Bolstering biculturals: Self-affirmation reduces contrastive responses to identity primes

Bicultural individuals often must select between different responses to a task implied by their dual identities. When one identity has been situationally primed, one strategy is to assimilate to the situational demand. However, another strategy is contrastive, to express their other identity. This second strategy has been called ethnic affirmation (Yang & Bond, 1980) and cultural contrast (Mok & Morris, 2013). It has been primarily explained as a defense against perceived threat to the specific identity that is excluded. The present studies posit that contrastive responses to cultural priming also may reflect a defense of biculturals' global self-integrity. We provide the first direct test of this mechanism by examining the effect of self-affirmation on the contrastive response tendency. In two experiments that varied self-affirmation and cultural priming, non-affirmed Chinese Americans showed contrastive responses—they exhibited greater extraversion in response to Chinese primes than to American primes in Study 1 or than to neutral primes in Study 2, but this pattern was significantly attenuated among Chinese Americans who engaged in self-affirmation. Theoretical implications are discussed.