Ethnic identity and identification with the majority group: Relations with national identity and self-esteem

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International Journal of Intercultural Relations 31 (2007) 503–523 www.elsevier.com/locate/ijintrel

Ethnic identity and identification with the majority group: Relations with national identity and self-esteem Li Gong School of Communication, Ohio State University, 3149 Derby Hall, 154 North Oval Mall, Columbus, OH 43210, USA Received 29 November 2006; received in revised form 13 February 2007; accepted 10 March 2007

Abstract Literatures on ethnic identity and acculturation have supported orthogonal conceptualization and separate measurements of ethnic identity and identification with the majority group or the larger society. The author further argues to conceptually differentiate identification with the majority group and identification with the larger society. A study with Asian American students (n ¼ 91) and African American students (n ¼ 115) in a large US Midwestern public university revealed no correlation between ethnic identity and identification with White Americans for Asian Americans and a small negative correlation at marginal significance for African Americans. These results support the orthogonal model. While identification with White Americans positively predicted national identity in regression analyses for both samples, ethnic identity also added a unique positive main effect, and additionally through an interaction effect suppressed the strength of identification with White Americans, for predicting national identity among American-born Asian Americans. Bicultural identity integrating ethnicity and nationality was suggested as the identity mechanism explaining this result. Thus, identification with the majority group and national identity were empirically shown to be different concepts, and ethnic identity can contribute to national identity. Suggestions for future research include regional comparative studies and deeper analysis of bicultural integration. r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Ethnic identity; Identification with the majority group; National identity; Bicultural identity; Selfesteem; Asian Americans; African Americans

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E-mail address: [email protected]. 0147-1767/$ - see front matter r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijintrel.2007.03.002

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1. Introduction Ethnic minority individuals, being first-generation immigrants or born in the country considered, need to negotiate their identification with their ethnic group and their identification with the mainstream culture of the society, due to their minority status and often racial or cultural distinctiveness. Theorizations and abundant empirical research in recent decades in the acculturation literature (Berry, 1997) and the interethnic relations literature (Phinney, 1990) have promoted and supported the model of orthogonality between ethnic identity and identification with the larger society or identification with the majority group. The acculturation literature typically compares ethnic identity to identification with or orientation to the host or larger society, while the interethnic literature contextualizes ethnic identity in comparison to identification or relationship with the majority group. Although newly arriving immigrants may equate the majority or dominant group with the host society, a period of residence in the host country or growing up in the host country will bestow upon people the awareness of the multiethnic composition of many immigrant-receiving countries, including the US. The primary objective of this article is to tease apart and link ethnic identity, identification with the majority group, and identification with the society, and present a study examining these three identity concepts using an Asian American sample and an African American sample in a large US Midwestern university. A second objective is to highlight identity as a core concept being part of but not the entirety of the interethnic relations or the acculturative process. A third objective is to test how ethnic identity and identification with the majority group relate to personal self-esteem, one of the most studied psychological well-being concepts for minorities. The last objective is to compare Asian Americans, the population concerned in many acculturation studies, and African Americans, the most studied minority population in the US-based interethnic literature. 1.1. Ethnic identity and identification with the majority group Since the early research on Black children’s racial identity and preference by looking at choice of dolls of different colors (Clark & Clark, 1940), ethnic identity of minority individuals has been conceptualized in comparison to attitude toward the majority group. Preference for entities or the culture of the majority group is construed as identification with, or desire to identify with, the majority group. Since the civil rights movement, ethnic pride has grown tremendously among minority groups in the US. Positive interpretations of and feelings toward one’s ethnic group are promoted and proven to help resolve the dilemma posed by the disparaged status of minority ethnic groups (Cross, 1978; Phinney, 1990). Triggered by categorization posed by the dominant group and common experiences of exclusion and discrimination, Asian Americans also have grown to be a large ethnic category uniting various Asian ethnic groups in the US for collective pride and empowerment (Le Espiritu, 1992; Wu, 2002). Phinney (1990) identified belonging and pride as key aspects of ethnic identity. Her Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM) (Phinney, 1992) is probably the most popular measure of ethnic identity with various ethnic groups (Worrell, Conyers, Mpofu, & Vandiver, 2006). MEIM includes an attitudinal component ‘‘affirmation and belonging’’ (5 items), a cognitive component ‘‘ethnic identity achievement’’ (7 items), and a behavioral component ‘‘ethnic behaviors’’ (2 items). In Phinney’s (1992) original psychometric

