English Proficiency, Identity, Anxiety, and Intergroup Attitudes: US Americans’ Perceptions of Chinese

Abstract

Guided by the Common Ingroup Identity Model and Berry’s acculturation framework, this study examined the roles that perceptions of language proficiency, cultural identity, and communication anxiety had on intergroup attitudes and stereotypes in the American–Chinese contact context. Serial mediation analyses with 10,000 bootstrap samples revealed that perceived English proficiency of a Chinese contact had significant indirect effects on affective and behavioral attitudes toward Chinese through American participants’ perceptions of their contact’s host and home culture identification and communication anxiety. Perceived English proficiency had an indirect effect only on positive stereotypes through the Chinese contact’s perceived identification with home culture.

Keywords:

• Intergroup contact theory
• cultural identity
• common ingroup identity model
• acculturation
• intergroup anxiety
• Chinese stereotypes