Introduction
Student migration represents a unique form of temporary mobility characterized by deep immersion in a new educational and cultural environment. Despite the temporary nature of their stay, international students, like other migrants, face numerous adaptation challenges that heighten the risk of acculturative stress. Research indicates that high levels of such stress can diminish academic satisfaction and even lead to premature withdrawal from study programs. A particularly vulnerable aspect of this process is the affective component, which manifests in anxiety, frustration, social withdrawal, and reduced subjective well-being (Gebregergis, 2018). Culture shock, as a primary affective response to a new cultural environment, remains a critical focus of scientific inquiry, underscoring the importance of successful emotional adaptation for academic and intercultural functioning.
While extensive research exists on international student adaptation, there remains a gap in studies systematically examining individual differences in coping with the affective dimensions of acculturative stress. This article argues that overcoming culture shock depends significantly on an individual’s internal regulatory resources. Among these, emotional intelligence (EI) — the ability to perceive, understand, and regulate emotions (Salovey, Mayer, 1997) — plays a crucial role. However, while EI facilitates emotional awareness, it does not fully account for how individuals process these emotions or evaluate their influence on behavior.
In this context, metacognitive awareness emerges as a vital complement to emotional intelligence. Defined as the ability to observe, interpret, and reassess one’s own cognitive processes (Schraw, Dennison, 1994), metacognition can also be applied to emotional experiences. This higher-order awareness enables individuals not only to experience emotions but also to reflect on their role in stress formation, identify maladaptive responses, and make more constructive decisions. Thus, metacognition enhances emotional regulation by providing a framework for deliberate self-reflection and adaptive coping.
This study aims to theoretically justify the combined role of emotional intelligence and metacognitive awareness as key personal resources facilitating successful emotional adaptation among international students. By proposing a typology of adaptation profiles based on varying levels of these abilities, the research seeks to outline potential strategies for navigating cultural transitions. Ultimately, integrating metacognition with emotional intelligence offers a more comprehensive approach to mitigating culture shock in a sociocultural adaptation process.
Culture shock for international students
Acculturation describes the process of an individual’s adaptation to a new cultural environment and leads to changes in lifestyle, values, and sociocultural practices negotiation. Berry's well known foundational bidimensional acculturation model conceptualizes this process through two critical dimensions: the degree to which individuals adopt the host culture (e.g., language acquisition, social norms) and the extent to which they retain their home culture (e.g., traditions, values). This framework gives rise to four distinct acculturation strategies that significantly influence migrant well-being: Integration, characterized by strong engagement with both cultures, emerges as the most psychologically beneficial approach, while marginalization, involving disconnection from both cultural systems (Ward, 2024), correlates with the poorest mental health outcomes (Choy et al., 2021). Between these extremes, assimilation (prioritizing host culture over home culture) and separation (maintaining home culture while rejecting host culture) present intermediate challenges, each carrying unique stressors and adaptive consequences.
Acculturation stress is thus associated with this process, which is understood as a reaction to encountering a new unfamiliar environment and insufficient resources for adaptation to the cultural environment and lifestyle. In addition to sociocultural characteristics, acculturation stress often includes a strong emotional component, which is especially significant for young people (Lerias et al., 2025). Research confirms that it is the emotional component — most often anxiety and loneliness — that predicts unsuccessful adaptation (Zhou et al., 2008).
International students represent a specific category of temporary migrants whose adaptation is associated with a unique combination of factors (Zhou et al., 2008; Gebregergis, 2018; Mulyadi et al., 2024): limited duration of stay, the need to adapt in an accelerated time frame, high academic workload, isolation from the familiar social environment and a rigid, often culturally specific unfamiliar structure of educational requirements. This makes them particularly vulnerable to acculturative stress, the emotional aspect of which may manifest itself more acutely than the cognitive or behavioral aspects.
This brings to the fore the issue of culture shock in international students. Culture shock, as a form of acculturation stress, is not simply discomfort associated with cultural differences, but a pronounced crisis (Ward, Bochner, Furnham, 2001). It includes symptoms such as loss of orientation, a sense of vulnerability, anxiety, and a sense of social inefficiency. The culture shock model (Black, Mendenhall, 1991) describes this process as four stages: «Honeymoon» as a positive perception of the new environment; «Negotiations» as anxiety, irritation, and cultural frustration; «Adaptation» as the formation of stable behavioral patterns; «Integration» as participation in the life of the host society while maintaining cultural identity.
