Implications for Bicultural Individuals ’ Cognition and Physiological Reactivity

ABSTRACT—It is awidely held belief that racial groups have underlying essences. We hypothesized that bicultural in-dividuals who hold this essentialist belief about race are oriented to perceive rigid interracial boundaries and ex-perience difficulty passing between their ethnic culture and the host culture. As predicted, we found that the more strongly Chinese American participants endorsed an es-sentialist belief about race, the less effective they were in switching rapidly between Chinese and American cultural frames in a reaction time task (Study 1), and the greater emotional reactivity they exhibited (reflected in height-ened skin conductance) while they talked about their Chinese and American cultural experiences (Study 2). Taken together, these findings suggest that essentialist be-liefs about race set up a mind-set that influences how bi-cultural individuals navigate between their ethnic and host cultures. The belief that realities—essences—underlie socially con-structed categories such as races is widely held (Tate &Audette, 2001). How do such essentialist beliefs about race influence laypeople’s psychological functioning? Previous research (e.g., Haslam & Levy, 2006; Jayaratne et al., 2006; Keller, 2005) has shown that essentialist beliefs about social groups influence perceptions of out-group members (particularly dominant-group members ’ perceptions of minorities). Little is known, however, about the psychological implications of such beliefs for indi-viduals (e.g., members of ethnic minorities) who must negotiate between their native and host culture (Tsai, Mortensen, Wong, & Hess, 2002; Tsai, Ying, & Lee, 2000). Toward that end, the current investigation examined cognitive (Study 1) and physiological (Study 2) effects of racial essentialism among bi-cultural individuals.1 Prejudice may stem from the lay belief that there are under-lying essentialist dispositions that give rise to the personality and behavioral characteristics of out-groups (Allport, 1954). Recent research has examined the nature of essentialist beliefs about social groups and their psychological consequences (e.g.