The Effect Of Social Identity Salience On Ethnicity-Related Memories In Asian Americans

The study aimed to investigate how the salience of Asian Americans' ethnic identities (Asian American vs. American) influences the reconstruction of their ethnicity-related experiences. By using a priming procedure adapted from previous study (Hong et al., 2004), the present study manipulated the Asian Americans' ethnic identity salience. Half of the participants were randomly assigned to the Asian American identity salient condition, and the other half were randomly assigned to the American identity salient condition. Within each condition, the participants were instructed to recall the earliest event they were aware of their ethnic origin after the priming procedure in a 5-minute period. Memory theme analysis indicated that the story theme of awareness of difference was the most common theme emerged in participants' ethnicity-related memories no matter which priming condition they were assigned. Furthermore, content subcategory analysis revealed that although the memory percentages containing connection to culture/ethnicity themes had no significant difference, the subcategories within the same theme showed significant differences. The results were discussed within a framework of the relation between the social identity salience and the construction of ethnicity-related social reality in Asian Americans