Page 19 - Never Too Far Away? The Roles of Social Network Sites in Sojourners’ Adjustment
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                                A General Framework of Social Interactions and Sojourners’ Adjustment
Berry (2003, 2006) provided a summative framework to integrate the numerous earlier studies on cross-cultural transition adjustment. According to Berry (2003, 2006), there is a broad agreement that the process of dealing with cross-cultural transition begins with intercultural contacts and social interactions. Most of the time, sojourners have to deal with two cultures in contact (i.e., sojourner’s own culture and the host country culture), and have to participate to various extents in both of these cultures. In this process, sojourners evaluate the meanings of and react to these contacts and social interactions – and the subjective outcome (i.e., psychological change) of the social interactions could be that they are benign, or sources of stress or threat, or opportunities. When social interactions with individuals from the host-country are perceived to pose no problem or threat, or even be beneficial (e.g., source of support) to sojourning newcomers, adjustment is likely to follow smoothly. Transition is likely to be rather easy and behavioral shifts are likely to facilitate adjustment. On the other hand, when social interactions are perceived to be sources of stress (e.g., homesickness), these acculturative stress reactions when not effectively dealt with, could impede sojourners’ adjustment in the host country (Berry, 2003, 2006). Thus, sojourners’ perception of, and reaction to an interaction as a source of opportunities or stress (i.e., subjective outcomes) mediate the association of social interactions and adjustment.
Ward and colleagues (Ward & Kennedy, 1994; Ward et al., 2001) also presented an integrative framework on cross-cultural transition adjustment adapted from stress and coping literature and social learning-social cognition frameworks. The main assumptions of this framework are similar to Berry’s (2003) model, particularly in pinpointing intercultural contacts and social interactions as a key factor in adjustment, and the intervening roles of positive and negative subjective outcomes of these intercultural contacts and social interactions. However, the main contribution of Ward et al.’s (2001) framework is in explicating the dimensions of adjustment. According to Ward and colleagues (2001), adjustment has two conceptually distinct but interrelated domains, namely: Psychological and sociocultural adjustment. Psychological adjustment is defined as one’s optimal psychological functioning or wellbeing, and involves effective coping with stress and depression (Ward et al., 2001). In previous investigations, depression was often used as a primary indicator of psychological adjustment (Ward et al., 2001; Zhang & Goodson, 2011). Sociocultural adjustment is defined as one’s “ability to fit in, to acquire culturally appropriate skills, and to negotiate interactive aspects of the
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