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analysis of the factor structure of MEIM, which also included the irrelevant Other-Group Orientation subscale in the analysis, multiple factors emerged. But due to high correlations of the factors, she combined all three components into one index. Later research with early adolescents identified a two-factor solution, including an attitudinal identification component (pride, affirmation, and belonging) and a component of learning and exploration which also included the two behavioral items (Roberts et al., 1999; Spencer, Icard, Harachi, Catalano, & Oxford, 2000). With Asian American college students, Lee and Yoo (2004) identified a three-factor solution and suggested that college students have developed greater cognitive complexity to differentiate various aspects of ethnic identity, compared to adolescents. The complexity in the measurement structure of the popular MEIM not only reflected methodological issues and population heterogeneity but also speaks to the conceptual complexity of ethnic identity. Regardless of the factor structure in the aforementioned studies, the attitudinal component of ethnic identity entailing pride, affirmation, and sense of belonging stood out consistently and coherently. This pattern corroborates the claim that attitude, namely how one feels about his/her ethnic group, is a core psychological element of ethnic identity. The second component, identity achievement and exploration, is deemed a salient factor particularly among adolescents during the identity development process (Phinney, 1990). Although ethnic identity achievement might be a life-long learning process provided that ethnic minorities are not dominant or well represented in the mainstream culture, it might not be a salient or exploratory factor at all developmental stages (Phinney, 2005). In particular, items speaking about confusion of the meaning of one’s ethnicity may not apply to adults who have achieved a clear sense of ethnic identity. The behavioral component of ethnic identity, which usually includes social networks and cultural practice, is not a core component defining ethnic identity, in the author’s opinion. Ethnic identity does provide motivation to engage with others of the same ethnicity and participate in organizations and cultural practices of the ethnic group (Ethier & Deaux, 1994; Saylor & Aries, 1999; Verkuyten, 1992). But motivation by itself is not sufficient to make such ethnic behaviors happen because one’s living environment needs to provide opportunities for engaging with people, organizations, and events of one’s ethnic group. Ting-Toomey (1981), for example, found that the ethnic composition of the neighborhood and schools, but not ethnic identity, influenced Chinese American college students’ friendship network. In addition, behavioral engagements of social interaction involve calculation of other factors such as time, cost, interest, and personality. Therefore, behaviors should be construed as reflections of ethnic identity rather than a core conceptual component of ethnic identity. The attitudinal component is a central component of ethnic identity that applies to all ethnic groups and developmental stages. The exploration and achievement factor should be explicated for the particular population and the developmental stage under study. The traditional unidimensional ‘‘either–or’’ thinking of ethnic identity and identification with the dominant group has given way to the orthogonal bidimensional model. Leveraging the acculturation theory, Phinney (1990) posited ethnic identity and identification with the majority group as two independent dimensions and reviewed a few studies which detected various relationships between them for different ethnic groups. Theorizing and measuring the two identities independently allow all possible relationships to emerge, which should reflect the characteristics of the ethnic population and sample

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under study (Berry, 1997; Berry, Kim, Power, Young, & Bujaki, 1989; Oetting & Beauvais, 1991). However, most studies on ethnic identity of minority individuals did not explicitly measure identification with the majority group. Oetting and Beauvais (1991) did measure identification with the White American culture along with identification with the Native American culture (for Native Americans) or the Hispanic culture (for Hispanic Americans). They detected an average correlation at about .20 between ethnic identity and identification with the White American culture. Chung, Kim, and Abreu (2004) developed a multidimensional scale, including cultural identity, to capture acculturation of Asian Americans. The measure included three scales with identical wordings targeting culture of origin, Asian Americans, and European Americans, respectively. Their two samples of Asian American college students showed no correlation between cultural identity with European Americans and cultural identity with Asian Americans or culture of origin in one sample, and a small negative correlation (.16) between cultural identity with European Americans and cultural identity with Asian Americans in the other sample. Cultural identity with the culture of origin decreased as generation status increased. But cultural identity with Asian Americans or European Americans had no association with generation status. Their cultural identity scale appears to capture identification with the majority group well, including wordings such as ‘‘part of’’, ‘‘in common with’’, and ‘‘identify with’’ European Americans. But using the same wordings to capture in-group ethnic identity does not grasp the essence of pride and affirmation for an ethnic membership which was already given. In-group ethnic identity is fundamentally at the level of feeling ‘‘happy’’, ‘‘good’’, ‘‘pride’’, ‘‘strong sense of belonging’’ or ‘‘strong attachment’’ with one’s ascribed ethnic group (words in quotations are from the MEIM scale), whereas out-group identity with the dominant majority group takes on the nature of wanting to and being able to identify and fit in. Therefore, valid measurements of in-group ethnic identity and identification with the majority out-group require different wordings, albeit both should capture the attitudinal and belonging core of identity. Although most of other studies in the interethnic literature did not include an explicit measure of identification with the majority group, acculturation studies following the bidimensional model typically include measures of identification with or orientation to the host society, as well as ethnic identity or orientation. 1.2. Ethnic identity and identification with the larger society Acculturation scholars, notably Berry (Berry, 1997; Berry et al., 1989), contributed to the theorization of duality of ethnic identity and identification with the larger society and helped social scientific studies on ethnic minorities to grow out of the unidimensional model of either ethnic maintenance or assimilation. Minority individuals’ orientation or identity is popularly broken down into four types: integration, separation, assimilation, or marginalization, depending on the level of identification in the two dimensions (Berry, 1997). Ward and Rana-Deuba (1999) cogently articulated that statistically treating the identities as continuous dimensions or as discrete categories of acculturation type depends on the purpose of the research. Since this research concerns the underlying identity dimensions, recent studies which assessed the identities with continuous measures are reviewed, with attention particularly paid to how they framed the comparison group to ethnic identity.

