New Zealand = Māori, New Zealand = Bicultural: Ethnic Group Differences in a National Sample of Māori and Europeans

Abstract

New Zealand (NZ) Europeans show a unique implicit bicultural effect, with research using the Implicit Association Test consistently showing that they associate Māori (the Indigenous peoples) and their own (dominant/advantaged majority) group as equally representative of the nation. We replicated and extended this NZ = bicultural effect in a small online national sample of Māori and NZ Europeans. The NZ European majority showed a consistent NZ = bicultural effect. Māori, in contrast, showed an automatic ingroup NZ = Māori effect. These results are contrary to predictions derived from Social Identity Theory and System Justification Theory, and instead seem more consistent with a model incorporating the pervasive effects of culture-specific symbols on automatic representations of the national category.