ArticleBMC psychology2026
Beyond cultural distance: perceived discrimination, social contact, and social adjustment among international students in Türkiye.
Article in BMC psychology, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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Abstract
backgroundInternational students face unique psychosocial challenges in host countries, including experiences of perceived discrimination that may impede their social adjustment. The mechanisms through which discrimination affects social adjustment remain underexplored, particularly within non-Western host contexts. This study examines the relationship between perceived discrimination and social adjustment to university life among international students in Türkiye, with a focus on the mediating role of social contact and the moderating role of cultural proximity.
methodsGrounded in the Cultural Distance Hypothesis, this cross-sectional study compared international students from the Turkic Republics with other international students in Türkiye. The sample comprised 448 international students (55.4% female; mean age = 23.1, SD = 5.47). Data were analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and Multi-group SEM to test the proposed mediation and moderation pathways.
resultsPerceived discrimination indirectly undermines social adjustment by eroding both the quantity and quality of social contact, with full mediation observed across the total sample. Multi-group analyses revealed that cultural proximity does not attenuate discrimination’s impact on adjustment per se; rather, it fundamentally reconfigures the conditional pathways through which discrimination exerts its effects. The mediating role of contact quality proved invariant across cultural groups, indicating that affectively meaningful social engagement constitutes a universal mechanism of adjustment.
conclusionsThese findings advance the Cultural Distance Hypothesis by positioning cultural proximity not as a moderator of discrimination’s overall severity, but as a variable that reshapes the conditional process through which discrimination translates into adjustment difficulties. The results call for culturally differentiated institutional responses that move beyond generic anti-discrimination frameworks to address the distinct adjustment trajectories of international students with varying degrees of cultural distance from the host society.
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