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Tsai, Ying, and Lee (2000) surveyed Chinese American college students, who were broken down into three categories: American-born, immigration age no greater than 12, and immigration age greater than 12. They examined Chinese identity and American identity, which were both measured with one-item statements ‘‘Overall, I am Chinese’’ and ‘‘Overall, I am American’’, as well as attitudes and behaviors in various domains with respect to these two cultural groups. American-born Chinese showed no correlation between the two identities, whereas first-generation Chinese Americans showed small to moderate negative correlations (.33 and .26) between the two. The three groups of Chinese American respondents did not differ in their orientation to the Chinese culture, but the group who immigrated after the age of 12 reported weaker orientation to the American culture. Their scales used the terms ‘‘Chinese’’ and ‘‘American’’. Although they did not further explicate these two terms, they mentioned ‘‘socializing with European Americans more’’ as indicative of greater acculturation into American culture (p. 308). Ryder, Alden, and Paulhus (2000) reported three survey studies of cultural identity and orientation of mostly Chinese Canadians, using their Vancouver Index of Acculturation scale. The correlations between heritage cultural orientation and ‘‘North American’’ cultural orientation were either not significant or small and negative among firstgeneration immigrants in Study 3. While using ‘‘heritage culture’’ to refer to one’s ethnic culture for a general purpose, their scale used ‘‘North American’’ or ‘‘typical North American’’ to refer to Canadian culture. It was not explained why some items added the term ‘‘typical’’. Dona and Berry (1994) used the terms ‘‘Canadian culture’’ or ‘‘society’’ in their measures of acculturation attitude and experience of Central American refugees in Toronto. They did not report the correlation between the two acculturation dimensions. Nesdale (2002) used the term ‘‘Australian society’’ in their acculturation study of immigrants from Vietnam, Hong Kong, and New Zealand. However, Nesdale also used the phrase ‘‘Anglo Australian culture’’ in the article. Nesdale found no correlation between orientation to one’s ethnic group and orientation to Australian society. In studies which incorporated four separate scales to measure the four acculturation types, the labels used included ‘‘overall US culture’’ (Ting-Toomey et al., 2000), ‘‘American’’ (Pham & Harris, 2001), and ‘‘Canadian society’’ (Berry et al., 1989). Although Nguyen and von Eye (2002) used the term ‘‘American’’ in their acculturation scale with Vietnamese youth in the US, they interpreted it as being limited to ‘‘mainstream, Anglo-American culture’’. They pointed out the difficulty in defining ‘‘American involvement’’. Hence, many acculturation studies presented the entire country or society such as ‘‘America’’ or ‘‘American society’’ as the comparison group to ethnic identity, but sometimes modified it with ‘‘overall’’ or ‘‘typical’’ or implicitly equated it with the dominant group. Such wording inconsistency and semantic ambiguity pose two methodological and conceptual problems. The first problem is simply inconsistency in wordings within a scale, such as using both ‘‘North American’’ and ‘‘typical North American’’ (Ryder et al., 2000). These two labels may not represent the same category to some minority individuals, with the former possibly meaning a collective identity without referring to a specific race or ethnicity and the latter possibly meaning the dominant group such as White North Americans. Terminological consistency ought to be maintained. The second problem is the ambiguity of the researchers’ intended meaning with the terms. Although ‘‘American’’ was presented in the scale, some researchers interpreted it as

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European/Anglo-American (Nguyen & von Eye, 2002; Tsai et al., 2000). But these two studies did not measure their respondents’ construal of ‘‘American’’ nor provide evidence of the respondents’ White interpretation of ‘‘American’’. In fact, most studies did not explicitly distinguish the dominant majority group and the overall society. With the majority group being only one of the groups, albeit the dominant one, in a diverse society, such conceptual and semantic ambiguity suffers from operational confounding and inability to tease apart participants’ intentions from researchers’ imposition. Therefore, it is the primary objective of this article to expose this issue under the light and highlight the importance of either explicitly framing the meaning of a society or measuring responses to both the society and the dominant group. The latter is the approach endorsed in this research because independently measuring responses to the society and the dominant group allows all possible relationships between the two to emerge. Ethnic composition and dynamics of the US society and many other immigrantreceiving societies is evolving in objective reality and is perceived in heterogeneous ways by different groups and individuals. Measuring responses to both the society and the dominant group will help understand the relationship between the two and allow detection of regional, group and individual differences and changes in social structure and interethnic dynamics. 1.3. Ethnic identity and national identity A line of research explicitly operationalized orientation to the larger society by focusing on the concept of national identity. Phinney and Devich-Navarro (1997) interviewed 52 African American and 46 Mexican American high-school students regarding their sense of being American. Although all the adolescents were American born, their interview responses expressed a wide range of views about being American, from a strong identification with America as part of a blended bicultural identity to a denial of being American in a separated identity. In another survey study, African American high-school students showed a small negative correlation (.14) between ethnic identity and American identity (Phinney, Cantu, & Kurtz, 1997). The Latino respondents showed no correlation between the two. American identity was measured with a one-item question ‘‘how strongly do you think of yourself as American?’’. About 55% of Asian American and 42% of Latino American college students surveyed by Weisskirch (2005) reported themselves as being not a ‘‘typical’’ American, compared to only about 10% among Whites. Asian American respondents who perceived themselves as typical American and those who did not perceive so did not differ in their level of ethnic identity measured with Phinney’s (1992) MEIM scale. Latino American respondents who perceived themselves as not typical Americans scored higher on the affirmation and belonging subscale but not on the achievement subscale of MEIM, compared to those who perceived themselves as typical. Setting aside the question of what is ‘‘typical’’ American, the issue is not simply whether minority individuals perceived themselves as less American than White Americans. Cheryan and Monin (2005) reported five studies which elegantly exposed the self–other perception discrepancy in American identity of Asian Americans. Their Asian American college student respondents reported the same level of self-perceived American identity as the White American respondents, but reported lower level of other Americans’ perception

