Perceived Prototypicality of Asian Subgroups in the United States and the United Kingdom

Abstract

Asians, despite their diverse ethnic compositions (i.e., South Asians, East Asians, Southeast Asians, and Middle Easterners), are monolithically categorized under one broad racial label. But this Asian label may be differentially used. Some ethnic subgroups are perceived to be more prototypically Asian than others and cultural contexts may further shape such perception. With historically longstanding presence of East Asians in the United States and South Asians in the United Kingdom, we theorized that the perceived prototypicality of different Asian subgroups in the two countries would reflect these respective historical salience. Three studies (N = 849) examined the cultural differences between Americans and British in their perceptions of Asian subgroups in terms of how prototypically Asian and how foreign they seem. Studies 1 and 2 found that compared to British perceivers, Americans perceived East Asians as more prototypically Asian; British considered South Asians as more prototypical than American participants. Study 3 showed that Americans perceived East and Southeast Asians to be less foreign and more prototypically American than South Asians and Middle Easterners, but British perceived South Asians to be less foreign and more prototypically British than all other Asian ethnicities. This research demonstrates the importance of disaggregating Asian subgroups and historical contextualization of prototype theories.

Gender Prototypes Shape Perceptions of and Responses to Sexual Harassment

“…Less research has explored whether women with intersectional identities are neglected in mental representations of sexual-harassment victims. However, in our studies, when participants read about targets of sexual harassment and targets of control events, they perceived the harassment targets as younger, which suggests that older women may be neglected in mental representations of sexual-harassment victims (Goh & Bandt-Law, 2020). Additionally, in another experiment, people were more likely to perceive White (vs. Black) women as targeted by sexual harassment (Bandt-Law et al, 2021), even when we controlled for social class and attractiveness.…”

Sexual Orientation and Race Intersectionally Reduce the Perceived Gendered Nature of Normative Stereotypes in the United States

“…For example, being a Muslim is often associated with individuals identifying as Middle Eastern, thus stereotypes towards Middle Eastern Americans likely reflect beliefs about Muslim Americans as well. As another example, we asked about Asian Americans although the prototype for Asian Americans is East Asians rather than South Asians (Kibria, 1998;Kuo et al, 2020), at least in the American context these studies were conducted (Goh & McCue, 2021). Finally, there have been a recent surge of stereotype and perception research at the intersection of race and sexual orientation (Johnson & Ghavami, 2011;Pedulla, 2014;Petsko & Bodenhausen, 2019;Preddie & Biernat, 2021), suggesting that these categories also influence one another in ways we do not examine here.…”

Psychological outcomes and culturally relevant moderators associated with events of discrimination among Asian American adults.

“…Another study found that levels of perceived discrimination varied across Asian subgroups and was associated with depression for South Asians (i.e., Asian Indian, Pakistani, or Bangladeshi), Vietnamese, Filipino, Koreans, and Japanese, but not for Chinese Americans (Tummala-Narra et al, 2012). East Asians could be at particular risk of being targeted since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic because they are, among U.S. citizens, perceived as the prototype of the Asian group (Goh & McCue, 2021), and COVID-19 was first identified in this region (Tessler et al, 2020).…”