Understanding pan-Asian identity: how and when threat affects Asian and national origin identity attachment

ABSTRACT

Asians in the United States have traditionally been treated as a monolithic group, both in public discourse and political science research. How unifying is the pan-ethnic label in practice? Using a survey experiment, I measure changes in the importance of one’s Asian and national origin identities in response to identity-based threats. I innovate on previous designs by using identity threats that differ in the group that (1) is the intended target and (2) is actually discriminated against, reflecting a common experience where Asians are mistaken for a different background. Experimental results from a sample of 2000 Asian respondents show that national origin identity becomes more salient in the face of identity threat, whereas Asian identity does not. Additionally, whether one’s national origin identity becomes more salient depends on the type of identity threat. These results suggest that Asians’ sense of pan-ethnic identity is not conditional on their national origin identity, with implications for the expected effects of identity primes in electoral and political contexts, as well as for research designs relying on such identity primes.

KEYWORDS:

• Pan-Asian identity
• group threat
• identity threat
• linked fate
• identity change

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 I use the term national origin to refer to the countries which an individual traces their ancestry. While I follow other research in this convention, I acknowledge the insufficiencies in using this term.

2 Asians are traditionally an underrepresented group in survey samples. In the 2016 ANES, Asian respondents constituted ∼4% of the overall sample.

3 Prior work highlights the distinction between “Asian” and “Asian American” identities (Lien, Conway, and Wong 2003; Wong et al. 2011) and shows that individuals prefer to identify as Asian American rather than Asian. To be inclusive of Asians in the US regardless of citizenship status, I focus on one’s orientation to their Asian identity. If one’s sense of group identity applies only to Asian Americans rather than Asians more generally, that suggests that Asian American group identity is a refinement of Asian identity. Differences may bear out in the measure of American identity attachment.

4 These predictions, as well as the subsequent analysis, were pre-registered on OSF Registries on February 25, 2020. Minor deviations from the pre-analysis plan are discussed in Appendix E.

5 Average completion time was ∼4 min. Approximately 7% of respondents finished the survey under two minutes. On Turk Prime, qualifications were such that workers needed approval ratings over 90% to be eligible.

6 Prolific asks: “What ethnic group do you belong to?” Turk Prime asks: “Which racial group best describes you?” Eligible respondents are those that selected “Asian” (including those that selected multiple options).

7 Identity strength is measured using a pre-treatment question: “On a scale from 0 to 100, how proud would you say you are to be Asian?”

8 Robustness for Figure 2 in which respondents with multiple national origins are dropped is provided in Appendix Table A13.