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 as well as in political science research. Despite the political origins of the Asian label, how unifying is it in practice? Using experimental design, I explicitly measure changes in the importance of one's Asian and national origin identities. Results show that individuals' national origin identity becomes more salient in the face of identity threat, whereas their 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.