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Cultural chameleons and iconoclasts: Assimilation and reactance to cultural cues in biculturals’ expressed personalities as a function of identity conflict
Abstract and Figures
Bicultural individuals vary in the degree to which their two cultural identities are integrated versus conflicting—Bicultural Identity Integration (BII). Past research on attribution biases finds that BII influences the way that biculturals shift in response to cultural primes: integrated biculturals shift assimilatively, whereas conflicted biculturals shift contrastively. Proposing that this reflects assimilation versus reactance responses, we tested whether it extends to shifts in self-perceived personality. In two experiments with Asian–American participants, we found that BII influences the direction of cultural priming effects (assimilation versus contrast) on the personality dimensions of need for uniqueness (Experiment 1) and extraversion (Experiment 2). As hypothesized, high BIIs shifted in a culturally assimilative direction, perceiving the self as more uniqueness-seeking and extraverted following American versus Asian priming, whereas low BIIs shifted in the reverse direction. Implications for research on bicultural identity, priming, personality, organizational and consumer behavior are discussed.
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... BII is further separated into two facets: Blendedness and Harmony. Blendedness refers to how biculturals perceive their dual cultural identities as being compartmentalized or fused (Benet-Martínez and Haritatos, 2005), while Harmony refers to the degree of conflict biculturals feel between their two cultural identities (Miramontez et al., 2008 moderates how biculturals respond to cultural stimulus in cultural priming studies (Benet-Martínez et al., 2002;Benet-Martínez and Haritatos, 2005;Cheng et al., 2006;Nguyen and Benet-Martínez, 2007;Mok and Morris, 2009;Mok et al., 2010). Individuals with higher levels of BII see their dual cultural identities as fused and harmonious and respond appropriately to cultural stimulus. ...
Introduction
Past research on the “bamboo ceiling” tend to focus on the barriers it presents, with few studies examining individuals who break through the bamboo ceiling. The purpose of this study is to explain the psychological factors driving the individual differences between East Asian Americans who break through the bamboo ceiling and those who do not.
Methodology
This two-study sequential mixed-methods exploratory research study included 19 one-on-one semi-structured interviews and 338 survey respondents by East Asian Americans.
Results
In Study 1, based on 19 one-on-one semi cultural essentialism and bicultural identity integration emerged from the interview data as contributing factors. Interviewees who exhibited essentialist or social constructionist beliefs showed different behavioral and career patterns. This mediating relationship was supported in Study 2. Taken together, it was found that East Asian Americans who had less essentialist views of culture were more likely to have a fluid and integrated bicultural identity and more likely to break the bamboo ceiling in their careers.
Discussion
The findings from both qualitative and quantitative data suggest that having more fluid concepts of culture, associating with more integrated bicultural identities, may improve career prospects in a multicultural work environment. This article offers practical implications for Asian Americans who desire to achieve their career goals to be authentic self while remaining adaptable and developing a mindset of “flexibility.”
Zestawienie dwóch kategorii teoretycznych, tj. konfliktu i tożsamości, odzwierciedla zjawiska występujące w przestrzeni relacji społecznych, które – choć bywają zauważone „między wierszami” – to do tej pory nie zostały w naukach społecznych jednoznacznie zdefiniowane lub dookreślone. W artykule podjęto zatem próbę charakterystyki zjawiska konfliktu tożsamościowego. W szczególności dotyczy to określenia jego genezy, uwarunkowań, zakresu i konsekwencji. W wyniku krytycznej analizy literatury przedmiotu określono także poziomy konfliktu tożsamościowego. Wnioski wskazują między innymi, że konflikt tożsamościowy wymaga reakcji, czyli w pierwszej kolejności uświadomienia sobie problemu i jego źródła, a następnie ustosunkowania się do wartości kluczowej dla przedmiotu sporu tożsamościowego, tj. rezygnacji lub włączenia pewnych atrybutów tożsamościowych.
Research on culture and personality has greatly enhanced personality science by bringing attention to the bidirectional processes by which socio-cultural factors shape personality and individuals in turn shape their social environments to fit and express their personalities. This review showcases the unique perspectives and topical contributions of five different sets of experts, who examine these issues from different standpoints and answer different questions. Specifically, these contributions focus on (1) the usefulness of anthropology-based distributive models of culture, (2) how culture and personality make-up each other, (3) the cultural and ecological basis of wellbeing, (4) how individual personality expressions relate to culture, and (5) the multicultural mind and self. These advances put personality psychology at the center of important current social science debates about the dynamic interplay between macro-level factors and individual variables, and how individuals can best manage cultural diversity and globalization.