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of their Americanness (Study 2b). About 34% of the Asian American respondents in Study 3 reported being mistaken as from a foreign country or not a native English speaker. When their American identity was threatened experimentally, Asian American students showed efforts to demonstrate their American cultural knowledge, reported greater level of American cultural practice, and felt angry and offended (Studies 4 and 5). However, both Asian and White respondents gave higher American ratings to unknown White faces than to Asian faces even though both types of face were labeled with American birth places. These results suggest these young adult Asian Americans felt as strongly as their White counterparts toward their national identity but clearly realized the deficiency in their desired social acknowledgement of their Americanness, and to a certain degree internalized the less Americanness of Asian entities. Similarly, African Americans in a study reported perceiving themselves as American but lower perception of their Americanness by other people (Barlow, Taylor, & Lambert, 2000). They felt a certain degree of exclusion from the national identity by White Americans. A similar sense of rejection by White Americans was also revealed among Phinney and Devich-Navarro’s (1997) African American interviewees. However, some research suggests that in regions with a large presence of an ethnic minority group, ethnic identity may constitute part of national identity. A survey of Mexican-American adolescents in Southern California showed positive correlation between ethnic identity and national identity as American (Phinney, Horenczyk, Liebkind, & Vedder, 2001). Phinney et al. suggested the large community of Mexican Americans and its strong influence in the Southern California region as the explanation for such correlation. Rumbaut’s (1994) survey of over 5000 middle-school minority students revealed, for example, that the Cuban American identity constituted the Americanness for Cuban adolescents in Miami, where Cuban Americans were the majority. The underlying mechanism suggested is strong identity with an ethnic minority group, which constitutes a substantial share of the population of a prominent region in a country, may provide a sufficient basis for supporting national identity. Relatively established compound identity categories such as Mexican Americans or Asian Americans may provide a readily available dual-identity concept with one component specifying the ethnic group and the other specifying the nationality. When there is a large and strong community socially sustaining such a compound identity, one’s overall ethnic identity may provide a strong basis for supporting both ethnic and national identities. The emerging body of research on bicultural identity supports this view of ethnicitynationality duality. Rumbaut (1994) found that the majority of US-born minority adolescents used bicultural labels such as Vietnamese-American to describe themselves. Foreign-born adolescents were less likely to use bicultural labels and were more likely to identify themselves by the nation or culture of origin. Ting-Toomey (1981) also found as immigration generation increased, Chinese American students were more likely to identify themselves biculturally. Phinney and Devich-Navarro (1997) summarized bicultural identity theorizations and differentiated blended and alternating biculturals. The blended biculturals see the two cultures as non-conflicting and integrated. The alternative biculturals see them as separate and switch between the two in various situations. Benet-Martı´ nez, Leu, Lee, and Morris (2002) further conceptualized the compatibility and integration of the two cultures in bicultural identity. More recently, Benet-Martı´ nez and Haritatos (2005) proposed and through factor analysis confirmed the elements of distance

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(perceived magnitude of differences between cultures) and conflict as two distinct issues in bicultural integration. Therefore, the relationship between ethnic identity and national identity can range from negative to no relationship to positive relationship. A negative relationship may be due to feeling of rejection by the society. Lack of a relationship might suggest the perception of the two as non-overlapping. A positive relationship might reflect an integrated bicultural identity. Attitude toward the majority group should be an important factor helping to tease these patterns apart. 1.4. Hypotheses and research questions First, this research aimed to test the relationship between ethnic identity and identification with the majority group. They were measured independently according to the bidimensional model. Given that most extant studies found no or weak correlation between ethnic identity and identification with the larger society or the majority group for Asian Americans, it was hypothesized that: H1: Ethnic identity and identification with the majority group are unrelated to each other for Asian Americans. African Americans were studied in very few acculturation studies. The interethnic research usually did not contain an explicit measure of identification with the majority group. A couple of existing studies found small negative correlation between ethnic identity and American identity for African Americans (Phinney et al., 1997). Given the small amount of empirical evidence in the literature, a research question was proposed: RQ1: What is the relationship between ethnic identity and identification with the majority group for African Americans? Again, an important objective of this research was to examine how ethnic identity and identification with the majority group relate to national identity. Because the majority group and a minority ethnic group are both part of a national society, it is theoretically more stringent to examine them simultaneously for predicting national identity. Identification with the majority group may or may not constitute the entirety of national identity, begging the need to understand individual variability regarding this relationship. Ethnic identity might also positively relate to national identity, in the light of integrated bicultural identity. In order to examine the unique effects of each group identity and control for redundancy in the shared variance, identification with the majority group and ethnic identity would be analyzed simultaneously in multiple regression for predicting national identity. Such analysis would help examine how ethnic identity and identification with the majority group uniquely contributes to national identity when controlling for the effects of each other. Granted that White Americans are the majority and dominant group in the US, it was hypothesized that it would maintain positive relationship to national identity notwithstanding any effects from ethnic identity. H2: Identification with the majority group positively relates to national identity, controlling for the effect of ethnic identity.

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The literature does not provide enough evidence for guiding a hypothesis regarding the relationship between ethnic identity and national identity for Asian Americans and African Americans. Thus, a research question was formulated. RQ2: What is the relationship between ethnic identity and national identity, controlling for the effect of identification with the majority group? This question is particularly relevant for exploring the notion of a strong integrated bicultural identity. There is also no statistical analysis reported in the literature about testing interactions between ethnic identity and identification with the majority group for predicting national identity. This research would include such analysis to fill the void. Because Asian Americans immigrated in large numbers in relatively recent decades and it was found that American-born Chinese reported stronger American identity (e.g., Tsai et al., 2000) and stronger bicultural identity (Ting-Toomey, 1981), the generation status of Asian Americans would be differentiated in examination of the proposed hypotheses and research questions. African Americans have nearly the same length of history as European immigrants in the US. Thus, it is not expected that there would be a large number of firstgeneration African American immigrants in the university accessible to the author.

1.5. Ethnic identity, identification with the majority group, and self-esteem A great number of studies on acculturation and ethnic identity included personal selfesteem as a key psychological well-being variable. An extensive review on this topic is beyond the scope of this article. The dominant pattern of results in the literature is small to moderate correlation between ethnic identity and personal self-esteem: for example, positive and moderate correlations for all minority respondents and Whites (when Whites were the minority in the school) (Phinney, 1992), positive regression coefficients among Black, Latino, and White students (Phinney et al., 1997), positive correlation among Asian Americans (Lee, 2003) and among Vietnamese immigrants in Australia (Nesdale, Rooney, & Smith, 1997). Considering the widely reported positive correlation between ethnic identity and self-esteem and the theorization that positive attitude toward one’s group should enhance personal self-esteem (Crocker, Luhtanen, Blaine, & Broadnax, 1994), it was hypothesized: H3: Ethnic identity positively relates to personal self-esteem for Asian Americans and African Americans. Acknowledging the importance of both ethnic culture and mainstream culture, Phinney (1990) called for ‘‘consideration not only of the strength of ethnic identity but also of the relationship to the majority culture’’ for understanding the psychological adjustment of minority individuals (p. 510). Thus, this research also explored the relationship between identification with the majority group and personal self-esteem. RQ3: What is the relationship between identification with the majority group and personal self-esteem?

