Counselling and mentoring help international students navigate identity clashes

International students arriving at a Hungarian university often carry more than luggage: they bring internalised rules about authority, communication and success that can collide sharply with the norms of their new academic environment. A perspective article published in Frontiers in Sociology on 22 October 2026 examines how those collisions play out psychologically, arguing that intercultural adaptation in higher education is best understood as a continuous negotiation of identity, driven by cognitive dissonance, and that counselling and mentoring can shape how that negotiation ends.

The article, authored by Rita Takacs, Viktória Nagy, Zsuzsa Kaló and Zoltán Horváth of ELTE Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, draws on the university’s Student Support Centre at the Faculty of Informatics, which has offered counselling in English since 2014. The faculty currently hosts nearly 1,200 international students, a number the authors describe as growing year by year, with most students arriving from countries in Africa, the MENA region and Asia. Roughly 100 students use individual counselling services each academic year, while about 300 first-year students take part in mentoring programs.

A crucial caveat frames everything that follows: the two case studies presented are pseudo-cases, composite narratives constructed from patterns observed across a dataset of 20 cases, compiled to comply with ethical guidelines and data protection requirements. The authors state that no individual student’s counselling files or notes were disclosed, and that conclusions were drawn only from recurring themes appearing consistently across multiple cases. They also acknowledge that, as case studies, the findings cannot be generalised; they offer analytical insight into underlying processes rather than statistical proof.

The theoretical backbone of the article is cognitive dissonance theory, which holds that when a person’s internal system of rules fails to match what external reality delivers, the resulting discomfort demands reconciliation. The authors propose a conceptual model linking cultural difference to cognitive dissonance, then to identity negotiation, and finally to an adaptation outcome. In this framing, cultural differences in a new educational environment challenge existing beliefs, values and communication patterns; the resulting psychological tension prompts a reevaluation of self-concept and social roles; and successfully managing that tension facilitates psychological and sociocultural adaptation, while unresolved dissonance leads to difficulty, uncertainty and a perceived decline in well-being.

The first case study follows a composite student, aged 20 to 25, from the MENA region, enrolled in a STEM bachelor’s program, who sought one-on-one counselling after six months in Hungary. A mentor had repeatedly urged him to see the faculty psychologists: he was falling asleep in class, looked pale, and refused to remove his coat even in a comfortable room temperature. A family doctor had found nothing physically wrong and recommended rest. Initially he cited fatigue, poor sleep, frequent thoughts of family back home, and difficulty finding his place in the university environment.

The counselling narrative, reconstructed from recurring patterns, moves through three phases. In the first, disorientation and self-doubt, the student questioned why he was at the university at all and reported feeling estranged even from friends from his own country. In the second, an emerging awareness of cultural differences, he described feeling like he had “two versions of myself,” one that knew how to behave back home and one he was trying to build in Hungary, which did not match. In the third phase, active adaptation and identity work, the counselling focused on grounding him in the present and reinforcing existing resources such as family and peer relationships and personal resilience. A concrete academic detail illustrates the adjustment: in Hungarian higher education a grade of 5 is the highest and 1 means failure, and the student, formerly at the top of his class, now received grades of 3 and 4. The authors note it was difficult for him to accept no longer being the top student, even though his results remained excellent.

The second case study shifts to a group setting, drawing on mentoring sessions held during students’ first semester, within the first 12 weeks after arrival and enrolment. One reported incident involved a classmate who openly argued against an instructor’s position in class; the instructor praised the question and the discussion continued. For a student whose belief system held that respect implies the absence of confrontation, the scene triggered genuine dissonance, described in the article as a classic double-bind situation in which both behavioural outcomes seem to carry negative consequences. The authors warn that this type of cognitive overload can lead to decision paralysis and dropout, as students increasingly refrain from participating in academic discourse. A second example involved group work and brainstorming where a student expected structured guidance and felt stuck, waiting for someone to provide structure, perceiving the open-ended task as a violation of norms.

The article maps three coping trajectories observed across these group sessions. In the first three weeks, rationalisation emerged, which temporarily reduced dissonance but devalued the new cultural environment, with one student asking how the university’s “too lax and informal” work could be taken seriously; the authors note this rigidly reinforced cultural polarisation. Avoidance and cognitive suppression, such as not speaking up in class or talking only to certain people, could reduce dissonance in the short term but risked academic difficulty and social isolation. By contrast, guided cognitive restructuring led students to reinterpret situations flexibly, for instance reframing classroom questions as a sign of interest rather than disrespect. The authors call this accommodative schema modification: the learner does not abandon their previous value system but reinterprets it in context. By the end of the mentoring process, the composite student reported a significant reduction in distress and described being able to choose how to react depending on context, which the authors link to strengthened metacognitive awareness and a sense of personal accomplishment.

The discussion draws practical implications for higher education support services, while remaining within the limits of the case-based evidence. Students who interpret adjustment difficulties as personal failures are, the authors argue citing prior literature, at increased risk of dropping out academically and socially, so counselling can serve a preventive function by reframing those experiences within a cultural context. Interventions targeting interpretive frameworks, rather than only problem-solving or skill development, may better support long-term adaptation, and identity-centred work can help students articulate multiple aspects of the self as a coherent whole. The authors also position the study within a Central and Eastern European context, noting that much existing literature on intercultural adaptation comes from Anglo-Saxon settings and that subtle differences in academic culture and communication styles can generate forms of dissonance existing models do not fully capture. Future directions they propose include multi-case studies, longitudinal designs on institutional factors, and quantitative research on the relationship between identity integration, dissonance resolution and retention outcomes in larger student populations.

Subject of Research: Identity negotiation and cognitive dissonance in the intercultural adaptation of international students in counselling and mentoring contexts

Article Title: Psychological pathways of intercultural adaptation among international students in Europe: identity negotiation and cognitive dissonance in counselling and mentoring contexts

Article References: Takacs, R., Nagy, V., Kaló, Z., & Horváth, Z. (2026). Psychological pathways of intercultural adaptation among international students in Europe: identity negotiation and cognitive dissonance in counselling and mentoring contexts. Frontiers in Sociology, 11, Article 1894672. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2026.1894672

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fsoc.2026.1894672

Keywords: intercultural adaptation, international students, cognitive dissonance, identity negotiation, higher education, counselling, mentoring, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, case study, STEM education, student retention, psychological well-being