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American Identity in Study Abroad Students: Contrasts, Changes, Correlates

People who encounter a foreign culture face many challenges in the process of adjusting and adapting to it. For those who remain in contact with that culture over time, such as study abroad students, the adjustment demands may occur on many different levels. Ward and her colleagues (Ward, 2001; Ward, Bochner, & Furnham, 2001) postulate an ABC model of acculturation tapping the affective, behavioral, and cognitive levels. This article focuses on the cognitive level, particularly the students’ social identification as American. An important aspect of study abroad students’ social identification is rooted in how they define themselves with regard to their sense of belonging to and preference for the country from which they embark on their study abroad. National identity (in the case of this study, American identity) has implications both for student well-being and their potential ability to adjust to a foreign culture (Phinney & Ong, 2007). The place of American identity within the range of outcomes of or precursors to intercultural exposure has yet to be clarified. Employing a new measure of this concept, we contrast the level, configuration, and change of American identity in study abroad students compared to those students who remained at home to clarify how this specific form of social identification fits within the broader nomological net of concepts that impact both college student development and study abroad.