By IANS
New York : Being a model minority is clearly good, but it has its disadvantages too, a new study says.
A set of four studies, published in the latest issue of the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, takes a close look at the Asian American community in the US, which includes Indian Americans, to arrive at this conclusion.
The studies demonstrate how associating Asian Americans with positive qualities tends to increase the degree to which people feel threatened by the group’s academic and financial success, which in turn leads to more negative attitudes towards them.
Indian Americans, who number over two million in the US, are among the biggest achievers in academic terms in the country, and are the highest-earning ethnic minority.
As part of the study, after testing the participants’ agreement with positive Asian American stereotypes, the researchers used a variety of methods to test the paradoxical effect.
“A stereotype, even a positive one, comes with costs,” writes Sara D. Hodges, an associate editor with the journal.
“This study is important because it might prompt people to consider how ethnic stereotypes – even if they aren’t derogatory stereotypes – might be affecting their perceptions of members of other groups in ways they might not have otherwise considered.”
The first study demonstrates that, in a realistic threat context, attitudes and emotions toward an anonymous group described by only positive “model minority” attributes are significantly more negative than when the group was described using other positive attributes.
The second study demonstrates that “realistic threat significantly mediates the relationship between (a) the endorsement of the both the positive and negative stereotypes of Asian Americans and (b) subsequent negative attitudes and emotions toward them”.
The third and fourth studies conceptually replicate this effect in experimental situations involving interactions with Asian Americans in realistic threat contexts.
The studies seek to understand the nature of stereotyping and prejudice toward Asian Americans and other minority groups.