Divided loyalties: Identity integration and cultural cues predict ingroup favoritism among biculturals

• Main Authors: CHENG, Chi-ying, HANEK, Kathrin J., ODOM, Annick C., LEE, Fiona
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2020
• Subjects: Bicultural Identity Integration (BII); Cultural Prime; Cultural Identity; Ingroup Favoritism; Psychological Reactance; Flemish-Belgian Biculturals; Asian-American Biculturals; Applied Behavior Analysis; Multicultural Psychology
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3249; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/4506/viewcontent/Divided_Loyalties_sv.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

How do biculturals, or individuals who identify with more than one culture, manage their loyalties between two cultural ingroups? We argue that this process is moderated by Bicultural Identity Integration (BII), or individual differences in perceived conflict between two cultural identities. Two quasi-experiments examined biculturals’ preferences for two competing groups, each representing one of their cultural identities, in response to cultural primes. In Study 1, we found that Flemish-Belgian biculturals with low BII, or those who perceive their cultural identities as conflicting, favored the primed cultural group less than the unprimed cultural group. In Study 2, we found the same effect among Asian-American biculturals, but only when the cultural primes were positive. These findings show that low BIIs exhibit psychological reactance to cultural primes that are seen as threatening to the self, which in turn affect their loyalties to competing cultural ingroups.