Exploring the contribution of racially based harassment and personality to variation in native and American identity in immigrant-origin youth

ABSTRACT

The rejection-identification model posits that, when faced with racially based harassment, immigrant-origin youth will protect their self-concept by detaching from the national culture and identifying more with the native culture. Although research has linked personality to responses to interpersonal stressors, personality contributions to native and American identity independently, and in the context of racially based harassment, have not been carefully examined. This study examined unique and interactive contributions of racially based harassment and personality to group identities in a sample of 163 immigrant-origin youth. Extraversion and agreeableness uniquely contributed to native identity. Additionally, agreeableness and neuroticism moderated associations between racially based harassment and American identity. Results underscore the influence of individual- and contextual-level factors on identity processes in immigrant-origin youth.

KEYWORDS:

• Rejection-identification
• racially based harassment
• group identities
• personality
• immigrant-origin youth

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. This plan was pre-registered using the Open Science Framework (see https://osf.io/3zu5n/?view_only=7cc8319163814c7db5f02f50ea00b46b). Deviations are described in the results section.

2. This variable had three levels (i.e., first, second, and third generation), requiring two contrast codes. The linear code compared first versus third-generation immigrants, while the quadratic code compared the mean of first- to the mean of both second- and third-generation immigrants. Sample sizes were unequal across groups. Thus, weights were determined based on group frequencies to maintain orthogonality.