The rising rates of immigration and globalization have created many multicultural societies, where individuals identify with more than one culture. Drawing on the perspective-taking theory, this research investigates the effects of perspective-taking on the perceived compatibilities of two cultural identities captured by Bicultural Identity Integration (BII). One experiment was conducted using Chinese participants to examine the relationship between perspective-taking and BII and to explore the moderating role of acculturation type (immigration-based vs. technology-mediated). The findings suggest that the perspective-taking positively influences one’s level of BII and the acculturation group moderates such effect. In particular, individuals experiencing technology-mediated acculturation reported a positive relationship between perspective-taking and the level of BII. Such a relationship is not evident among those who acculturate as a result of immigration.
The present mixed methods study explored perceived differences in social support across three immigrant generations of early adolescents residing in Canada. A total of 960 first-generation ( n = 249, M age = 13.02, σ = .69, 54.2% girls), second-generation ( n = 327, M age = 12.88, σ = .69, 57.5% girls) and third-plus-generation ( n = 384, M age = 12.81, σ = .69, 57.3% girls) early adolescent immigrants completed the self-reported Child and Adolescent Social Support Scale, and 16 of them participated in individual interviews on social support. Multivariate analyses of covariance (MANCOVA), in which we controlled for sex, mother tongue, and socioeconomic status (SES), showed that second-generation early adolescents perceived significantly less social support from their mother, teachers, school personnel, and classmates compared to their first- and/or third-plus-generation counterparts. Our mixed methods analysis revealed that these second-generation youth perceived several barriers to social support, such as an unsatisfactory quality of their relationships with these sources, a negative attitude from these sources, their limited availability or involvement, and their ineffectiveness in providing certain types of support. These findings highlight the importance of better understanding the unique challenges facing second-generation early adolescents in order to provide social support adapted to their needs.
The use of music in marketing campaigns is ubiquitous. Frequently, brands choose music that they think will be personally meaningful to consumers so that positive associations about the music may spillover to the brand, itself. Yet some anecdotal evidence suggests that such a strategy can sometimes backfire. The proposed conceptual framework of consumer responses to music explains the process through which consumers interpret and respond to music which is related to their personal autobiographical experiences. We propose that the more music is associated with autobiographical experiences, the more a consumer will develop a sense of ownership of the music, and subsequently, the more likely that they will make a determination about whether they will psychologically “license” the use of the music to the brand. This effect is proposed to be conditional on the appropriateness of the music usage. The framework then traces such licensing to a series of consequences: identity outcomes, music outcomes, and identity-related brand outcomes. We conclude by outlining directions for future research.
Photovoice is a participatory action research method that allows participants to express their stories, ideas, and emotions through photographs and discuss them in a group to reflect upon their community. The study aims at investigating the emotional and cognitive representations of the young participants (migrant and non-migrant) on integration in the living context in which they spend most of their time. The participants were 4 psychology students, 2 peer researchers, and 6 migrants. Results show how participants from different backgrounds conceptualize integration according to different themes: 1. A universal language (of music, art, food) to convey integration; 2. Travel as a metaphor for encounter; 3. Solidarity as a universal gesture; 4. Nostalgia as an obstacle to integration; and 5. Loneliness and poverty as factors of non-integration. Implications of the results are discussed.
Photovoice is a participatory action research method that allows participants to express their stories, ideas, and emotions through photographs and discuss them in a group to reflect upon their community. The study aims at investigating the emotional and cognitive representations of the young participants (migrant and non-migrant) on integration in the living context in which they spend most of their time. The participants were 4 psychology students, 2 peer researchers, and 6 migrants. Results show how participants from different backgrounds conceptualize integration according to different themes: 1. A universal language (of music, art, food) to convey integration; 2. Travel as a metaphor for encounter; 3. Solidarity as a universal gesture; 4. Nostalgia as an obstacle to integration; and 5. Loneliness and poverty as factors of non-integration. Implications of the results are discussed.
Children’s resilience in Ethiopia was built primarily on three crucial factors; children’s identity was definitively anchored in family and community, they grew up with an intrinsic sense of belonging, as significant partners who contributed to the wellbeing of their families through predefined roles. Immigration changed all of this. In Israel children are surrounded by fewer family members who spend less time together, with less effective and affirmative communication. In this chapter, I have attempted to delve into the intricacies of resilience in immigrant families coping simultaneously with many changes, especially role reversal and filial responsibility on the backdrop of bias, stereotyping, and discrimination. The narratives of participants in my study as well as examples from other studies have been used to illustrate how individuals, families, and communities negotiate such complex, often very stressful, situations using culturally specific tools such as reciprocity, joint responsibility, and emotional distancing as well as sheer determination and innovative methodologies such as creativity in maintaining connections, syncretism, shared protest, and visits to the country of origin. All these examples reflect the social basis of resilience, and the interplay of interaction with context to create culturally meaningful pathways towards wellbeing.KeywordsResilienceImmigrationEthiopianFamiliesDiscriminationRole reversal
This study explored how personality and cultural variables influence subjective well-being (SWB) in two different U.S. ethnic groups: Asian Americans and European Americans. Structural equation modeling analyses supported a hypothesized culture?personality model of SWB, in which the cultural syndromes of individualism and collectivism predict variations on personality dispositions (Big Five), which, in turn, influence life satisfaction through self- and relational esteem. Despite ethnic mean-level differences found for many of the variables, none of the pathways in the culture?personality model of SWB differed across our two ethnic groups. Furthermore, the culture?personality model of SWB fit the data more adequately than a competing personality?culture model of SWB, in which personality dispositions preceded cultural syndromes in predicting life satisfaction. A consistent finding was the stronger weight of self-esteem (compared with relational esteem) in predicting life satisfaction for both ethnic groups. Results are discussed in the context of acculturation theory and recent cultural psychology views.