The emotional phase of «negotiations» is the most intense stage of culture shock. It can be assumed that it is most acute in students who experience a deficit of social and cognitive resources. Thus, studies confirm that low levels of self-efficacy and lack of confidence in their adaptive abilities correlate with more pronounced symptoms of anxiety and emotional distress at this stage (Almukdad, Karadag, 2024). In the acculturation process, migrants develop emotional reactions oriented either toward «themselves» or toward «others» (Ward, 2024). And the presence of mindfulness at this stage — that is, understanding one’s own experiences and regulating them — can help overcome stress and move on to more effective adaptation strategies.
Indeed, researchers emphasize that culture shock does not always lead to unsuccessful adaptation. Individual differences play a decisive role in how this crisis plays out: some students demonstrate emotional stability and adapt quickly, while others experience prolonged and severe stress. Particularly important are stress-reducing traits (e.g., flexibility and emotional stability), which allow one to perceive the situation as less threatening, as well as social-perceptual traits (openness to experience, initiative), which promote the perception of the new culture as a constructive challenge and accelerate cultural learning (van der Zee & van Oudenhoven, 2013).
Thus, culture shock in international students can be considered as a conditionally initial, emotionally charged phase of acculturation stress. Emotional reactions to a new cultural environment are not universal: they are controlled by the acculturation strategy, the type of cultural distance and the characteristics of the educational context (Zhou et al., 2008; Ward, 2024). But international students often lack the opportunity to distance themselves from the environment, like tourists or labor migrants: they are «locked» in the structure of academic expectations. This makes their emotional reactions not only intense, but also difficult to process. That is, the specificity of this group of temporary migrants suggests increased demands on emotional self-regulation.
Research indicates that international students like any other migrant commonly face significant psychological challenges, including homesickness, culture shock, and discrimination, all of which contribute to heightened acculturative stress and increased risk of depression (Gebregergis, 2018; Choy et al., 2021). These stressors stem from the need to rapidly adapt to unfamiliar languages, cultural norms, and social expectations, often leading to emotional distress, identity confusion, social isolation, and academic difficulties. Additionally, language barriers, lack of belonging, and social intimidation further hinder integration, making it crucial to address these issues to support students’ well-being and academic success (de Souza, Murgo, de Oliveira Barros, 2021).
In this context, emotional intelligence (EI) serves as a vital resource, helping students navigate these challenges by enhancing their ability to recognize, understand, and regulate those emotions (Salovey, Mayer, 1997) experiencing in their adaptation process. However, EI alone is insufficient, as cultural variations in emotional expression can create what this paper calls — an «emotional language barrier», — where even emotionally intelligent individuals may misread signals due to unfamiliar norms. This is where metacognition—the ability to reflect on and regulate one’s thought processes (Iacolino et al., 2023) — becomes essential. Metacognitive awareness allows students to critically evaluate their emotional reactions, question initial assumptions, and consider cultural context before responding. By combining EI’s emotional regulation with metacognition reflective reasoning, students can more effectively manage stress, adapt behaviors, and reframe negative experiences, ultimately fostering resilience and smoother cultural adjustment.
Thus, the integration of EI and metacognition provides a comprehensive framework for international students to overcome acculturative stress. While EI equips them with emotional adaptability, metacognition ensures they consciously process and adapt to cultural nuances, turning challenges into opportunities for growth and cross-cultural competence.
Emotional intelligence as a resource for overcoming cultural shock
Emotional intelligence (EI) is defined as the ability to understand, manage, and perceive emotions — both one’s own and those of others (Haag, Bellinghausen, Poirier, 2025). The concept of EI developed from Gardner's ideas about intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligence to the four-factor model of Salovey and Mayer: perceiving, using, understanding, and managing emotions (Salovey, Mayer, 1997).
Empirical studies show that high EI is associated with more effective coping with emotional difficulties in adaptation, including anxiety, culture shock, and stress reactions (Anfimova, 2019; Khan et al., 2020; Putra et al., 2022). High EI facilitates emotional recovery and helps reduce the level of stress arising from cultural differences (Polancos et al., 2025; Wang, Chiu, 2024). In addition, EI facilitates the development of social skills, understanding of cultural cues, and the formation of social connections (Deng, Marshall, Imada, 2025). In addition, a number of studies demonstrate that EI not only directly influences the mitigation of the effects of culture shock, but also indirectly through mediators such as resilience and cross-cultural competence (Putra et al., 2022; Kai Liao et al., 2021).
