Caroline Ng Tseung-Wong

University of Canberra · Centre for Applied Psychology

In this study, we investigate the relationships among contextual variables of perceived diversity norms- multiculturalism, assimilation and polyculturalism, identity styles and identity consolidation in bicultural Australians. The Multicultural Identity Styles Scale proposes two identity strategies, hybrid identity style (HIS) and alternating ident...

This chapter discusses the importance of ethnic and religious identities to the construction of national identity in Mauritius, a small Indian Ocean island state. First, the sociohistorical context of Mauritius, a past Dutch, French, and British colony (in that order), is described with reference to the group positions of the different ethnoreligio...

This study used a person-centered approach to distinguish groups of bicultural (national and ethnocultural) individuals in culturally diverse Mauritius. We focused on experiences of harmony or conflict among blended bicultural individuals and used representative data from the three numerically largest ethnocultural groups (Hindus, Creoles, and Musl...

This study investigated understandings of national group belonging in relation to attitudes toward foreign and established outgroups in Mauritius. Representative data were collected among the three numerically largest ethno-cultural groups (Hindus, Muslims, and Creoles; Ntotal = 1770) and results confirmed a distinction between “being,” “doing,” an...

The current study examines dual identification (i.e., identification with one's ethnic and national cultures) and cultural identity styles (i.e., the ways in which one negotiates ethnic and national identities) as predictors of intergroup evaluations in a sample of 228 Chinese New Zealanders. It was hypothesized that dual identification predicts mo...

The article introduces the concept of cultural identity styles, strategies that individuals use for decision making about identity-relevant issues, and proposes that blending and alternating are two strategies that acculturating individuals activate to manage multiple cultural identities. Drawing on diverse samples from New Zealand, Mauritius, and...

Objectives: We investigated adolescents' understandings of national group membership in multicultural Mauritius. We hypothesized that tolerance toward different cultures would be an important criterion for being Mauritian. In addition, national identity was expected to be defined in terms of "being," "feeling," and "doing." The type of definition,...

In social psychology, the background assumption of most of the research on cultural diversity ideologies is that multiculturalism is not in the interest of majority group members while colourblindness is. However, this assumption may not hold in a context in which multiculturalism benefits the majority group. Two studies investigated the associatio...

Multiculturalism is on the retreat in many Western countries. As an ideology, it is criticized for failing to engender national belonging and social cohesion and thereby to encourage groups of citizens to have parallel lives. In this article, we present the case of Mauritius that is often viewed as a successful plural society. We discuss the condit...

Multiculturalism can be viewed as promoting positive intergroup relations in the public domain (neighbours, classmates) and heritage culture maintenance in the romantic domain (marriage). The present study examined this “two-sidedness” of multiculturalism by focusing on intergroup social distance in relation to endorsement of multiculturalism, grou...

Social psychological research on multiculturalism has mostly looked at recognition of differences and much less at equitable participation. The present study investigated adolescents’ fairness judgements of three democratic decision-making procedures (representative democracy, equal group representation, and proportional group representation) and o...

Religious group identification is an important but understudied social identity. The present study investigates religious group identification among adolescents of different faiths (Hindu, Muslim, Christian) living in multicultural Mauritius. It further explores how religious and national group identities come together among religious majority and...

Rankings of countries on mean levels of self-reported Conscientiousness continue to puzzle researchers. Based on the hypothesis that cross-cultural differences in the tendency to prefer extreme response categories of ordinal rating scales over moderate categories can influence the comparability of self-reports, this study investigated possible effe...

In cross-national studies, mean levels of self-reported phenomena are often not congruent with more objective criteria. One prominent explanation for such findings is that people make self-report judgements in relation to culture-specific standards (often called the reference group effect), thereby undermining the cross-cultural comparability of th...

This paper focuses on the superordinate (national)-subgroup (ethnic) association in relation to group identifications, relative ingroup indispensability, relative ingroup prototypicality and their effects on outgroup and ingroup evaluations. Survey data were collected from a large sample of Mauritian adolescents (N = 1,784) from three ethnic groups...

The purpose of this study was to assess the cross-cultural validity of the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability scale short form C, in a large sample of French-speaking participants from eight African countries and Switzerland. Exploratory and confirmatory analyses suggested retaining a two-factor structure. Item bias detection according to country w...

Most studies about the higher-order dimensions to be considered in order to parsimoniously describe Personality Disorders (PDs) have identified between two and four factors but there is still no consensus about their exact number. In this context, the cultural stability of these structures might be a criterion to be considered. The aim of this stud...

Adolescents' identification with the national and ethnic categories was investigated within the multiethnic context of Mauritius. A sample of 202 subjects (107 girls, 95 boys) in age group of 12-16 years answered the self-report questionnaire. The study aimed to (a) assess the nature of national identity along cognitive, affective and evaluative li...

This study investigated whether group identity as pertaining to an ascribed identity (ethnicity) is a multidimensional construct and examined the relationship between group identification and inter-group attitudes. Data was gathered from a random sample of one hundred twenty six male respondents using a structured questionnaire. Results of factor a...

A potentially rich framework for analyzing many aspects of interpersonal relationships has been provided by Evolutionary Psychology (Buss, 1994, Buss et al., 1999). With increasing frequency, jealousy as an aspect of relationship has been the focus of both empirical research and theoretical formulation. It is often speculated that there are importa...