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Journal of Personality and Social Psychology1995, Vol. 69, No. 1,142-152 Copyright 1995 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.0022-3514/95/$3 .00

Spontaneous Self-Descriptions and Ethnic Identities inIndividualistic and Collectivistic CulturesEun Rhee and James S. UlemanNew York University Hoon K. LeeYonsei University

Robert J. RomanNew York University

The Twenty Statements Test (TST ) was ad ministered in Seoul and New "fork, to 454 stud ents from2 cultures that emphasize collectivism and individualism, respectively. Responses, coded into 33categories, were classified as either abstract or specific and as either autonom ous or social. These 2dichotomies were more independent in Seoul than in New York. The New York sample includedAsian Am ericans whose spontaneous social identities differed. They either never listed e thnicity -nationality on the TST, or listed it once or twice. Unidentified Asian Am ericans' self-concepts re-sembled Euro-A mericans' self-concepts, and twice identified Asian A mericans' self-concepts resem -bled Kore ans' self-concepts, in bo th abstractness-specificity and autonom y-sociality. Differentialacculturation did n ot accou nt for these results. Implications for social identity, self-categorization,and acculturation theory are discussed.

There are two proposals in the literature regarding the effectof individualism-collectivism on the self-concept.1 One is thatthe self-concept varies along an interdependent-independentdimension. That is, individualistic cultures pro duce more inde-pendent and private self-descriptions and fewer interdependentand collective self-descriptions because the role of other peop leis less central in the self-conception in individualistic than col-lectivistic cultures (Bochner, 1994; Markus & Kitayama, 1991;Triandis, 1989 b). The second proposal is that the self-conceptvaries along a concrete-abstract dimension. Th at is, individual-istic cultures produce more abstract (not situated) and fewerconcrete self-descriptions (Bond & Cheung, 1983; Cousins,1989; Shweder & B ourne, 198 4). However, independent-inter-dependent and abstract-concrete often seem to be used inter-changeably in this litera ture.Spontaneous self-descriptions reveal "the dimensions interms of which people tend spontaneously to think of them-

Eun Rhee, James S.Uleman, and Robert J. Roman, Department ofPsychology, New \brk University; Hoon K. Lee, Department of Psy-chology, Yonsei University, Seou l, South Korea.This work was supported in part by a grant from the National Insti-tute of Mental Health. We would like to thank Jacqueline Goodnow,Stacey Lutz, Len Newman, and Diane Ruble for insightful commentson an earlier version. We would also like to thank Magda Garcia for herhelp in developing the coding scheme and Susan LoBosco for coding thedata.Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to EunRhee, Department of Psychology, New York University, 6 WashingtonPlace, 7th Floor, New York, New York 10003. Electronic m ail may besent via the Internet to rhee@acfcluster.nyu.edu.

selves, what the aspects of the self are that concern the person"(McGuire & McGuire, 1981, p. 149). O ne purpose of the pres-ent study was to compare spontaneous self-descriptions fromindividualistic and collectivistic cultures on each of these twoself-concept dimensions, to determine whether they differ as ex-pected, and to examine whether these dimensions are inter-changeable. A second purpose was to examine the spontaneousself-descriptions of Asian Americans who differ in their sponta-neous ethnic iden tities.

Individualism, Collectivism, and Self-DescriptionsIn several studies, differences have emerged in the self-de-scriptions offered by English speakers from the United States,Australia, or B ritain and those offered by Chinese, Japanese, orMalaysian participants. Cousins (1989) found that Americans'self-descriptions con tain m ore traits than do Japanese descrip-tions, whereas Japanese students' self-descriptions containmore concrete attributes and social categories. Bond andCheung (1983) also found that Japanese students used fewertraits than American students.2 Trafimow, Triandis, and Goto

(1991) found that native English speakers from the UnitedStates gave more private self-descriptions (e.g., kind and1 The issue of whether individualism-collectivism is a single dimen-sion or two dimensions is not addressed here.2 However, their Hong Kong students did not differ from Americanstudents in trait use. As the authors noted, "Hong Kong is a colonizedterritory, composed in large part of a refugee pop ulation. Many Chinesesee themselves as a mix of Chinese and western cultures" (Bond &Cheung, 1983, p. 155).