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2. Method 2.1. Participants Respondents of the study were 91 Asian American students (34 men, 57 women) and 115 African American students (51 men, 64 women) in a large public university in the state of Ohio in the US. The respondents were recruited through email from courses in communication and student organizations targeting Asian Americans or African Americans. The Asian American or African American identity was ensured by selecting respondents who chose the category of Asian or Black/African American in the ethnicity question and who chose the category of US citizen in the nationality question. The questionnaire was part of a larger data collection project which consisted of other measures unrelated to this research. Students enrolled in communication courses received extra course credit as reward. Other respondents were paid US$10. As of the autumn term of 2005, 5.2% of the student population of this public university was Asian American, 7.1% was African American, and 85% was White American. Thus, Whites were the predominant majority. The vast majority of the undergraduate students were in-state residents. According to the US 2000 census data, also 85% of the Ohio population was White, 1.2% being Asian, and 11.5% being African American (US Census, 2000). 2.2. Procedure The recruitment email contained a hyperlink to a Web site containing the questionnaire for the study. Students completed the questionnaire online. Computer ownership and Internet access were ubiquitous in this university. The measures for this research were randomly placed in the survey with other unrelated measures interspersed between them. 2.3. Measures 2.3.1. Demographic variables Demographic variables included ethnicity, gender, age, and nationality. An additional question asked about the immigration generation status, following the wordings by Suinn, Rickard-Figueroa, Lew, and Vigil (1987). The first generation was defined as ‘‘born in a foreign country’’. The second generation was defined as ‘‘born in the US. Either parent was born in a foreign country’’. Higher generations were worded accordingly. For firstgeneration immigrants, they were asked to write down their age at the time of immigration. 2.3.2. Ethnic identity Phinney’s (1992) MEIM scale was used to assess ethnic identity. Seven-point scales were used, anchored with ‘‘strongly disagree’’ and ‘‘strongly agree’’. Principal Component Analysis of the 14 items of MEIM yielded three factors with eigenvalues greater than one in both the Asian American sample and the African American sample. College student samples in previous studies also yielded three factors (Lee & Yoo, 2004; Phinney, 1992). The five items of the Affirmation and Belonging subscale consistently loaded on one factor in both samples, with eigenvalues being 1.58 (accounting for 11.1% of variance) in the Asian American sample and being 1.92 (accounting for 16.0% of variance) in the African

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American sample. The seven items of the Achievement subscale and the two items of the Behavior subscale did not load on the other two factors according to the breakdown of the subscales. Lee and Yoo (2004) found similar patterns. The Affirmation and Belonging subscale had high internal reliability, Cronbach’s a ¼ .88 for Asian Americans; a ¼ .87 for African Americans. Thus, the core attitudinal component of MEIM appears to have consistent internal reliability and meaning structure for both the Asian and the African American samples. Because this research focused on the attitudinal core of identity rather than an expansive treatment involving cognitive achievement and behavioral interactions, which would invite other contingency factors, ethnic identity was construed and operationalized with the Affirmation and Belonging subscale of MEIM (in short, still referred to as ethnic identity). Responses to the five items were averaged to form the composite measure of ethnic identity. Higher number means stronger ethnic identity. 2.3.3. Identification with the majority group Among the two scales measuring identification with White Americans by Chung et al. (2004) and Oetting and Beauvais (1991), Chung et al.’s 6-item scale appeared to have better face and construct validity for its direct focus on identification. Two sample items are ‘‘How much do you feel you have in common with White Americans?’’ and ‘‘How much do you identify with the White American culture?’’ Their original wording of ‘‘European American’’ was replaced by ‘‘White American’’ because undergraduate student informants in the university consistently commented that European Americans mean Europeans who themselves immigrated to the US. White or Caucasian was the term used by either minority students or White American students. The only other wording change occurred from ‘‘how proud are you to be a part of European Americans?’’ to ‘‘How much do you feel you are part of the White American culture?’’ because the original wording is doublebarreled and being part of the White American group or even culture is not given for nonWhite Americans. Seven-point scales were used with appropriate anchors for each item. One negatively worded item was reverse coded. Higher number means stronger identification with the majority group. The scale had good internal reliability for Asian Americans (a ¼ .82) and acceptable reliability for African Americans (a ¼ .76). Responses to all six items were averaged to form the composite measure of identification with the majority group. 2.3.4. National identity Phinney et al.’s (1997) one-item measure ‘‘How strongly do you think of yourself as American?’’ was used. A seven-point scale was used, anchored with ‘‘very weakly’’ and ‘‘very strongly’’. Higher number means stronger national identity as American. 2.3.5. Self-esteem Rosenberg’s (1965) Self-Esteem Scale is probably the most used measure of personal self-esteem in ethnic identity and acculturation research. It was also used in this study. Seven-point scales were used, anchored with ‘‘strongly disagree’’ and ‘‘strongly agree’’. Negatively worded items were reverse coded. It had high internal reliability among Asian Americans (a ¼ .90) and among African Americans (a ¼ .86). Responses to the 10 items were averaged to form the composite index of self-esteem. Higher number means higher self-esteem.

