Being two people at the same time: bicultural identity integration affects intergroup prejudice

Abstract

Biculturals internalize two cultural identities and tend to refer both of their cultural affiliations as me or us. The current research examines whether the implicit attitudes of Asian American biculturals are influenced by cultural cues and perceived conflicts between their two cultural identities. In two experiments, we found that biculturals assimilated their cultural group attitudes to cultural cues, favoring Asians more when exposed to East Asian cultural cues versus American cues. However, this was the case only when biculturals were high in their bicultural identity integration (high BII). Those who perceived more conflict between their cultural identities (low BII) were more likely to anchor on their existing cultural attitudes without change, suggesting underlying dual identity struggles. Together, these findings suggest that exposure to different cultural information can generate divergent responses to biculturals' intergroup attitudes, depending on how integrated their two identities are.