The Intersectional Prototypicality Model: Understanding The Discriminatory Experiences Of Asian American Women And Men

Are Asian Americans invisible or hypervisible? Depending on the context, both types of experiences are relevant. The authors present the Intersectional Prototypicality Model (IPM), which provides a nuanced account of Asian Americans' discriminatory experiences through the intersectional lenses of race and gender. The IPM proposes that the intersection of racial and gender stereotypes influences the extent to which Asian American women and men are perceived as prototypical members of a social group or role, which in turn affects the nature of their discriminatory experiences. Hypo-prototypicality (being perceived as less representative of a social group or role) engenders marginalization. By contrast, a social group is hyper-prototypical when it is perceived to have exaggerated or excessive attributes of a prototypical member. Hyper-prototypicality produces dehumanization and objectification (e.g., objectifying women as hypersexual dating partners). Both hypo-prototypicality and hyper-prototypicality are context-specific, such that Asian American women and men can be hyper-prototypicality in one social role but hypo-prototypical in another. The authors argue that the dual constructs of hypo-prototypicality and hyper-prototypicality provide a useful explanatory framework for many contemporary discriminatory experiences, such as the omission of Asian American women in an APA Monitor on Psychology article featuring female researchers of color, the marginalization of Asian American men in dating relationships, and the disturbing representation of Asian women in pornography. The authors review the relevance of prototypicality to the model minority and perpetual foreigner stereotypes, its broader implications for racial/ethnic minority psychology, as well as its practical and policy implications for dismantling discrimination against Asian Americans.