Degree Name

MA in International Education

First Advisor

Adrian Sherman

Abstract

Despite the fact that having a deep yearning for travel, or Wanderlust, is a known behavioral pattern particularly in the community of international educators, it has not yet been studied as a distinct and measurable psychological phenomenon. The researcher attempted to develop the first survey to ascertain what demographic, personality and situational variables conceptually relate to Wanderlust. There were two purposes for this study; first, to create a hypothetical scale to measure Wanderlust and second, to determine if certain personality variables relate to or predict Wanderlust. Through a survey sent out to the international education community, various personality traits were measured against Wanderlust scores. Wanderlust was shown to have strong correlations with variables such as percentage of time abroad, Reverse Culture Shock and Perceiver vs. Judger in the MBTI personality inventory. However, the most significant find was that Wanderlust correlations are dramatically different for the male and female samples. Male Wanderlust correlates with issues such as Reverse Culture Shock, the F-type Myers-Briggs inventory, and being from collectivist cultures, whereas female Wanderlust only significantly correlated with percentage of time abroad. Future research is necessary to isolate this complex personality variable, which may in fact manifest quite differently in males versus females.

Disciplines

International and Comparative Education | Psychology

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