International Students’ Acculturation and Attitudes Toward Americans as a Function of Communication and Relational Solidarity with their Most Frequent American Contact

Abstract

The current study was guided by the theoretical frameworks of Intergroup Contact Theory (Pettigrew, 1998), Acculturation (Berry, 1997), and the Common Ingroup Identity Model (Gaertner & Dovidio, 2000). Using the PROCESS models on mediation analysis (Hayes, 2013), this cross-sectional survey tested three research hypotheses that predicted significant indirect effects of international students’ (N = 233) contact quantity and quality with U.S. American students on their affective, behavioral, and cognitive attitudes towards U.S. Americans through the sequential mediators of relational solidarity and identification with U.S. culture. Findings supported all the hypotheses. In addition, the indirect effects of contact on attitudes were significant through identification with U.S. culture as a single mediator. Furthermore, the direct effect of contact quality on behavioral attitudes was significant. Implications for scholars and practitioners, and suggestions for future research, are discussed in light of prior literature on intergroup contact, acculturation, and common ingroup identity.