Bicultural identities: The interface of cultural, personality, and socio-cognitive processes

Abstract

This paper presents recent work examining the meaning and impact of individual variations in the way bicultural individuals organize their two cultural identities, a construct that we call Bicultural Identity Integration (BII). While biculturals high on BII describe their two cultural identities as ‘compatible’ (fluid and complementary), biculturals low on BII experience them as largely ‘oppositional’ (i.e., conflicting and disparate). We first report experimental evidence for how variations in BII moderate biculturals’ socio-cognitive behavior, specifically, the way in which bicultural individuals process cultural knowledge and use it to interpret social behavior. We then report structural equation modeling findings that elucidate some important personality, contextual, and performance predictors of BII. Finally, we conclude with a brief discussion of how the study of bicultural identities provides an ideal ground for the integration of cultural and personality psychology.