Essay On Ethnic Identity And Self Esteem

A research article titled “Ethnic Identity and Self-Esteem among Asian and European Americans when a minority is the majority and the majority is a minority” published in 2014 and performed by Yiyuan Xu, JoAnn M. Farver, and Kristin Pauker aims to bring attention to ethnic identity and its role in a group’s self-esteem.

After researching about the ethnic identities of minorities and majorities, and concluding that “feeling a strong sense of belonging with an ethnic group may contribute to aspects of individuals’ psychological well-being, such as self-esteem” (Xu, Farver, & Pauker, 2014), the researchers decided to study the effect of being the majority or a minority has an effect on the ethnic identity and self-esteem of an individual. Xu, Farver, and Pauker find from researchers such as Greene, Way, and Pahl that “the centrality of minority group membership may increase perceived threat to

The hypothesis of Study One was that “Asian Americans in California (CA Asian Americans) would report higher ethnic identity (affirmation and exploration) than would Asian Americans in Hawaii (HI Asian Americans) and that the relation between ethnic identity and self-esteem would be stronger for Asian Americans in a numeric minority context (California) than in a numeric majority context (Hawaii)” (Xu, et al., 2014). The research was conducted by taking two hundred fourteen Asian American college students, a mixture of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean people, from two universities. One hundred sixteen of the students were picked from a university in Los Angeles, California and ninety-eight of the students were picked from a university in Honolulu, Hawaii. The samples were full of both males and females. At the university in California, the Asian American students were a minority group and at the university in Hawaii the Asian American students were the majority group (Xu, et al.,