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INDIVIDUALISTIC, COLLECTIVISTIC SELF-DESCRIPTIONS 143honest) than did Chinese participants, who gave more collectiveself-descriptions (e.g., brothe r and studen t) than native Englishspeakers. Bochner (199 4) found th at Malaysians gave more col-lective and fewer idiocentric self-descriptions than did Austra-lians and British.These differences in descriptions have been attributed todifferences in the extent to which the cultures referred to areindividualistic or collectivistic in orientation. Individualism de-scribes cultures, such as those of the U nited States and WesternEurope, in which people ma intain "loose ties" with each otherand a belief in the inherent separateness of people. These cul-tures emphasize autonomy, emotional independence, individ-ual initiative, a right to privacy, primacy of personal goals overin-group goals, behavior regulated by attitudes, and acceptanceof confrontation (Hofstede, 1980; Triandis, 1989a; Triandis,McCusker, & Hui, 1 990). Furthermo re, individualistic culturesemphasize personal goals and preferences, personal autonom y,and distinctive personal characteristics. These cultural impera-tives lead one to view people, including oneself, in term s of bothautonomy (independent of specific others) andabstract dispo-sitions (internal attributes that are invariant over time andcontext; Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Miller, 1988 ). Newman(1993) found that individualists are more likely to make traitinferences spontaneously.In contrast, people in collectivistic cultures are integratedinto strong, cohesive in-groups. These c ultures em phasize col-lective identity, emotional dependence, in-group solidarity andharmony, duties and obligations, behavior regulation by in-group norm s, family integrity, and strong in-group-out-groupdistinctions (Kim, 1994; Triandis, 1989a; Triandis et al.,1990). T hus, people from collectivistic culture s view the "per-son" not as anautonom ous being with abstract qualities but interms of specific relationships to significant others, whichShweder and Bourne (1984) labeled "sociocentrism." The fo-cus is on specific, situation-bound behaviors and social catego-ries rather than on abstract personality traits, because the per-son may change across social contexts (Markus & Kitayama,1991; Miller, 1984). People from collectivistic cultures do de-scribe personal attributes, such as abilities, opinions, judg-ments, and personality characteristics, but these attributes areunderstood as situation specific, as sometimes elusive and unre-liable, and as not particularly diagnostic. According to T riandis(19 89 b), people from non-Western c ultures are m ore likely topossess a "collective self" because their child-rearing practicesemphasize the in-group.

A Korean sample offers the opportunity to extend these find-ings in two ways. Thefirst s by a change in sample. Korea hasbeen described as one of the m ost collectivistic cultures (Bond,1988; Hofstede, 1980 ), and a replication of the results obtainedfrom Chinese and Japanese students could strengthen earlierinterpretations. The second is bydetermining whether the twodimensions often referred to as part of an individualistic-col-lectivistic difference (abstract-specific and autonomous-social)are identical.

Asian Americans, Acculturation, and Social IdentityThere is little research on Asian Am ericans' spontaneous self-descriptions, bu t Asian Am ericans are a particularly interesting

