Interpersonal contact and attitude change in a cross-cultural situation

Structure of Ethnic Identity of Arab-Israeli Students

The main problems posed in this study were: What is the structure of the Arab-Israeli identity? What is the relation of ethnic identity to another self-referent scale? The Ethnic Identity and Self-esteem scales were administered in the summer of 1973–74 to 532 Arab-Israeli university students. Factor analysis of the items demonstrated that most of the common factor variance was appropriated by three factors, all of which were clearly recognized as already known constructs. Despite the peculiar situation of the Arab minority in Israel, two relatively orthogonal factors, an Arab identity and an Israeli identity, emerged while the other factor represented a self-esteem construct. These findings supported the conclusions of previous research on Jewish-American identity and raised questions about the notion that ethnic-majority identity forms a bipolar continuum. The ethnic identity is then discussed in relation to the broader concept of self-identity.

Relation of Two Cultural Identities of Armenian-Americans

The gap between the two cultural identities of 37 female and 43 male Armenian-American teen-agers attending Armenian schools was studied. The effects of ethnic involvement and residency status (native-born and recent immigrant) were examined. The absolute difference between the Armenian and American identity scores defined the gap between the two cultural identities. It was hypothesized that more ethnic involvement and recent immigrant status would show greater gap. A 2 × 2 analysis of variance of ethnic involvement and residency status produced significant main effects in the expected directions and no interaction. The ethnically more involved and the recent immigrants showed greater gap in their American and Armenian identities than the ethnically less involved and the native-born, respectively. Some phenomenological explanations for the observed effects were considered.

Determinants of Hetero-and Autostereotypes

This study analyzed the responses of 1,184 college students from seven countries in the Americas regarding their auto- and heterostereotypes. The instrument included emic scales (culture-specific) and a set of etic scales (composed of semantic differential scales). The autostereotype as measured by the etic scales was found to be fairly positive in most groups of respondents. Both auto- and heterostereotypes were highly uniform (with uniformity on etic scales decreasing in countries that had experienced mutual conflict), highly intense (primarilyamong the autostereotypes), and congruent (principally those obtained through the emic scales). Mirror-imaging stereotyping was found among conflicting nations, and highly developed countries were perceived in a more positive fashion than the respondents' own group. High levels of contact and proximity produced negative stereotyping.

Dimensions of Jewish-American identity

The main problem posed in this study is: What are the content and structure of Jewish and American identity? The Jewish-American Identity Scale, which was adapted and refined for this study, was administered in 1971 to four samples, totaling 1006 Jewish-American college students from various parts of the United States. Initially, factor analysis was applied to the separate samples. Intersample comparisons of factor structures indicated a high degree of congruency; consequently, the samples were combined for subsequent analyses. Factor analysis of the test scores demonstrated that most of the common factor variance was appropriated by two relatively orthogonal factors. Items dealing with American identity and those dealing with Jewish identity had medium to high loadings on the two respective factors. These findings supported the hypothesis of the duality and the orthogonality of dimensions of Jewish and American identity, and cast doubt on the notion forwarded by some researchers that Jewish-American identity forms a bipolar continuum.