2012 Theses Bachelor's

Bicultural Individuals in a Stereotypical World: The Effects of Negative Stereotypes

Zur, Ilana

Previous research proves that individuals have a natural inclination to want to affiliate with a group. Culture, peers, and nationalities influence both the need to affiliate and the groups themselves. While all humans socially categorize themselves, the efficiency of stereotypes can shed negative effects by driving these distinctions into evaluations and prejudice of other groups. Literature has illustrated many ways in which negative stereotypes have affected members of groups, however, there is minimal research on how stereotypes specifically affect bicultural individuals juggling two strong group memberships. By turning on and off their associations with cultures based on their immediate surroundings and activations, bicultural individuals have plasticity in their ingroup associations. This experiment reveals the implicit and explicit associations of bi cultural individuals after the prime of negative stereotypes against one culture. Expected results indicate that bicultural individuals identify with the primed stereotyped group. Implications for the results are discussed, as well as potential motivators for the behavior.