PSYCHOLOGY MASTER'S THESIS ABSTRACT

Mayuko Onuki
MA-Research
Summer 2007

To Stay or to Leave: The Role of Culture in Choice of Strategy for Protecting Collective Self-Esteem

    This study examined factors that might lead individuals to leave a low status ingroup as a behavioral strategy to protect their collective self-esteem.  Culture, operationalized as ethnicity and individualism and collectivism, was hypothesized to influence the choice of behavioral strategy.  Forty-nine European American and 51 Asian American participants worked with 2 confederates on a group task and received a negative feedback on the group performance.  The participants were then given a choice to either stay in or leave the poorly performing ingroup.  Participants were also asked to evaluate the ingroup members (confederates) and hypothetical outgroup members and rate their attitudes toward the ingroup and its performance to better understand the psychological contexts of their choice of behavioral strategy.  The results did not support the hypotheses, yet revealed significant relationships among the behavioral, evaluative, and attitudinal outcomes as well as cultural influences on attitudinal outcomes.  Implications of these findings are discussed.

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