Proactive personality and international student mobility: Patterns of self-selection and development

Abstract

Proactive personality, i.e., individuals' disposition to take personal initiative and to initiate change, is a personality characteristic that is related to many favorable outcomes in the work domain and beyond. Yet, the conditions that promote its development amongst young adults have barely been researched. As international student mobility (ISM) has become an essential part of higher education in many countries, we assessed how proactive personality related to ISM experiences by self-selection, socialization and anticipation effects. We further explored if behavioural exploration served as a mediator of ISM socialization effects. We carried out a longitudinal study (N = 2163) with two measurement occasions and three study groups, i.e., control students who stayed at home, present sojourners who engaged in ISM and a waiting group of future sojourners. Latent change analyses indicated that all sojourners showed higher levels of proactive personality than control students before their departure abroad. Moreover, present sojourners increased in proactive personality as compared to the other two groups. This effect could partly be explained by sojourners' more frequent exploration of new behaviours. There was no indication that future sojourns affected proactivity development by anticipation effects. Implications of these findings for the understanding of adaptive personality development are discussed.