Felt understanding as a bridge between social identity and wellbeing among international university students

Abstract

Wellbeing issues among international students in UK higher education have been recognised as a crisis. To address this, we integrate social identity and felt understanding approaches to wellbeing and mental health, testing whether felt understanding (the belief that others understand oneself) is an important process through which social identity predicts better wellbeing, over and above other, more established mediators (social support, life meaning, and personal control). International university students (including both undergraduates and postgraduates, N = 301) completed an online survey which measured three sets of variables: social identity variables (ingroup identification, multiple identities, multiple identity compatibility); process variables (social support, felt understanding, life meaning, personal control); and wellbeing outcomes (e.g., depression, anxiety, stress). Path analyses confirmed that felt understanding predicted better wellbeing outcomes over and above the other mediators. Additionally, indirect effects from social identity variables to wellbeing via felt understanding were consistently significant, even when adjusting for the other mediators. The results are consistent with the idea that felt understanding is an under-acknowledged resource through which social identities protect wellbeing. The findings contribute to ‘social cure’ research and have implications for promoting wellbeing services from the perspective of group memberships.