Richard N. Lalonde

The Personal/Group Discrimination Discrepancy: Perceiving My Group, but not Myself, to be a Target for Discrimination

An unexpected finding that has surfaced in research on discrimination is that respondents perceive a higher level of discrimination directed at their group as a whole than at themselves as individual members of that group. The present study directly tested this personal/group discrepancy by focusing on two groups of Canadian immigrants who have been the targets of much discrimination, Haitian and South Asian women. Respondents were questioned about their personal and group discrimination on four separate dimensions: race, culture, status as newcomers to Canada, and gender Strong support was found for the generality of the personal/group discrimination discrepancy. Three possible explanations for the discrepancy point to possible avenues for future research: the denial of personal discrimination, the exaggeration of group discrimination, and information-processing biases.

Serial migration and its implications for the parent-child relationship: a retrospective analysis of the experiences of the children of Caribbean immigrants.

This study addressed the potential impact of serial migration for parent-children relationships and for childrens psychological well-being. The experience of being separated from their parents during childhood and reunited with them at a later time was retrospectively examined for 48 individuals. A series of measures (e.g., self-esteem, parental identification) associated with appraisals at critical time periods during serial migration (separation, reunion, current) revealed that serial migration can potentially disrupt parent-child bonding and unfavorably affect childrens self-esteem and behavior. Time did not appear to be wholly effective in repairing rifts in the parent-child relationship. Risk factors for less successful reunions included lengthy separations and the addition of new members to the family unit in the childs absence.

Behavioral preferences in response to social injustice: The effects of group permeability and social identity salience.

The purpose of this study was to examine features of an intergroup context that can affect peoples preferred responses to a situation of social injustice. Ninety research participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 conditions of group permeability (open, token, or closed) and 1 of 2 conditions of social identity salience (not salient or salient). It was predicted on the basis of social identity theory that individualistic responses would be preferred to a collective response when group boundaries were more open but not when they were closed. It was also expected that under conditions of group impermeability, collective behavior would be preferred to a greater extent by individuals for whom social identity was salient than by individuals for whom it was not salient

Social identification and gender-related ideology in women and men

The nature of womens and mens gender-derived social identification was examined with a focus on the relationships between aspects of identity and gender-related ideology. Measures of social identification, sex-role ideology, and the perception of womens collective disadvantage were completed by 171 women and 91 men who categorized themselves as either traditional, non-traditional or feminist. Factor analysis provided support for a multidimensional conception of gender-derived social identification, with viable subscales reflecting in-group ties, cognitive centrality, and in-group affect. For self-identified non-traditional and feminist women, the cognitive centrality of gender was greater, and more consistently related to gender-related ideology, than for traditional women. Traditional men reported stronger in-group ties and more positive gender-linked affect than did non-traditional men, but mens levels of identification were generally weakly related to gender-related ideology. The utility of considering both multiple dimensions and ideological correlates of group identification is discussed with reference to social identity theory.

An Intergroup Perspective on Immigrant Acculturation with a Focus on Collective Strategies

Abstract This study adopted an intergroup perspective on immigrant acculturation, which views immigrants as members of a disadvantaged social category. Its primary purpose was to relate the relative disadvantage of certain immigrant groups to a preference for collective acculturation strategies. Questionnaires were administered to immigrants from four ethnic groups, two of which (blacks from the Caribbean, and Chinese) were considered to be relatively more “stigmatized” within the Canadian context than the other two (Greeks and Italians). In addition, a cross-generational methodology provided comparisons between first-generation immigrants (n = 116), and their adult children (n = 133). It was hypothesized and found that the more “stigmatized” immigrants perceived themselves to be at a greater social disadvantage and were more supportive of a collective integration orientation than less stigmatized immigrants. Parents were more likely to endorse a collective acculturation orientation and exhibited a strong...

