Silent or Talking in the Classroom: Implicit Self-Stereotyping Among Asian and White Students

Abstract

In academic settings, Asian students are often described as less talkative than White students. We provide an account of this phenomenon based on research on cultural influences on the self, self-categorization, and implicit social cognition. We hypothesized that the classroom context activates a process of implicit self-stereotyping. Asian and White participants were asked to imagine themselves in a classroom or leisure context. Next, they completed Implicit Association Tests assessing their self-concept, ethnic stereotypes, and ethnic identification. In the classroom context only, ethnic stereotypes accounted for a more reserved self-concept among Asian participants and a more talkative self-concept among White participants.

Notes

¹After the self-concept IAT, participants described themselves on the traits used for the self-concept IAT. Responses on this measure were not affected by the context manipulation and were not reliably correlated with the self-concept IAT. Before the demographic questions, Asian participants completed the Suinn-Lew Asian Self-Identity Acculturation scale (Suinn, Ahuna, & Khoo, 1992). Responses on this scale did not account for or moderate findings reported in this article. Results based on these measures are not presented in this article for brevity's sake.

Note. For Coding of Mental Imagery and Self-Concept, higher scores reflect more reserved (less talkative) self-images. For Ethnic Stereotypes, higher scores reflect stronger ethnic stereotypes (Asians are more reserved than Whites). For Ethnic Identification, positive scores reflect identification with Asians, whereas negative scores reflect identification with Whites. For Perceived Ethnic Composition, scores express the proportion of members of own ethnic group in the imagined situation.

²Responses from 15 participants were excluded from this analysis because they did not provide numbers or proportions, but instead responded with answers such as “a lot,” “a few,” or “many.”