Ethnic Role Salience in Racially Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Societies

Abstract

Hawaiian-Japanese, Japanese, and Australian subjects were presented with a slide depicting either a Japanese or a Caucasian couple, and asked to describe three ways in which the two persons in the picture were similar. The dependent variable was ethnic role salience, measured in terms of the frequency and rank order of ethnic trait references appearing spontaneously in the descriptions. Contrary to orthodox role theory, but as predicted by McGuire's distinctiveness theory of selective perception, the Japanese described the Caucasian but not the Japanese couple in ethnic terms, the Australians described the Japanese but not the Caucasian couple in ethnic terms, and the Hawaiian-Japanese described both the Japanese and the Caucasian couple in ethnic terms.

An exploratory investigation of the effects of a cultural orientation programme on the psychological well-being of international university students

“…All students reported that their closest friends were either co-nationals or students with a shared linguistic background. This is consistent with findings in other studies on international students and friendship networks (Bochner and Ohsako, 1977;Klineberg and Hull, 1979).…”

The Collective Selfa

“…These findings not only demonstrate that the size of one's group enlarges and minimizes particular dimensions of self‐descriptions, but they also suggest that the self‐concept may be quite malleable, changing as a function of the properties of one's social group. Distinctiveness theory has been employed to demonstrate the importance of contextually determined gender salience (Cota & Dion, 1986), age salience (Gfellner, 1986), race salience (Bochner & Ohsako, 1977), and the salience of religious affiliation (Charters & Newcomb, 1952) for self‐identification.…”

Socio‐biographical Antecedents of Intercultural Effectiveness: The Neglected Factors1

“…According to the distinctive theory of selective perception (McGuire and Padawer-Singer, 1976), we notice any aspect of ourselves, or of another, to the extent to which that characteristic is unique in that social setting. For example, research evidence has shown that when a person is overtly or symbolically confronted with members of other ethnic groups, the encounter will arouse his own ethnic role and the individual is also likely to regard these 'strangers' primarily in terms of their ethnic affiliation (Bochner and Perks, 197 1 ;Bochner and Ohsako, 1977). It follows that ethnicity (whatever form it takes) can be relevant in an intercultural interaction, especially if the expatriate is distinctively dissimilar.…”

“…Collier (1989) observed that the outcome of intercultural interaction can be influenced by the nationality of the 'actors'. Research evidence has shown that nationality is a significant cue in predicting the behaviours of foreigners (Bochner and Ohsako, 1977). It has also been noted that expatriates' intercultural experiences vary with their nationality (Barker et al, 1991;Cui and Berg, 1991;Dean and Popp, 1990).…”