The Role of Culture in Interpersonal Relationships Do Second Generation South Asian Canadians Want a Traditional Partner

Two studies examined the influence of Eastern cultural heritage on relationship preferences among second generation immigrants to the West, and explicitly tested the mediating roles of interdependence and familial cultural influence in mate preferences. The first used a between-subjects approach to compare the preferred mate attributes of South Asian Canadians (n= 97) to those of Euro-Canadians (n= 89). The second study used a within-subject approach by using the strength of cultural identity of South Asian Canadians (n= 92) as a predictor of preferred attributes. Both studies found a culture influence on “traditional” mate attribute preferences. Moreover, familial cultural influence (e.g., family allocentrism) was a better mediator of the culture-traditional attribute preference relationship than the more generic measure of interdependent self-construal. The results further suggest that a cross-cultural approach, rather than a strength-of-culturalidentity approach, is better suited to tap into non-conscious influences of culture on behavior.

Social Identity and Preferred Ethnic/ Racial Labels for Blacks in Canada

A number of studies conducted in the United States have found that Black and African American are the preferred labels for ethnic/racial self-designation by Blacks. The purpose of this study was to assess which labels were preferred (and disliked) by a sample of Black Canadian students (N = 101), as well as to uncover the personal meanings of their preferred labels. In addition, the relationships between label preferences and measures of ethnic/racial identity developed in America (African Self-Consciousness Scale, Black Racial Identity Attitude Scale) and Canada (York Ethnic Identification Scale) were examined. Although Black was the most preferred label, the following four types of preferred labels were identified: Black, Africentric, Caribbean, and Canadian. Different label preferences were associated with different measures of social identity. Issues of social identity and ethnic/racial self-designation for Blacks in Canada are discussed.

Interdependence as a Mediator between Culture and Interpersonal Closeness for Euro-Canadians and Turks

The present study examines cross-cultural differences in interpersonal closeness to different people and whether these differences can be explained by independent and interdependent self-construal. Turkish and Euro-Canadian samples of university students were asked to indicate how close they feel and how close they ideally would like to be to family members, romantic partners, friends, and acquaintances. As predicted, Turkish participants scored higher on interdependent self-construal, whereas there was no culture difference on independent self-construal scores. Turkish participants rated their actual and ideal closeness with others higher than Euro-Canadian participants did. Both Turkish and Euro-Canadian participants reported feeling closest and ideally wanting to be closest to their romantic partner, and then to their families and friends, followed by acquaintances. Turkish participants desired more closeness with family members and acquaintances than Euro-Canadian participants did. Interdependent self-construal was found to partially mediate the relationships between culture and actual closeness scores forfamily, friends, and acquaintances and between culture and ideal scores for family and acquaintances.

Testing the social identity-intergroup differentiation hypothesis: ‘We're not American eh!’

The social identity-intergroup differentiation hypothesis is a hotly debated issue among social identity researchers (Brown, 2000; Turner, 1999); it states that individuals having a stronger in-group identification will perceive greater differences between their in-group and a relevant out-group. This study examines the importance of three factors when testing this hypothesis: the strength and salience of in-group identification, the relevance of the out-group for social comparison, and the relevance of the dimension of social comparison. The hypothesis was examined in relation to the national identity of a sample of Canadian students. Perceptions of the in-group and out-groups were measured at Time 1 (N =171). The same measures were given at Time 2 (N = 77), along with a variety of measures of social identity. It was predicted that this hypothesis would be supported when the dimension of social comparison was of high relevance and only for an important social comparison group (i.e. Americans). Finally, the ability of identity to predict differentiation at another point in time was examined in order to examine the issue of identity salience and stability. Results generally supported the hypotheses and are discussed in relation to prior research and the conceptualization of a minority identity.

The Process of Social Identification for Visible Immigrant Women in a Multicultural Context

Haitian and Indian women rated their identification with (self-perceptions), and the extent to which they believed majority Canadians perceived them as being (metaperceptions), Haitian or Indian, immigrant, and Canadian. Self-perceptions and metaperceptions were compared in order to understand the quality of integration for the two sample An attempt was made to predict self-perceptions on the basis of pragmatic (years in Canada, age at arrival, citizenship status) and social psychological (motivation for culture retention, perceived discrimination) predictors in a series of multiple regression analyses. Although both samples expressed a strong identification with their ethnic groups, different results emerged for immigrant and Canadian identifications. Identity perceptions for these labels were more closely related to pragmatic predictors for the Indian, whereas social psychological variables were more predictive for the Haitian. The results are discussed in relation to the different visibility of the two groups as well as other salient factors in a multicultural context.