Ethnic identity and self-esteem among Asian and European Americans: When a minority is the majority and the majority is a minority

Three studies were conducted to examine the impact of being a numeric majority or minority in Hawai’i and U.S. mainland on the ethnic identity and self-esteem of Asian and European Americans. Results of Study 1 (N=214, M age=19.85 years) and Study 2 (N=215,M age=18.20 years) showed that Asian Americans who grew up on the U.S. mainland, where they are a numeric minority, reported higher ethnic identity than did Asian Americans who grew up in Hawai’i, where they are a numeric majority. In addition, ethnic identity was significantly associated with self-esteem for Asian Americans from the U.S. mainland and European Americans from Hawai’i (numeric minority), but not for Asian Americans from Hawai’i and European Americans from the U.S. mainland (numeric majority). Study 3 (N=88,M age =18.12) examined ethnic identity and self-esteem among Asian and European Americans who had moved from the U.S. mainland to attend a university in Hawai’i over a 1 year time period. The results showed significant relations between ethnic identity and self-esteem for Asian Americans when they initially moved to Hawai’i, but this relation decreased after they had lived in Hawai’i for 1 year. The findings highlight contextual variations in ethnic identity and self-esteem for members of both minority and majority groups in the U.S. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. A shared sense of identity with others who belong to the same ethnic group is an important aspect of individuals’ social identity and is closely tied to their respective minority– majority status within a social context (Phinney, 1990; Tajfel & Turner, 1986). In multiethnic settings like in the U.S., researchers have found that individuals from minority groups report a stronger sense of ethnic identity than do European Americans who represent the national majority (Martinez & Dukes, 1997; Phinney & Alipuria, 1990; Tsai & Fuligni, 2012). Although ethnic identity may be a more important aspect of social identity among minority groups than for the dominant majority (Sellers, Rowley, Chavous, Shelton, & Smith, 1997), the extent to which individuals define themselves by ethnicity may be influenced by their numeric minority– majority status. Within microcontexts ranging from schools and communities (Phinney, Cantu, & Kurtz, 1997) to wide geographical areas, such as cities or states (Juang, Nguyen, & Lin, 2006), a national minority can become the numeric majority and the national majority can become a numeric minority (Juang et al., 2006; Umana-Taylor & Shin, 2007). Little is known, however, about the relation between individuals’ numeric minority–majority status and their ethnic identity and psychological functioning for both minority and *Correspondence to: Yiyuan Xu, University of Hawaii, Psychology, 2430 Campu E-mail: [email protected] We used “minority” or “majority” to refer to the minority–majority status in the majority status within a particular micro context. According to the U.S. Census (2010), Hawai’i has the highest percentage of As Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. majority group members, and how this relation may change as they adapt to new social settings. Therefore, our objective was to examine the impact of being a numeric minority or majority in two different contexts—Hawai’i and the U.S. mainland—on the ethnic identity and self-esteem of Asian and European Americans. Hawai’i provides a unique demographic context because Asian Americans represent the numeric majority (38%) and outnumber all other ethnicities despite their minority status in the overall U.S. population (5%), and although European Americans form the majority (63%) of the overall U.S. population, they represent a numeric minority (about 23%) in Hawai’i (U.S. Census, 2010). Furthermore, few studies have taken a longitudinal approach to examine the dynamic nature of ethnic identity and its relation to self-esteem in settings that should theoretically activate both majority and minority group members’ ethnic identity more when they are in the numeric minority versus less when they are in the numeric majority. To address these gaps in the literature, we examined multiple ethnic groups to ensure that any differences were attributable to numeric minority–majority status opposed to the specific history or status associated with a particular group in broader U.S. society, and we incorporated a longitudinal design to examine change over time within new contexts. s Road, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822, USA. U.S. and “numeric minority” and “numeric majority” to refer to the minority– ian Americans and lowest percentage of European Americans in the U.S. Received 30 August 2012, Accepted 18 July 2014