ABSTRACT
Pursuing academic goals in a new country is a life-changing experience. It entails a sudden change in one’s social networks as well as changes in one’s physical and cultural environment. For many, it even requires a change in the language used in everyday life as well as for academic work. Consequently, many international students are presented with at least a moderate degree of acculturative stress due to these multiple and multi-dimensional transitions, a major part of which is coping with high epistemic uncertainty – the sense of being unsure of what is happening, what a certain thing means, what is correct or wrong, etc., when faced with many social situations. The severity of such stresses and coping responses differ across individuals, nevertheless, depending on the individuals’ personalities (e.g., Ward, Leong, and Low, 2004), prior experiences (Kealey, 1989), and cultural background (Sam, 2001). In this chapter, we discuss the implications of a particular personality and situational factor known as need for cognitive closure (NCC) in international students’ experiences.