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2.4. Data analysis Descriptive analysis was conducted first to discern potential generational differences among Asian Americans, compare Asian Americans and African Americans, and examine bivariate correlations among the measures. The correlational data provided basis for testing H1 and RQ1 regarding the relationships between ethnic identity and identification with the majority group. Hierarchical multiple regression was conducted to test H2 and RQ2, regressing national identity on ethnic identity and identification with the majority group. The second step of hierarchical regression analysis added the interaction term between ethnic identity and identification with the majority group, a common method in regression interaction analysis (Cohen, Cohen, West, & Aiken, 2003). The same procedure of hierarchical regression analysis was performed regarding self-esteem to test H3 and RQ3. 3. Results 3.1. Descriptive results Among 91 Asian American respondents, 34 (37.4%) were first-generation immigrants with a mean age at immigration being 6.24 (SD ¼ 4.11). Only two people immigrated at an age older than 12, specifically 15 and 15 and one-half years old (12 was treated as a watershed age of development by Tsai et al., 2000). The remaining Asian American respondents included 55 (60.4%) who identified as second-generation, one as fourthgeneration, and one as fifth-generation. Thus, two subsamples of Asian Americans were created: foreign-born (n ¼ 34) and American-born (n ¼ 57). All African American respondents were American-born. Gender or age did not make any difference for the identity or self-esteem variables and thus were not considered in further analyses. The foreign-born Asian Americans did not differ from the American-born Asian Americans in ethnic identity, but at marginal significance had weaker identification with Table 1 Means, standard deviations (in parentheses), and T-test comparisons for the main variables between foreign-born Asian Americans, American-born Asian Americans, and African Americans

Foreign-born Asian Americans American-born Asian Americans T-test for the two groups above African Americans T-test for African Americans and Foreign-born Asian Americans T-test for African Americans and American-born Asian Americans

Ethnic identity

Identification with White Americans

National identity

Selfesteem

5.71 (.90) 5.55 (1.25) t ¼ .72 p ¼ .48

5.14 (.91) 5.49 (1.00) t ¼ 1.66 p ¼ .10

5.06 (1.65) 5.67 (1.49) t ¼ 1.81 P ¼ .07

5.47 (1.18) 5.57 (1.12) t ¼ .42 p ¼ .68

6.08 (.97) t ¼ 1.95 p ¼ .05 t ¼ 2.79 po.01

4.17 (.99) t ¼ 5.09 po.001 t ¼ 8.17 po.001

5.83 (1.29) t ¼ 2.86 Po.01 t ¼ .73 P ¼ .47

5.99 (.96) t ¼ 2.62 po.01 t ¼ 2.52 po.05

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White Americans and weaker American identity than the latter group. Regression analyses for predicting national identity and self-esteem also showed different patterns of results for the two groups. Thus, further analyses presented the results of these two groups separately. Table 1 presents the means, standard deviations, and T-test statistics for comparing the two groups. Differences between the two Asian American groups suggest being born in the US did not incur a decline of ethnic identity but possibly an increase in national identity and identification with the majority group. Such a pattern further suggests that ethnic identity is not polar-opposite of identification with the majority group or national identity. The two Asian American groups did not differ in self-esteem. The African American sample reported higher ethnic identity, higher self-esteem, but lower identification with White Americans than either Asian American group (also see Table 1). African Americans did not differ from American-born Asian Americans in national identity, but scored higher than foreign-born Asian Americans. High ethnic identity and self-esteem among African Americans is consistent with previous studies in the literature (e.g., Phinney, 1992). African Americans’ lower identification with White Americans probably reflects the influence of the long history of racism and oppression of Blacks and enduring Black–White tensions. However, African Americans did not have lower national identity. This suggests national identity is not identical as identification with the majority group. Relatively higher identification with White Americans among Asian Americans may be partially attributable to the small and relatively new Asian American population in Ohio. Interestingly, American identity was only lower for foreign-born Asian Americans and did not differ between American-born Asians and African Americans, suggesting being born in the country granted strong foundation for national identity. 3.2. Correlation between ethnic identity and identification with the majority group Bivariate correlations among all the measures are presented in Table 2. Pearson correlation between ethnic identity and identification with the majority group was nearly zero for either Asian American group, but had a small negative coefficient which approached significance (p ¼ .08) for African Americans. Therefore, ethnic identity appeared to be unrelated to identification with White Americans for Asian Americans. Hypothesis 1 was supported. Addressing Research Question 1, ethnic identity and Table 2 Bivariate correlations between the main variables Ethnic identity Ethnic identity Identification with White Americans National identity Self-esteem

Identification with White Americans

National identity

Self-esteem

.03/.03

.03/.26* .55***/.62***

.44**/.39** .10/.37**

.17a .04 .62***

.44*** .04

.32a/.35** .00

Note: The top right half presents correlation coefficients for foreign-born Asian Americans (before the forward slash sign) and American-born Asian Americans (after the forward slash sign). The bottom left half presents correlation coefficients for African Americans. a po.10, *po.05, **po.01, ***po.001.

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identification with White Americans had a small negative correlation at marginal significance for African Americans, possibly reflecting some effect of the Black–White tensions. But this correlation was not significant at a conventional level of .05 and was small in magnitude. Overall, these results provide quite strong support to the orthogonal model because polar opposites stipulate high negative correlations. 3.3. Predicting national identity with ethnic identity and identification with the majority group Hierarchical multiple regression analysis was run to test the main effects concerned by Hypothesis 2 and Research Question 2 and to explore interaction between ethnic identity and identification with the majority group for predicting national identity. Both predictor variables were mean centered first. Then the product term between the two was created. The main effect terms were entered in Step 1 of the hierarchical regression. The product term for testing the interaction was entered in Step 2. Regression analysis for foreign-born Asian Americans showed that only identification with White Americans had a strong and positive relationship with national identity. Ethnic identity did not have a direct main effect or an indirect moderating effect. Table 3 presents the regression results for both Asian American groups. For American-born Asian Americans, however, ethnic identity showed a significant positive main effect and a significant interaction effect. Identification with White Americans also had a strong and positive main effect on national identity. Controlling for the significant and strong role of identification with White Americans and additionally controlling for the interaction term, ethnic identity maintained a significant, positive and direct main effect on national identity. It suggests that to a certain degree the more Asian Americans identify with their Table 3 Hierarchical regression analysis results for predicting national identity for the two Asian American groups R2

Variable

B

b

Foreign-born Asian Americans (n ¼ 34) Step 1 Ethnic identity Identification with White Americans

.09 .99

.05 .55***

Step 2 Ethnic identity Identification with White Americans Interaction term

.26 1.00 .24

.14 .55*** .15

.29 .91

.24* .61***

.25 .97 .33

.21* .65*** .29**

American-born Asian Americans (n ¼ 57) Step 1 Ethnic identity Identification with White Americans Step 2 Ethnic identity Identification with White Americans Interaction term *po.05, **po.01, ***po.001.