A special contribution to the research on the role of EI in acculturation is made by the model of Schmitz and Schmitz (2012), which interprets EI through three interrelated components: emotional awareness, emotional clarity, and the ability to emotional reparation. This model shows empirically that high emotional clarity and developed reparation skills are associated with a preference for the integration strategy in acculturation, whereas high awareness with a deficit in emotion regulation can lead to a choice of separation or assimilation. Thus, strategies associated with a preference for one culture are associated with emotional instability. International students, as short-term migrants, often choose separation (Ward, Bochner, Furnham, 2001). This, combined with low emotional clarity, can increase acculturation stress.
However, the results on the role of EI are not always unambiguous. Research shows that the impact of EI on adaptation may vary depending on the context (Polancos et al., 2025; Schmitz, Schmitz, 2012). In addition, EI may be culturally specific: the interpretation of emotions and the ways of expressing them depend on cultural norms, which limits the universality of the application of EI skills in intercultural communication (Pathak, Muralidharan, 2020). In addition, there is a risk of overestimating the importance of emotional intelligence in isolation from other key factors. For example, research data (Deng, Marshall, Imada, 2025) indicate that cognitive and metacognitive mechanisms, including cultural intelligence and conscious reflection on emotional reactions, play a critical role in successful adaptation.
Thus, for international students, EI plays a crucial role in navigating culture shock, as it helps them interpret emotional cues in unfamiliar cultural contexts. However, a fundamental challenge in cross-cultural interactions is the «emotional language barrier» — where individuals may misread emotions due to differing cultural expressions of affect. EI aids in recognizing familiar emotional patterns, yet cultural differences can obscure these signals, leading to misunderstandings (Li et al., 2025). This reveals a limitation of EI: while it helps individuals identify and manage emotions, it does not automatically account for cultural variations in emotional expression.
This highlights metacognition's fundamental importance. Defined as the higher-order cognitive process that monitors, evaluates, and regulates thought processes (Iacolino et al., 2023), metacognition enhances emotional intelligence by prompting students to critically assess their initial interpretations, weigh cultural context, and modify their reactions. For example, if a student misreads a host-national’s neutral facial expression as disapproval, metacognitive reflection allows them to reconsider — perhaps the behavior is culturally typical rather than a personal slight. By fostering self-awareness and cognitive flexibility, metacognition helps learners navigate the implicit emotional norms of a foreign culture, thereby improving adaptive strategies.
The Role of Metacognitive Awareness in Overcoming Culture Shock
Classical concepts of metacognition focused primarily on the cognitive sphere, modern research, however, expands the scope of metacognition to include affective processes. Thus, Efklides (2006) introduces the concept of «metaexperiences» — subjective emotional states that accompany the comprehension of the quality of one’s own thinking. In turn, the self-regulatory executive function model (Wells, Matthews, 1996) emphasizes that metacognitions also include beliefs about the significance of emotions, determining how a person interprets and regulates emotional states. This theoretical expansion makes metacognition particularly relevant in the context of acculturation and overcoming culture shock.
Existing research suggesting metacognitive processes as culturally shaped can imply its direct implications for international students' adaptation. These findings underscore that effective cultural adaptation involves not just applying universal metacognitive skills, but understanding and navigating culturally-specific approaches to self-monitoring and behavioral adjustment (van der Plas et al., 2022). Furthermore, this together with the international students' successful management of intercultural conflicts and negative emotions using metacognition (Bartel-Radic, Cucchi, 2025) highlights three key insights: (1) cultural background can provide unique metacognitive strengths — students from cultures emphasizing reflective processing may excel at error correction but need to adapt to different communication norms (van der Plas et al., 2022); (2) communication styles themselves reflect cultural metacognitive differences, with some cultures valuing precision while others prioritize contextual understanding; and (3) successful cultural competence and adaptation requires students to both leverage their inherent metacognitive strengths an develop new strategies aligned with their host culture's standards and expectations (Bartel-Radic, Cucchi, 2025; Proust, Fortier, 2018).
