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The Everyday Implications of Ethnic-Racial Identity Processes: Exploring Variability in Ethnic-Racial Identity Salience Across Situations

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Abstract

Given the social and developmental relevance of ethnicity-race during adolescence, it is important to understand the meaning of ethnic-racial identity in adolescents’ everyday lives. The current study considered how individual differences in ethnic-racial identity exploration (i.e., the extent to which individuals have explored their ethnicity-race), and commitment (i.e., the extent which they have a clear sense of what it means to them) influenced variability versus stability in the awareness of ethnicity-race in a given situation (i.e., salience), and how this variability is related to mood in that situation. Within an ethnic/racially diverse sample of 395 adolescents (M age = 15; 63 % female; 12 % Black, 26 % Latino, 34 % Asian, 23 % White), results indicated that ethnic-racial identity exploration was unrelated to variability in salience, while commitment promoted stability in salience across situations. Further, among adolescents who were generally very aware of their ethnicity-race, increases in situational salience were related to decreased negative and anxious mood. Among adolescents who were generally not aware of their ethnicity-race, increases in situational salience were related to increased positive and decreased negative mood. Implications for understanding the developmental and everyday experiences of ethnic-racial identity are discussed.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a Grant awarded to the third author and J. Nicole Shelton of Princeton University from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (1 R01 HD055436).

Author contributions

SD participated in the study’s conception, design, and coordination, conducted the analyses, interpreted the data, and drafted the manuscript. YW interpreted the data and helped draft the manuscript. TY designed the larger study from which data were drawn, participated in the conception, design, coordination, and interpretation of the data, and provided feedback on the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final version of this manuscript.

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  1. T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, 85287, USA

    Sara Douglass

  2. Fordham University, New York, NY, USA

    Yijie Wang & Tiffany Yip

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  1. Sara Douglass
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  2. Yijie Wang
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Correspondence to Sara Douglass.

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Douglass, S., Wang, Y. & Yip, T. The Everyday Implications of Ethnic-Racial Identity Processes: Exploring Variability in Ethnic-Racial Identity Salience Across Situations. J Youth Adolescence 45, 1396–1411 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-015-0390-1

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