increased presence of Asian immigrants, including the Vietnamese and other Indo-Chinese refugees, has sparked the so-called Asian immigration debate since 1980 (Ip, Kawakami, Duivenvoorden, & Tye, 1992). In a 1989, national survey, one-third of the respondents expressed negative feelings towards the Vietnamese while under 9% felt similarly towards either the Italians or the Greeks (Holton, 1990). In a more recent study conducted by Ip et al., over half of the Australian adults surveyed felt that Vietnamese Australians did not integrate with the wider Australian society. Nguyen and Ho (1995), however, asserted that Vietnamese in Australia are generally moving towards becoming “bicultural”. Many have adapted to the economic, social, and cultural conditions of life in Australia and want to be part of the host society, while at the same time maintaining to some extent their original culture and cultural identity. Like other immigrant groups, the Vietnamese community pins its hope for accelerated social mobility on the academic and subsequent occupational success of its members who do well in high schools or have gained places in universities. In the 1991 census, the Viet Nam-born were found to have a relatively high level of school retention rate beyond 17 years (Bureau of Immigration and Population Research, 1994). Yet there has been no research on the factors in social efficacy among an essentially bilingual and bicultural population of Vietnamese Australian students. This is despite the fact that social efficacy is an important aspect of sociocultural adaptation that can affect their academic performance, well-being, and career development. 1.4. The present study Based on the literature reviewed above, we formulated and tested an individual differences model of sociocultural adjustment using a sample of Vietnamese Australian university students. While recognising the importance of cultural relocation factors in enhancing immigrants’ intercultural social skills, we feel that some researchers (e.g., Bochner, 1994) may have been unduly dismissive of the possible role of the migrants’ characteristic social efficacy and their relatively stable personality structure (cf. Kim, 1988). The recently advanced notions of the superordinate Big Five personality factors and cultural fit could provide a useful framework for investigating the contributions of personality, in conjunction with the more well-established cultural relocation variables, to variation in sociocultural adjustment. We proposed that a useful framework for predicting Asian migrants’ intercultural social self-efficacy in western societies would include (a) the Big Five superordinate personality dimensions (especially lower neuroticism, greater extraversion, and greater openness), (b) the cultural relocation variables of lower ethnic identification, greater fluency in English, and a longer period of residence in the host country, and (c) the migrants’ co-ethnic social self-efficacy. Moreover, we tested if the effects of the personality factors on intercultural social self-efficacy were mediated by the migrants’ co-ethnic social self-efficacy. Using Baron and Kenny's (1986) criteria, co-ethnic social self-efficacy would qualify as a mediator should three conditions be fulfilled: (a) variation in the personality variable would significantly account for variation in co-ethnic social self-efficacy, (b) variation in co-ethnic social self-efficacy would significantly account for variation in intercultural social self-efficacy, and (c) with the above two paths controlled, a previously significant relation between the personality variable and intercultural social self-efficacy would no longer be significant.

The present study provided general support for the proposed integrative model of intercultural social self-efficacy using a sample of Vietnamese Australian migrant students. The findings highlight the relevance of both cultural relocation factors and the possession of relatively enduring personal resources (in the form of customary social efficacy and personality characteristics that enhance their cultural fit), to individuals’ social confidence in interacting with host nationals. There are practical implications for enhancing migrants’ proficiency in English, and their social efficacy and skills mastery while respecting their ethnic identification and individual variations in social presentation styles. Future research can test the model with more refined measures, behavioral outcome measures, and using larger and alternative samples, such as different ethnic groups, samples with greater percentages of more recent arrivals, migrants who arrive as adults, other acculturating groups, and other host societies. Combined with cultural relocation variables, the five-factor personality approach may prove to provide a useful approach to understanding the substantial variation in both psychological and sociocultural adjustment as individuals cross-cultural boundaries.