Sojourners' social support on the relationship between identity conflict and psychological outcomes.

Abstract

The present study aims to find outwhether the social support that the sojourners receivedwill moderate the relationship between identity conflict and psychological outcomes.Sixty-five Chinese sojourners participated in the study and completed a questionnaire. Results showed that there was significant interaction effect of the number of Singapore and China friends one had, closeness with China friends and actual social supportthat one received from China friends on the relationship between identity conflict and psychological outcomes. However, no significant interaction effect was found for perceived social support from family members, Singapore or China friends. Although in most cases, no significant effect of identity conflict on psychological outcomes were found based on simple slope analysis, there was a trend that the slopes went in the opposite direction of each other. For participants with high social support from home culture, the higher the identity conflict, the higher the level of psychological outcomes whereas for those with low social support from home culture, the lower the identity conflict, the higher the level of psychological outcomes. On the other hand, for participants with high social support from host culture, the lower the identity conflict, the higher the level of psychological outcomes whereas for those with low social support from host culture, the higher the identity conflict, the higher the level of psychological outcomes. It seemed like different sources of social support had different impact on the relationship between identity conflict and psychological outcomes. Implications and the directions for future research were further discussed.