Ethnic Role Salience in Racially Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Societies

Abstract

Hawaiian-Japanese, Japanese, and Australian subjects were presented with a slide depicting either a Japanese or a Caucasian couple, and asked to describe three ways in which the two persons in the picture were similar. The dependent variable was ethnic role salience, measured in terms of the frequency and rank order of ethnic trait references appearing spontaneously in the descriptions. Contrary to orthodox role theory, but as predicted by McGuire's distinctiveness theory of selective perception, the Japanese described the Caucasian but not the Japanese couple in ethnic terms, the Australians described the Japanese but not the Caucasian couple in ethnic terms, and the Hawaiian-Japanese described both the Japanese and the Caucasian couple in ethnic terms.