Date of Award

2016-01-01

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Psychology

Advisor(s)

Michael A. Zárate

Abstract

The primary aim of the proposed research was to investigate the role cultural identity plays in regards to academic perceptions, goals, and motivation amongst bicultural college students. Previous research suggests that biculturals experience shifts in mental frames as they navigate differences in cultural settings. Central to this research is the idea that people who have access to multiple cultural meaning systems switch between culturally appropriate behaviors depending on the context. We hypothesize that biculturals' responses to cultural cues involve more than automatic cognitive processes. Cultural frameworks may depend on their motives to embrace or reject particular cultural identities and multiple identities may provide multiple resources to draw from. The present research experimentally manipulated the role of identity salience to investigate how it influences academic self-perception, goals, and motivations. Results found that identity alone predicts positive academic self-perceptions. In addition, a secondary aim of this proposal was to explore the role of bicultural identity on self-complexity.

Language

en

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Size

58 pages

File Format

application/pdf

Rights Holder

Miriam J. Alvarez

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Psychology Commons

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