Effects of Culture Priming on Chinese Personal Self-Esteem: The Moderating Effects of the Bicultural Self

As East Asians (e.g., Chinese) have become more westernized due to globalization and exposure to Western culture, their development of bicultural selves and the psycho-cultural consequences of biculturalism have received much research interest. Bicultural individuals have been found to be able to switch between two cultural meaning systems and behave according to the particular culture that has been situationally primed (assimilation effect). An example of assimilation effect is bicultural Chinese people lowering their personal self-esteem (PSE) when Chinese primed and raising their PSE when Western primed. In this culture priming experiment we tested the two assimilation effects among four subgroups of Hong Kong Chinese (N = 416) categorized by their endorsement of Chinese and Western selves (biculturals with strong Chinese and Western selves, Sinocentrics
strong in Chinese self only, Western-centrics strong in Western self only, and marginals with weak Chinese and Western selves). As expected, Chinese primes produced assimilation effect (lower PSE) among participants strong in Chinese self (biculturals and Sino-centrics), and Western primes also produced assimilation effect (higher PSE) among participants strong in Western self (biculturals and Western-centrics). We also tested for the opposite contrast effect of shifting away from the primed culture, that is, higher PSE when Chinese primed and lower PSE when Western primed. We hypothesized and found that with respect to Chinese primes, contrast effect (higher PSE) occurred among participants weak in Chinese self (Western-centrics and marginals). With respect to Western primes, the hypothesized contrast effect (lower PSE) did not occur among all participants weak in Western self, but only among Sino-centrics – the marginals with equally weak Chinese self actually displayed an unexpected assimilation effect. Implications of these results and plausible explanations for the unanticipated finding are discussed.