What stress college students out? A comparison between Easterners and Westerners.

Abstract

In the present study, we aimed at examining whether American and Taiwanese college students stressed out from different stressors. We hypothesized Taiwanese stressed more from interpersonal relationships, European Americans more from personal performances and problems, and Asian Americans were in-between. Participants were 74 college students from a University at west coast of the United States, inclusion of 37 European Americans (EA), 37 East Asian Americans (e.g., Chinese, Japanese, and Korean; AA), and 100 local students from a University at Taiwan (TW). The results were not consistent with our expectation generated from Markus & Kitayama’s (1991, 2010). Easterners as AA, however, did not behave in between Westerners and local Easterners. Reasons may be that AAs often endured culture shock, which we saw in many participants’ report, and made them most stressful in many fields. Although differences in stressors revealed, students from different ethnic groups stressed out of academic performance. Since Taiwan is globalizing and AA are increasing in America, further research examining more detailed culture factors on mental health is needed.