“To See Ourselves as Others See Us”: On the Implications of Reflected Appraisals for Ethnic Identity and Discrimination

Abstract

This study examined how immigrants' feelings of ethnic identity align with their perceptions of how other people see them, and how these reflected appraisals from others contribute to immigrants' experience of discrimination. First-generation (N = 94) and second-generation (N = 140) Chinese Canadians completed a questionnaire which assessed their ethnic identity and the reflected appraisals of members from Chinese and Anglo Canadian communities across four situational domains (family, friends, university, community). The results showed that both generations generally felt that they were regarded by both Chinese and Anglo Canadians as more Chinese than they felt themselves but indicated few discrepancies between self-and reflected appraisals of Canadian identity. Reflected appraisals were associated with the experience of personal discrimination only in the second-generation group. The discussion emphasizes the importance of a situational perspective on ethnic identity and underscores important differences between generational groups in their experience of identity and discrimination.Emigrating from one's home country and entering a new, unfamiliar one, entails adapting in many ways, including changing patterns of identification

Situational variations in ethnic identity across immigration generations: Implications for acculturative change and cross‐cultural adaptation

“…The results of the means analyses replicated earlier studies comparing G1 and G2 Canadians (Clément et al, ; Noels et al, ; Zhang & Noels, ), such that heritage identity was stronger than Canadian identity in the family domain, but the converse was true in more public domains, such as being at the university or in the general community. This pattern is in line with the idea that people generally negotiate identities that are consistent with the people and normative expectations of the social situations in which they are engaged.…”

Relationship among Self-appraisals, Others’ Actual Appraisals, and Reflected Appraisals on Primary School Teachers Teaching Ability

“…The other study on the racial identity of American black stated that the reason half black regarded them as black was that they considered half black as black (Khanna, 2010). Furthermore, this result was also supported by Noels' research (Noels, Leavitt, & Clément, 2010). The third viewpoint shows that others' actual appraisals could not influence self-perception directly, but could influence self-perception through reflected appraisals (Kinch, 1963;Yue, Huang, 2012;Yue, Huang, & Peng et al, 2008).…”

Native Friends and Host Country Identification among Adolescent Immigrants in Germany: The Role of Ethnic Boundaries

“…The second mechanism addresses the role of interpersonal networks in identity formation. By providing means to express identities and by defining sets of proper behaviors (Alba ; Deaux and Martin ), networks determine how much social approval an individual receives for a particular identity (McFarland and Pals ; Klein, Spears, and Reicher , 32f; Noels, Leavitt, and Clément , 741ff). The general assumption underlying this argument is that individuals seek social approval from and conformity with their social environment.…”

“…Consequently, being embedded in a network which does not support one's identity creates pressure to adjust to the identity of that networks' majority. Like other studies, we assume that native friends generally possess, and thus support, national identification, whereas co‐ethnic friends and immigrant families, on average, possess and support ethnic identification (Yip ; Sabatier ; Noels, Leavitt, and Clément ; Gonzales‐Backen , 100f).…”