This study tested whether priming of cultural symbols activates cultural behavioral scripts and thus the corresponding behaviors, and also whether the behaviors activated are context-specific. Specifically, to activate the cultural knowledge of Chinese-American bicultural participants, we primed them with Chinese cultural icons or American cultural icons. In the control condition, we showed them geometric figures. Then, the participants played the Prisoner's Dilemma game with friends or strangers (the context manipulation). As expected, participants showed more cooperation toward friends when Chinese cultural knowledge was activated than when American cultural knowledge was activated. By contrast, participants showed a similarly low level of cooperation toward strangers after both Chinese and American culture priming. These findings not only support previous evidence on culture priming of social judgment and self-construals, but also (a) provide the first evidence for the effects of culture priming on behaviors and (b) demonstrate the boundary condition of culture priming.
W.E.B. Du Bois said, on the launch of his groundbreaking 1903 treatise The Souls of Black Folk, textquotedblleftfor the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-linetextquotedblrighttextemdasha prescient statement. Setting out to show to the reader textquotedblleftthe strange meaning of being black here in the dawning of the Twentieth Century,textquotedblright Du Bois explains the meaning of the emancipation, and its effect, and his views on the role of the leaders of his race. (http://www.bartleby.com/114/)
This chapter describes the role of naïve theories of bias in bias correction in the flexible correction model. The notion of bias correction was reviewed across a variety of research domains. Corrections are often the result of people consulting their naive theories of the influence of potentially biasing factors on their perception of the target. This view differs from competing views of bias correction because a view of corrections based on perceivers' naive theories of bias allows for a more flexible set of corrections than those proposed by other current models of bias removal. The chapter illustrates that flexible correction model (FCM) principles demonstrate the relevance of the perspective to a variety of research areas (including persuasion, attribution, impression formation, stereotyping, and mood). Finally, this chapter hopes that research and theory based on flexible correction notions will help to build a unifying framework within which correction processes in many areas of psychology can be investigated and explained.
There are at least two prerequisites for understanding the academic performance of minorities in contemporary urban industrial societies. The first is to distinguish among different types of minority status; the second is to distinguish different types of cultural difference. The distinctions between voluntary and involuntary minorities and between primary and secondary cultural differences are used as explanatory concepts. Voluntary minorities do not have persistent basic academic difficulties, no matter what their primary cultural differences from the dominant majority. The people who have the most difficulty with academic achievement are involuntary minorities. These difficulties stem from the responses that involuntary minorities have made to their forced incorporation and subsequent treatment, especially their formation of oppositional identity and oppositional cultural frame of reference. Such responses constitute secondary cultural differences. Unlike primary cultural differences, secondary cultural differences do not predate contact between the minority and the majority groups; rather, they are responses to the difficult nature of the contact.
In two studies, we investigate how differences in self-construal patterns affect preferences for consumption symbols through the process of self-expression. The results of Study 1 demonstrate that individuals with a dominant independent self-construal hold attitudes that allow them to express that they are distinct from others. In contrast, individuals with a dominant interdependent self-construal are more likely to hold attitudes that demonstrate points of similarity with their peers. Study 2 provides additional evidence for the mechanism presumed to underlie the results by identifying differential schematic processes as the driver of expressed preferences. We find that differential levels of recall for similar and distinct items exist across culturally-encouraged selves, documenting higher recall for schema-inconsistent information. We discuss the results and encourage future research that expands the framework to group decisions and social preferences.
The present study examined how biculturals (Asian-Americans) adjust to differing cultural settings in performance appraisal. Biculturals vary in the degree to which their two cultural identities are compatible or oppositional — Bicultural Identity Integration (BII). The authors found that individual differences in BII interacted with the manipulation of the cultural setting (American or Asian) in determining whether employee outcomes were evaluated as matching or mismatching cultural norms. Results showed that Asian-Americans with high BII gave less weight to employees’ situational conditions in the American setting (matching American cultural norms) and more weight in the Asian setting (matching Asian cultural norms), whereas those with low BII showed the opposite pattern, giving more weight to employees’ situational conditions in the American setting (mismatching American cultural norms) and less weight in the Asian setting (mismatching Asian cultural norms). We discuss the implications of understanding bicultural identity dynamics in managerial judgment and behavior.