.30**

.32**

.44***

.52***

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Table 4 Hierarchical regression analysis results for predicting national identity for the African American sample (n ¼ 115) Variable

B

R2

b

Step 1 Ethnic identity Identification with White Americans

.16 .60

.12 .46***

.21***

Step 2 Ethnic identity Identification with White Americans Interaction term

.16 .61 .03

.12 .46*** .02

.21***

***po.001.

ethnicity, the more they identify with being American. It implies that the bicultural identity of Asian American carries a considerable weight of Americanness. The interaction effect indicated that as ethnic identity increased, the strength that identification with White Americans had for predicting national identity decreased. Hence, ethnic identity showed an additional effect suppressing the role of identification with the majority group for supporting national identity. Notably, the regression model including ethnic identity, identification with White Americans, and their interaction term predicted 52% of the variance of national identity. For the African American sample, the pattern of the results resembled that for foreignborn Asian Americans (Table 4 presents the regression results). Identification with White Americans had a significant main effect positively predicting national identity. Ethnic identity did not have a significant main effect or a moderating effect. This result does not suggest ethnic identity was against national identity because it did not have a negative relationship with national identity. It does suggest that increase in the African American identity did not incur an increase in American identity and further implies that African American identity and American identity might be distinctly different concepts. The R2’s were notably smaller in the African American sample than in the Asian American groups. This suggests other factors need to be considered for understanding national identity among African Americans. In summary, Hypothesis 2 was supported. Among all groups, identification with White Americans, the majority group in the US, positively related to national identity as American, controlling for any effects of ethnic identity. The answer to Research Question 2 was more complex. Interestingly, for American-born Asian Americans, ethnic identity added unique positive contribution to predicting national identity and additionally suppressed the strength of the relationship between identification with White Americans and national identity. Ethnic identity did not have any significant relationship with national identity for foreign-born Asian Americans or African Americans. 3.4. Predicting self-esteem with ethnic identity and identification with the majority group Confirming Hypothesis 3, ethnic identity significantly and positively predicted personal self-esteem for both Asian American groups and African Americans (Tables 5 and 6 present the regression results). Interestingly, identification with White Americans also had a significant positive relationship with self-esteem among American-born Asian

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Table 5 Hierarchical regression analysis results for predicting self-esteem for the two Asian American groups Variable

B

R2

b

Foreign-born Asian Americans (n ¼ 34) Step 1 Ethnic identity Identification with White Americans

.58 .11

.44** .09

Step 2 Ethnic identity Identification with White Americans Interaction term

.82 .11 .33

.62** .08 .29

American-born Asian Americans (n ¼ 57) Step 1 Ethnic identity Identification with White Americans

.34 .40

.38** .36**

.34 .41 .07

.37** .37** .08

Step 2 Ethnic identity Identification with White Americans Interaction term

.21*

.26*

.28***

.29***

*po.05, **po.01, ***po.001.

Table 6 Hierarchical regression analysis results for predicting self-esteem for the African American sample (n ¼ 115) Variable

B

R2

b

Step 1 Ethnic identity Identification with White Americans

.63 .14

.64*** .14a

.40***

Step 2 Ethnic identity Identification with White Americans Interaction term

.63 .14 .01

.64*** .14a .01

.40***

a

po.10, ***po.001.

Americans. Identification with White Americans positively predicted self-esteem at marginal significance (p ¼ .06) for African Americans. There were no interaction effects between ethnic identity and identification with White Americans. Therefore, these results supported Hypothesis 3 showing a positive relationship between ethnic identity and personal self-esteem for both African Americans and Asian Americans. For Americanborn Asian Americans and approaching significance for African Americans, identification with the majority group also positively related to self-esteem. 4. Discussion To better understand the identity of minority individuals, ethnic identity and identification with the majority group were both examined, as suggested by Phinney

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(1990). Furthermore, the author argued that identification with the majority group is a different concept from, albeit related to, identification with the overall society, specifically national identity as operationalized in this research. The differentiation of identification with the majority group and national identity is crucial for understanding and detecting differences among individuals, groups and regions and across time in any society with diverse ethnicities and evolving interethnic dynamics. The results of this study with Asian American and African American college students in a large public US Midwestern university shed light on understanding the relationships among these three identity concepts. The lack of correlation between ethnic identity and identification with White Americans in the Asian American sample lent strong support to the bidimensional model and is consistent with most previous studies with Asian populations. The weak negative correlation with marginal significance in the African American sample also lent some support to the bidimensional model, especially considering the prominence of Black–White tensions in US history. As expected, identification with White Americans positively related to national identity for both Asian Americans and African Americans. It suggests that White Americans as the dominant majority group carry substantial weight for defining national identity. But identification with White Americans did not fully account for national identity, which also received some predictive support from ethnic identity. Although ethnic identity did not have a significant relationship with national identity for African Americans or foreignborn Asian Americans, it added unique positive contribution to predicting national identity for American-born Asian Americans. In addition, ethnic identity suppressed the strength that identification with the majority group had for predicting national identity for American-born Asian Americans. This result suggests that Asian Americans who were born in the US may attribute substantial weights to both the ethnic component of Asian and the national component of American in their compound bicultural identity. Thus, when their ethnic identity is strong, their national identity is likely to be strong, and the role that identification with White Americans plays for supporting national identity becomes weaker. Foreign-born Asian Americans may not have cultivated as strong a sense of American identity as their American-born counterparts, reflected in T-test difference with marginal significance and consistent with findings by Tsai et al. (2000). This difference may account for lack of significant relationship between ethnic identity and national identity and further suggests less tight integration between Asian ethnicity and American nationality among these first-generation immigrants. Their Asian ethnicity and American nationality acquired through immigration may be two distinct concepts, but are not inversely related due to no significant relationships, positive or negative. Similarly, absence of relationships between ethnic identity and national identity in the African American sample suggests ethnic identity and national identity may function overall as two independent concepts for African Americans. However, the implications are different from those for foreign-born Asian Americans. It is possible that some African Americans view being Black and being American as distinct, and others view them even as being inversely related and have a White construal of Americanness. White construal of Americanness and feeling of rejection were revealed by some African American adolescent interviewees in Phinney and Devich-Navarro (1997). But other African Americans may possess bicultural integration incorporating both being Black and being American, a

