Contrasting lay theories of polyculturalism and multiculturalism: Associations with essentialist beliefs of race in six Asian cultural groups

College

College of Liberal Arts

Department/Unit

Psychology

Document Type

Article

Source Title

Cross-Cultural Research

Volume

50

Issue

3

First Page

231

Last Page

250

Publication Date

7-1-2016

Abstract

Multiculturalism and polyculturalism are two lay theories of culture that have been associated with some similar intergroup attitudes and behaviors. But other than the studies of Rosenthal and Levy in the United States, there have been no studies that directly distinguish between these two lay theories. In this study, we use confirmatory factor analysis procedures to show that multiculturalism and polyculturalism represent two distinct latent constructs among our 1,730 participants in six Asian cultural groups (China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Macau, Malaysia, the Philippines). Moreover, we show that essentializing race is associated with endorsement of multiculturalism (but not polyculturalism) in five cultural groups (except Hong Kong). The results provide strong cross-cultural empirical evidence for the distinction between the two lay theories and, more importantly, point to aspects of the lay theory of multiculturalism that relate to why it is sometimes associated with stronger stereotyping and prejudice toward minority cultural groups. © 2016, © 2016 SAGE Publications.

html

Digitial Object Identifier (DOI)

10.1177/1069397116641895

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | Multicultural Psychology

Keywords

Multiculturalism; Cultural pluralism

Upload File

wf_no

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS