Results indicated that there is no relationship between the IAT and cultural knowledge after accounting for such changes. The procedural change that took place in their methodology involved moving from normative judgments in the original IAT procedure , which was the type of methodology used in the first Nosek and Hansen paper mentioned earlier, to more idiosyncratic judgments in the personalized IAT procedure . The target concept that these judgments were being paired with were attitudes toward George Bush relative to John Kerry, which represented cultural knowledge. There are a couple reasons as to why the aforementioned studies have found little evidence in support of an IAT-culture relationship. First, cultural knowledge serves as a poor proxy for cultural experience. Nosek and Hansen suggest that cultural knowledge may be distinct from personal knowledge, and that cultural experience may be what is manifested in implicit evaluation. That is, measuring cultural knowledge is not an optimal way to capture the cultural experience that resides in implicit evaluations. A more profound reason is more of a conceptual issue than a methodological one as previously suggested in the Nosek and Hansen studies. The problem may lie in distinguishing person from culture. Nosek and Hansen argue that “Putting aside the conceptual ambiguities of distinguishing person from culture and person from extrapersonal,plant pot with drainage we tested whether the personalizing changes influence the relationship between the IAT and cultural knowledge” .
Clearly, the authors recognize that there are conceptual limitations that affect the IAT-culture relationship and there is a need to address these limitations. The Nosek and Hansen studies posit that there is conceptual haziness when distinguishing person from culture in implicit social cognition research. Their argument is consistent with the conceptual crisis that plagued the cross-cultural psychology perspective for decades prior to the emergence of the cultural psychology approach. Toodate, the Nosek and Hansen studies have empirically examined the IAT-culture relationship and have conceptualized culture from a traditional cross-cultural psychology perspective as being a contextual/situational variable that is outside of and apart from the individual. For instance, the authors second set of experiments examined the IAT-cultural knowledge relationship after accounting for personalized changes in IAT procedures. They used idiosyncratic judgments such as I Like/I Dislike when paired with attitudes toward George Bush relative to John Kerry, which represented cultural knowledge. Nosek and Hansen employ a type of methodology that personalizes the IAT procedures when examining the IAT-culture relationship, however their procedure fails to examine the integration of cultural knowledge and/or experience into the self-concept. The idiosyncratic judgments of I Like/I Dislike refers to a personal attitude towards an object and does not focus directly on the self-concept per se. This approach is not ideal for examining the IAT-culture relationship.
The approach that is optimal when examining the IAT culture-relationship is best illustrated in the research on the IATgender relationship. The IAT-gender relationship often uses concept contrast judgments such as female-self and male-other and vice versa. This type of methodology is ideal for directly assessing the self-concept in relation to cultural knowledge and/or experience and needs to be used when examining the IAT-culture relationship. To truly conceptualize and measure culture as a socio-cognitive variable that exists within the individual in assessing the IAT-culture relationship means that the culture and the individual need to be viewed as interdependent rather than as independent entities. This phenomenon is best illustrated in the cultural-frame switching studies which experimentally manipulated culture within bicultural individuals by using a cultural priming technique . When the Hosek and Hansen studies are compared to the cultural-frame switching studies, it becomes quite apparent that the Nosek and Hansen studies fall short of truly conceptualizing culture as a socio-cognitive variable. In all, implicit social cognitive researchers need to adopt a cultural psychology approach to culture, which would operationalize culture as a socio-cognitive variable that exists within the individual. By doing so, implicit social cognitive researchers will have the distinct advantage and opportunity of examining the IAT-culture relationship with better accuracy. To date, there is only one researcher who has examined acculturation, more specifically the integration strategy at both the implicit and explicit level.
Devos , using the IAT, examined the extent to which Mexican American and Asian American college students identified with American culture and their ethnic culture. Devos found that the both Mexican American and Asian American participants strongly and equally identified with both cultures across two levels of awareness. In particular, results were consistent across two studies in that both Mexican American and Asian American college students strongly identified with American culture when pitted against a series of primes which represented a general category of “Other” cultures in one IAT. Simultaneously, both ethnic groups also displayed a pronounced relationship between self and ethnic culture when pitted against the general category of “other” cultures in a second IAT. The third IAT directly pitted the American culture and ethnic culture against one another and results showed that identification with both cultural orientations created a stalemate. In all, these set of data provide clear evidence for an implicit bicultural identity among Mexican American and Asian American college students. Devos’s findings are in line with the portrait that is emerging from current research on acculturation . That is, at least under certain circumstances, individuals are successfully internalizing or identifying with more than one culture. Such findings are inconsistent with the literature which states that cultural identities are mutually exclusive. On the contrary, individuals often find themselves immersed into multicultural surroundings and define themselves along numerous cultural boundaries and incorporate into their self concept knowledge about a variety of cultures. Devos also found that not only bicultural identity surfaces at an implicit level but also at a conscious level of awareness. A strong attachment to both American culture and ethnic culture appeared from responses based on deliberate or controlled processes. That is, when Mexican American and Asian American college students reflect on their explicit self-concept, introspect about what is important to them, and deliberately evaluate their attachment to different cultures, a strong bicultural identity emerges. One could argue that Devos’s obtained results are not the product of the associative links between the self-concept and the culture, but the extent to which individuals are familiar with the cultural icons. The familiarity account states that the techniques employed by Devos are not tapping cultural identification, but familiarity with cultural icons. However, research using IAT procedures have examined the familiarity with stimuli account and have found no influence on IAT performance . A second version of the familiarity account posits that differences in familiarity with the broadly defined cultures could account for Devos’s results rather than familiarity with the stimuli itself. Based on the familiarity accounts proposed by Devos, he argues that “more systematic investigations are needed to fully dissect how familiarity and experiences foster associations between the self and cultures, and how theses associative links determine the experiences that, knowingly or unknowingly, individuals seek out” . Although Devos provides firm evidence for a bicultural identity through assessments of thoughts that cannot be consciously controlled, what is not known is to what extent do individuals who experience psychological acculturation also identify with other acculturation strategies at an implicit level. Given the lack of research on assessing acculturation issues through assessments of thoughts that cannot be consciously controlled,pot with drainage holes there is a need to examine the extent to which acculturation strategies may exist at an implicit level. Furthermore, Devos calls for future research to examine the extent to which cultural experiences foster associative links between the self concept and the culture.