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pattern also discerned among some African American interviewees by Phinney and Devich-Navarro. Thus, when African Americans were examined as a group, it is likely that they overall did not show a significant relationship between ethnic identity and national identity. How individuals treat their ethnicity and their nationality needs to be explicitly assessed to unpack the underlying distinct patterns. Consistent with most studies in the literature, ethnic identity positively related to personal self-esteem for Asian Americans and African Americans. Identification with White Americans did not relate to self-esteem for foreign-born Asian Americans, but positively related to self-esteem for American-born Asian Americans, even after controlling for the effect of ethnic identity. The positive relationship between identification with White Americans and self-esteem was approaching significance for African Americans. The value of human dignity and ethnic pride has laid the foundation for positively linking ethnic identity, as collective group esteem, to personal self-esteem (Crocker et al., 1994). Such a positive relationship received consistent and strong support from the data of two minority groups in this research. Although Phinney (1990) suggested the need for incorporating identification with the majority group in the studies of self-esteem, very little theorization was offered in terms of how identification with the majority group would relate to personal self-esteem. The literature only suggested that one-sided identification with the majority out-group indicates internalized shame and supposedly lower self-esteem. But existence of both ethnic identity and identification with the majority group may indicate an orientation of bicultural integration involving ethnic pride and blending in the mainstream culture. Furthermore, as correlational data do not necessitate causality, it is possible that high selfesteem motivates minority individuals to succeed in the mainstream culture; or being able to blend in the mainstream culture may boost personal self-esteem. More research is needed to disentangle this relationship. 4.1. Limitations and suggestions for future research The results of this study suggest American-born Asian Americans are more likely to possess an integrated bicultural identity, compared to foreign-born Asian Americans or African Americans. Bicultural identity and particularly the degree of integration between the two identity targets need to be explicitly measured to confirm this suggested pattern. The recently developed multi-item scale measuring bicultural integration with the factors of distance and conflict (Benet-Martı´ nez & Haritatos, 2005) will be a viable measure to use. A larger sample of foreign-born Asian Americans would help test whether younger age of immigration would contribute to integrated bicultural identity. Bicultural identity and integration assessments with African Americans will also help tease apart individual differences. Integrated bicultural African Americans would be expected to exhibit positive relationship between ethnic identity and national identity, as American-born Asian Americans in this study did. Non-integrated biculturals or monocultural separated identity would predict no such positive relationship. Negative relationship might even emerge between ethnic identity and national identity if African American individuals feel a strong sense of rejection from the American society. Feeling of rejection and discrimination, suggested by Phinney and Devich-Navarro (1997) as indicative of the separated identity, needs to be measured to test its moderating role between ethnic identity and national identity.

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The finding of the predictive role of ethnic identity for national identity among American-born Asian Americans in this study is remarkable, considering relatively small Asian American community and short Asian American history in the Midwestern state of Ohio. Supposedly, regions with large and strong communities of a particular ethnic group should be more conducive to the cultivation of integrated bicultural identity. Thus, future research should test whether there are similar relationships between ethnic identity and national identity in areas with much larger and stronger Asian American communities, such as many areas in California. However, growth of a separated identity might also be possible in an area with high concentration of an ethnic group. Therefore, comparative studies between regions would be very valuable. Although single-item measures of American identity were useful and valid in previous research (e.g., Phinney et al., 1997; Tsai et al., 2000) and the measure in this research showed sensible and interpretable results, more elaborate multi-item measurements are needed to capture national identity. In measurement development of American, or broadly, national identity, more conceptualization is needed to parse out the psychological, cultural, and political aspects of national identity. Exclusive measurements on identity served the purpose of this research. Future research can link the core identity component to other domains of interethnic relations and acculturation, including interpersonal communication, media consumption, organizational affiliation, and language use. But clearer conceptual frameworks for differentiating these domains need to be in place to avoid indiscriminantly lumping orientations and preferences across diverse domains in one large sum. Such a sum does not equate to identity conceptually, as argued in this article, because activities in many domains involve consideration of other factors and contextual contingencies, such as community size and social and economic conditions. Ethnic identity and identification with the majority group constitute two important components of minority individuals’ identity in the society. However, one’s subjective construal of a society may even include more components and variations, including a sum of all ethnicities, a combination of minority ethnicities, a raceless scheme, or a whole stressing interethnic interactions. Research guided by and testing different frameworks of identity and interethnic relations will contribute greatly to our understanding of identity in ethnically diverse societies. 4.2. Conclusion This research empirically demonstrated the conceptual distinction between identification with the majority group and national identity by showing that bicultural ethnic identity can also contribute to national identity and dilute the prominence of the majority group for supporting national identity. It clearly illustrates the importance and necessity of considering both ethnic identity and identification with the majority group and statistically comparing them in multiple regression analysis for understanding minority individuals’ identity within a nation or society. Interaction analysis adds further value to understand the intricate dynamics between ethnic identity and identification with the majority group, which represent two most prominent groups for minorities. More research with detailed analysis of bicultural identity and bicultural integration will further help understand their relationships. Confirming many studies in the recent decades, this study clearly supported the

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