The literature identifies several types of metacognitions that are highly significant for intercultural adaptation. These include, first of all, monitoring and reappraisal, which involve tracking one’s own thoughts, emotions, and behavior, as well as the willingness to revise them in response to discrepancies between expectations and reality. Cognitive flexibility, which manifests itself as a willingness to change established cognitive and behavioral patterns when faced with a new cultural reality, has positive effects (van der Plas et al., 2022).
So, a special place in this series is occupied by metacognitive awareness, which is understood as the ability to notice and regulate one’s own cognitive and emotional reactions in the moment, without switching to automatic action (Schraw, Dennison, 1994). This ability provides a person with an internal distance between the stimulus and the reaction and thus creates conditions for a meaningful choice of behavior. As noted in scientific papers (Bartel-Radic, Cucchi, 2025), it is metacognitive strategies such as reflection, planning, and conscious behavioral adjustment that form the basis for developing intercultural competence. The effectiveness of metacognitive awareness can also be manifested in the ability to mitigate the severity of negative emotions that arise during culture shock. Thus, its positive role in the development of stress management strategies in general was discovered (Agnihotri, Ijjina, 2024).
However, the role of metacognitive awareness in overcoming culture shock — as the most intense and emotionally intense form of acculturation stress — remains understudied. It has only been established that self-regulation based on metacognitions helps to overcome loneliness in a new cultural environment (Syawaludin, Suprapto, Sutanto, 2020).
In summary, metacognitive awareness plays a pivotal role in how international students navigate acculturative stress. It involves two key processes: first, the ability to monitor and regulate one's cognitive responses (Schraw, Dennison, 1994; Efklides, 2006), and second, the capacity to create a «psychological pause» between emotional triggers and behavioral reactions (Heyes et al., 2020). This dual function distinguishes it from emotional intelligence – while EI helps identify emotions, metacognition enables deeper understanding of their origins and impacts.
Thus, the practical value becomes clear in stressful intercultural situations. When an international student feels anxious in social settings, for example, metacognitive awareness may allow them to: (1) recognize the anxiety as a natural response to unfamiliarity rather than personal failure, (2) assess whether this emotional response is helpful or limiting, and (3) choose constructive responses like seeking clarification or observing cultural norms. This reflective process transforms potentially paralyzing stress into opportunities for growth and learning. This process is helped by EI, allowing the international student to understand the experience of anxiety in unfamiliar cultural situations — as EI helps to noticing physical symptoms (e.g., racing heart, sweating), emotional intelligence also enables accurate emotion recognition, distinguishing nervousness from physical illness. International students can therefore cognitively link anxiety to specific triggers like fear of mispronunciation. Crucially, EI with metacognition help students contextualize these reactions as normal adaptation challenges and a deeper analysis of cultural assumptions underlying the anxiety.
Consequently, by combining immediate emotional awareness with higher-order reflection, international students develop resilience in new cultural environments. They learn to interpret challenges as temporary and manageable rather than as personal shortcomings. This metacognitive approach not only reduces the negative impact of culture shock but actively facilitates successful adaptation, turning stressful encounters into valuable intercultural learning experiences.
Emotional intelligence and metacognitive awareness as bases for a typology of adaptation profiles
The present study establishes emotional intelligence (EI) and metacognitive awareness as distinct but interrelated psychological resources for cultural adaptation. Where EI provides the capacity to perceive, understand, and regulate emotional responses to cultural stressors (Salovey, Mayer, 1997), metacognition enables individuals to monitor, interpret, and strategically adjust these emotional experiences within cultural contexts (Efklides, 2006). Empirical studies demonstrate only moderate correlations between these constructs (Ahmad, 2014; Vinogradova, Byzova, 2024), suggesting they represent separate dimensions of adaptive functioning that can combine in different configurations. This theoretical synthesis proposes four potential adaptation profiles emerging from their interaction:
- Vulnerable Adaptors: Limited Regulatory Capacity (Low EI/Low Metacognition):
Students with underdeveloped EI and metacognitive skills face compounded challenges in cultural transitions. When encountering cultural misunderstandings — such as misinterpreting a host culture's communication directness as hostility — they experience unmodulated emotional distress without constructive processing mechanisms.
- Reflective Adaptors: Cognitive Insight Without Emotional Tools (Low EI/High Metacognition):
Students in this category possess strong metacognitive abilities to analyze cultural conflicts, but limited capacity for emotional regulation. While they can intellectually comprehend adaptation challenges, they remain vulnerable to the physiological and affective toll of acculturative stress, resulting in emotionally taxing adaptation processes.
