REVIEW article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Cultural Psychology
A Systematic Review: Examining Motivation Within the Context of Acculturative Stress
Provisionally accepted
- Technical University Dresden, Dresden, Germany
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This systematic review is the first to investigate the relationship between motivation and acculturative stress in the last decade (2014-2025), across nine major data banks and Google Scholar. Results demonstrate that while seven motivation constructs (including academic motivation, motivation to adapt, and motivation to study abroad) are measured in relation to acculturative stress, language learning motivation is very underrepresented. This is a major oversight, as language has been proven elemental in the acculturation process. Language proficiency is a well-established predictor of acculturative stress (AS). However, so much focus is on language skill that the motivation to learn is overlooked. Although acculturative stress and motivation are well-researched independently, there is little research combining them in the quantitative sense. The present review exposes a literature gap and elaborates on why language learning motivation could enhance acculturative stress literature.
Keywords: Acculturation, Acculturative stress, International students, Language, Motivation
Received: 28 Oct 2025; Accepted: 22 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Haviv Zehner. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Arianna Haviv Zehner
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