The Dynamic Nature of Ethnic Identity Among Greek-Australian Adolescents

Abstract

The dynamic nature of ethnic identity was explored by exposing Greek-Australian adolescents to one of three experimental conditions: positive (highlighting the advantages of their ethnic group membership), negative (the disadvantages), or a neutral control condition. Sensitizing respondents to their ethnic group membership resulted in an increase in the salience of Greek identity. Multidimensional scaling yielded two dimensions that best represented the interrelationships among items describing ethnic reference groups: an ethnicity dimension and a multicultural-segregated dimension. There was no discrimination among the three groups on the latter, but the two experimental groups differentiated between the Australian and Greek items significantly more than did the controls. Respondents in the negative condition had significantly less positive attitudes to their ethnic origins than the other two groups.