The Role of Culture and Racial Appearance when Majority Group Members Form Impressions of Immigrant Racial Minority Groups

Abstract

<p>Race and enculturation are often inextricably linked when investigating how impressions are formed of others. Race has long been held as a “primitive” category, along with age and sex. It has been included as a primitive category because, like a person’s age and sex, it is seen to be immediately discernible as a category upon which we can base assessments of, and form impressions about, others. It is also the basis of social problems such as racial prejudice and racial discrimination, and often incorrect assumptions about individuals and groups are made based on racial stereotypes. This is a serious problem in a world that has increasing immigration and globalisation. The present research investigated how host societies assess immigrants to their country, and how majority group members form impressions of minority group members. Established theories of multiculturalism, acculturation, stereotypes and nonverbal accent have been sourced upon which to base examination of the roles that race and culture play in assessments of immigrant minority groups living in countries with racially and culturally different majorities.</p> <p>The first chapter introduces concepts and theories of race, enculturation, multiculturalism, acculturation, and stereotyping. It introduces the theory of nonverbal accent and its potential for revealing subtle cues about enculturation. A review of the literature on the effects of race and culture as cues for categorising others provides background information for the overarching research question of this thesis: can culture override racial appearance when majority groups form impressions of racial minority outgroups? Six separate empirical studies were conducted to arrive at the results which are reported in journal article format and comprise three separate journal articles reported in Chapters 2, 3 and 4. The final chapter incorporates the overall findings which are discussed in terms of relevance to modern immigrant societies. </p> <p>The first article, which is presented as Chapter 2, reports two separate studies conducted in Australia. Both studies explored the attitudes of the host population towards immigrants of different racial appearances who adopted various acculturation strategies when settling into Australia, investigating the influence of race and culture on impression formation. In Study 1 (<i>N=</i>142) survey results demonstrated a strong effect of acculturation strategy on the impressions formed about the immigrant targets, while racial appearance had no effect. The second study (<i>N =</i> 1,051) intended to repeat the findings of the first study but with a more broadly representative sample of Australians. This study also removed the national labels that were offered in the first study, to reduce the possibility that ratings could be based on national stereotypes rather than race. Results confirmed that the acculturation strategy adopted by the immigrant targets was more influential than race in how participants rated them, and that integration and assimilation were the most favoured acculturation strategies.</p> <p>The next article (Chapter 3) sought to understand how Australians see themselves as a people. National self-stereotypes (descriptors that national ingroup members use to describe the character of their own nation) have been found to be stable over time and resilient to change (Wilson, 2006; Lueptow, Garovich-Szabo, & Lueptow, 2001; Kawakami & Dovidio, 2001). However, they have also been found to be unstable and influenced by the political and social climate in which they are found (Haslam, Oakes, Reynolds, Mein, 1999). Chapter 3 reports a survey which was conducted on 157 Australians to assess current self-stereotypes. The aim was to assess the current self-stereotypes nominated by Australians, and to ascertain if consensus about the stereotypes Australians attribute to themselves has changed in the last two decades. The results revealed that some long held Australian stereotype traits have remained stable. However, the popularity of other traits was found to have dropped since the mid 1990s and since the last Katz-Braly checklist survey which was conducted in 2006. A trend for decreasing uniformity in Australian self-stereotype consensus, which was observed by Haslam et al. (1999), seems to have abated with results demonstrating a return to the rate of the mid 1990s. </p> <p>The third article, presented as Chapter 4, reports the results of three studies, which further explored the subtle influences of culture and race on impression formation, as well as the influence of individual differences in attitudes towards race. The first study surveyed 205 Australians and the results demonstrated participants could detect Australian nationals from foreign national individuals by briefly observing their enculturated nonverbal accent – with no social interaction. The second study surveyed 212 Australian participants to explore the effect that individual differences in attitude towards race (lay theories of race) have on the ability to perceive subtle enculturation cues via nonverbal accent. All targets were of Asian racial appearance, with half being Australian nationals while the other half were foreign nationals. Results did not show any significant differences between the lay theories of racial essentialism and social constructionism. </p> <p>The third study in this chapter reports survey results from Australian participants (<i>N =</i> 208) which explored the part stereotypes play in how impressions are formed by national majority group members about racial minority groups. Participants attributed Australian stereotypes to their fellow cultural ingroup members (i.e., fellow Australians) without knowing they were observing two groups of targets (i.e., fellow ingroup nationals and foreign outgroup). This study also investigated the effect for individual differences in lay theory of race. The target individuals all presented a minority Asian racial appearance, and results showed that while there was not any difference between the two lay theories in how participants attributed stereotypes, there was a significant three-way interaction effect. This revealed a weaker effect for participants who endorsed racial essentialism, demonstrating that while nonverbal accent affected how both groups allocated Australian stereotypes in the same way, it had a weaker effect for participants who endorsed racial essentialism.</p> <p>The research findings presented throughout this thesis offer insight into the perception of race and enculturation when national majority members form first impressions of racial minority groups , specifically by teasing apart the potential difference between a person’s racial appearance and their actual ethnic enculturation. While previous research has examined how we stereotype others according to their “ethnicity”, often it has coupled racial appearance with ethnic enculturation, without separating the influence on attitudes of the two cues. The findings from the current research have implications for how we structure and behave in multicultural and immigrant based societies, understanding that while many cultures may exist and thrive in multicultural nations, racial appearance is not a criterion for the inclusion or exclusion of others to the mainstream cultural society. As majority group members come to understand and become aware of the subtle cues of cultural belonging, it will lead to more effective strategies in the promotion of inclusion and positive perceptions of minority group members who call immigrant nations home.</p>