Specifically, are the Mexican Americans and Asian American college students in Devos’s study simply identifying themselves as ‘bicultural’ at an implicit level based on the familiarity argument or do their myriad of cultural experiences such as such having knowledge of both cultures, behaving in appropriate roles according to both cultures, having the confidence to perform effectively in both cultures, communicating in both cultures, psychologically adjusting to both cultures, and having social support networks in both cultures foster the associations between the self and their dual cultural orientations. In fact, literature on psychological acculturation posited that stress response to demanding life events are often rooted in cultural experiences, a phenomenon known as acculturative stress. Research on acculturative stress has revealed that the integration strategy to be the least stressful, whereas marginalization is most stressful . Between these two extremes are the assimilation and separation strategies, with one or the other sometimes being the less stressful. This pattern of findings also hold true for various indicators of mental health and self-esteem . As a result of attempting to deal with acculturative stress changes, some long term adaptations may occur. According to Ward and Kennedy , two types of adaptations emerge from acculturative stress, namely psychological and sociocultural adaptation. Psychological adaptation refers to one’s psychological and physical welfare, whereas sociocultural adaptation refers to how well an acculturating person is able to handle daily life in the new cultural context. In all, good psychological adaptation is predicted by personality variables, life changing events, and social support, whereas good sociocultural adaptation is predicted by cultural knowledge, degree of contact and positive inter group attitudes . In regards to the acculturation strategies, both forms of adaptations are best suited by those who endorse the integration strategy, whereas those who are marginalized are the least well adapted. Again, both assimilation and separation strategies fall in between both levels of adaptation. Based on the research linking psychological acculturation to acculturative stress and adaption patterns, there is a need to collect data using a battery of traditional acculturation and outcomes measures to determine if implicit acculturation strategies correlate with explicit acculturation behaviors. Study 1 Goals The purpose of Study 1 was to use the Implicit Association Test to examine differences in the strength of identification with both ethnic and mainstream cultures among multi-generational Mexican American college students. Study 1 used methodological procedures that were similar to Devos’s methodology, which allowed for an examination of the extent to which multi-generational ethnic minority college students implicitly endorse Berry’s four acculturation strategies. However, this study differed from Devos in two fundamental ways. First, a specified third neutral culture was used which was considered irrelevant to the participant’s cultural self-concept as opposed to using a general category of ‘Other’ cultures , and the word “Ramadan”; see Devos 2006 for how cultural icons were selected). The second fundamental difference was that this study included a battery of acculturation and outcome measures in order to get at the whole familiarity versus experience issue raised in Devos’s study. Recall that perhaps familiarity with the cultural icons or more generally familiarity with the broadly defined cultures itself rather than identification with the cultures can account for the results obtained in his study. This warrants a more comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the acculturation experiences. Given the exploratory aims of this study and the limited literature on this topic, it is very difficult to make precise predictions about how our Mexican American participants will differ in their strength of identification with both ethnic and mainstream cultures. For this reason no predictions were made for this study. According to Berry there are two methods of assessing acculturation. The first method involves directly assessing the four acculturation strategies . The second method involves examining the two underlying dimensions of acculturation . Both methods result in categorizing individuals into the four acculturation groups . For the purpose of this study, the VIA instrument was used to form the four acculturation groups based on the fact that this instrument was a more reliable measure relative to the acculturation attitudes instrument. First, participants received two VIA scores for the heritage and mainstream components. A median split was performed on the two VIA scores in order to determine the four acculturation groups. For both VIA dimensions, the median score was 4.3. Scores on the two dimension scales were cross-tabbed to form the four acculturation groups: those who scored at or above the median on both dimensions were categorized as integrationists, those that scored at or above the median on the mainstream scale and below the median on the heritage scale were considered assimilationists, the opposite pattern yielded individuals in the separation group, and those who scored below the median on both dimensions were categorized as marginalized.