Unravelling Physiology in Intergroup Discussions: Exploring Stress Responses among Dutch and International Students
Summary
The ever-increasing presence of multicultural societies requires us to understand the processes
that occur when different groups interact. It is especially important to address the changes
within the higher education setting, as the population of international students is increasing
rapidly. With this empirical study of intergroup communication between Dutch and
international students, we aimed to investigate how factors such as group status and perceived
intergroup threat relate to psychological and physiological stress responses. The study was
designed in the form of framed intergroup discussion between two participants belonging to
different status groups (Dutch students as the high-status group versus international students
as the low-status group), with the topic proposing benefit of the low-status group at the
expense of high-status group. Self-report anxiety and heart rate measures were taken as
indicators of stress. Additionally perceived intergroup threat was assessed. We found no
significant differences between the status groups on either of the stress response measures,
although the heart rate increased significantly on the overall sample during the discussion
compared to baseline. However, we were not able to conclude whether this was indeed an
indication of stress. Our key finding was that low-status group members scored significantly
higher on perceived intergroup threat, despite the discussion putting them in a better position.
This suggests that intergroup threat might be more influenced by the general experiences,
which raises concerns regarding psychological safety of international students and calls for
further investigation into the reasons behind our findings.
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