- Emotional Adaptors: Surface-Level Adjustment (High EI/Low Metacognition):
Students with high EI but low metacognitive awareness can effectively manage immediate emotional reactions to cultural stressors through strategies like emotion suppression or situational avoidance. However, without capacity for deeper reflection on the cultural roots of these stressors, they risk developing rigid behavioral patterns that may fail under sustained or novel stress, potentially leading to eventual emotional exhaustion.
- Integrated Adaptors: Optimal Synergy (High EI/High Metacognition):
This profile represents the most adaptive configuration, combining emotional regulation skills with cultural-cognitive flexibility. When facing exclusionary behaviors, integrated adaptors can: (1) use EI to moderate initial distress, (2) employ metacognition to assess whether the exclusion reflects cultural norms or personal factors, and (3) implement context-appropriate responses. This dual-capacity system mirrors the most successful outcomes in acculturation research while focusing on the underlying psychological processes rather than surface behaviors.
The proposed typology extends existing models in three key ways. First, it complements Berry's acculturation strategies framework by elucidating the psychological mechanisms underlying different adaptation approaches (Ward, 2024). Second, it expands Ward et al.'s (2001) ABC model by specifying how affective and cognitive systems interact during cultural adjustment. Third, it provides a more nuanced understanding than coping strategy inventories by identifying pre-adaptive individual differences that influence strategy selection and effectiveness. Practically, this model suggests tailored intervention approaches — for instance, metacognitive training for emotional adaptors versus emotion regulation skill-building for reflective adaptors — that address each profile's specific regulatory gaps.
This theoretical synthesis underscores that comprehensive cultural adaptation requires both the moment-to-moment emotional attunement enabled by EI and the higher-order cultural sense-making afforded by metacognition. Their synergistic interaction transforms culture shock from a disruptive experience into an opportunity for developmental growth through enhanced self-regulation and intercultural understanding.
Conclusion
Like all migrants, international students experience fundamental emotional responses to their environment — e.g., fear when facing uncertainty, frustration with communication barriers, or loneliness in unfamiliar social contexts. This universal emotional dimension makes the examination of regulatory processes particularly relevant, as it addresses core human experiences through the specific lens of cultural adaptation. This theoretical analysis demonstrates that culture shock represents a significant emotional challenge for international students, arising from abrupt transitions between socio-cultural environments. The review reveals that effective adaptation requires the synergistic operation of two key regulatory systems: emotional intelligence (EI), which facilitates immediate emotion recognition and regulation, and metacognitive awareness, which enables reflective processing of emotional experiences within cultural contexts. While each capacity contributes uniquely to adaptation, neither proves sufficient in isolation — their integration creates the most robust foundation for navigating cultural stress.
Building on this premise, the proposed typology identifies four distinct adaptation profiles that emerge from varying combinations of EI and metacognitive capabilities. These profiles range from vulnerable adaptors (with deficits in both domains) to integrated adaptors (who skillfully employ both capacities), providing a framework for understanding individual differences in self-regulation strategies and emotional resilience during cultural transitions. The model advances existing acculturation theories by specifying the psychological mechanisms underlying adaptive success, moving beyond descriptive accounts of coping behaviors to explain their cognitive-emotional foundations.
However, several important limitations and future directions emerge from this work. First, while conceptually grounded, the model requires empirical validation through quantitative assessment of the proposed profiles and their predictive relationship with adaptation outcomes. Second, the dynamic interplay between metacognition and EI during different phases of culture shock remains underexplored – longitudinal studies could illuminate how these systems interact over time. Third, this research highlights the need for targeted interventions; development of training programs that simultaneously cultivate metacognitive reflection and emotional regulation skills may prove particularly beneficial for students exhibiting vulnerable or imbalanced profiles.
Ultimately, this theoretical integration underscores that successful cultural adaptation depends not merely on possessing emotional or cognitive resources, but on their strategic coordination. By elucidating how EI and metacognition jointly contribute to intercultural adjustment, the framework provides both a foundation for future research and practical insights for supporting international students' wellbeing and academic success in cross-cultural environments. Future work should focus on translating these theoretical insights into measurable constructs and evidence-based interventions that address the complex interplay of emotion and cognition in cultural adaptation.