group because they may participate in both an individualisticand a collectivistic cultu re. In p relimina ry w ork, we found thatspontaneous ethnic identities can be assessed with the TwentyStatements Test (TST; Rhee, Ulem an, & Roman, 1991), whichasks respondents to reply 20 times to the prompt "I am." In asample of 61 Asian Am ericans, social identities fell into threegroups. Some (32%) did not identify themselves as being Asian,Asian A merican, or of any particular nationality (although wecould so identify them from another questionnaire). Others(50%) identified themselves by either ethnicity or nationality,and the rest identified themselves by both ethnicity (Asian orAsian American) and nationality (Chinese, Indian, or Korean).Our hypothesis in the present study was that the self-descrip-tions of doubly identified Asian Americans would resemblethose ofKoreans most closely, that the self-descriptions of un -identified Asian Americans would resemble those of Euro-Americans most closely, and that the self-descriptions of singlyidentified Asian Americans would fall between the precedingtwo categories. We also expected these differences to be relatedto acculturation to the United States.Acculturation is a multifaceted process that refers to individ-ual changes over time in identification, attitudes, values, andbehavioral norms through contact with different cultures(Berry, 1980; Berry, Trimble, & O lmedo, 198 6). Even thoughcultural identity is an important aspect ofacculturation, thereis no research on how it influences people's self-concepts andwhich self-characteristics they consider most important(Phinney, 1990). What is clear is that the process of accultura-tion is an uneven one. For instance, people may subjectivelyidentify with their ethnic group and have ethnic friends bu t notspeak the ethnic language.Both acculturation theory and social identity theory predictdifferences in self-descriptions among th e three groups (Berry,1980; Sue & Wagner, 1973; Tajfel, 1978a, 19 78b ). Th ree of

Berry's (1976, 1980) four modes of acculturation may be rele-vant to Asian American's spontaneous ethnic identities. Un-identified Asian Americans, who mentioned neither their ethnicgroup nor their national group on the TST, may be Berry's as-similators. Singly identified Asian Americans, who mentionedeither their ethnic or national group, may be integrators. Dou-bly identified Asian Americans, who mentioned both ethnicand national groups, may be Berry 's rejectors, strongly assertingtheir e thnic distinctiveness. If this is correct, and if acculturativeinfluences are reflected in spontaneous self-descriptions, thenunidentified Asian Americans should describe themselves sim-ilarly to Euro-Americans and doubly identified Asian Ameri-cans should resemble Korean participants. Singly identifiedAsian Americans should incorporate aspects of each cultureinto their self-descriptions, falling between the other groups.Social identity theory generates similar predictions. Ethnicidentity 3 is defined as a person's subjective awareness and ac-ceptance of membership in a particular social category (Tajfel,1978a). People have multiple social identities; however, ethnicidentity is particularly relevant in multicultural societies such3 We use the term ethnic identity to refer to both ethnic and nationalidentity.

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144 RHEE,ULEMAN,LEE, AND ROMANas the United States, where many minority groups coexist witha dominant social group (Ethier & Deaux, 1990; Gibbs & Hu-ang, 1989;Phinney, 1990; Sue & Wagner, 1973;Tajfel, 1978b).According to social identity theory, identity is based on twokinds of social comparisons: those between people and thosebetween groups. Ethnic identity seems to be neither salient norimportant to unidentified Asian Americans, so they shouldmake primarily interpersonal comparisons, referring more of-ten to abstract, autonomous categories such as traits and lessoften to intergroup categories such as social roles. In contrast,ethnic identity seems to be very important to doubly identifiedAsian Americans, so they should make more intergroup com-parisons, referring to more social identities and fewer traits. Sin-gly identified Asian Americans should fall between the preced-ing two groups.

The Present StudyWe predicted that the self-descriptions of participants with

Western European backgrounds (referred to herein as Euro-Americans) would be more abstract and more autonomousthan those of Koreans. In addition, we examined the relation-ship between these two dimensions among Euro-Americans andKoreans. We also expected that other self-description differ-ences found in prior cross-cultural research would be evident,thus extending these findings. Koreans should qualify thosetraits that they do use more than Euro-Americans because Ko-reans give more weight to contextual factors (Cousins, 1989).Consistent with previous findings, Koreans should use moreglobal self-descriptions (e.g., "human being") than Euro-Americans (Bond & Cheung, 1983; Cousins, 1989).4 Euro-Americans should express more emotions than Koreans be-cause the norm in Asian cultures is to restrain expression offeelings (Markus & Kitayama, 1991).

Our Asian American participants were divided into ethnicallyunidentified, singly identified, and doubly identified categorieson the basis of the TST. We predicted that this three-level ethnicidentity variable would predict how much their self-descriptionsresembled those of the individualistic Euro-Americans and col-lectivistic Koreans. We also expected these differences to be re-lated to the degree of acculturation to the United States.

MethodParticipants

The sam ple consisted of 105 psychology majors from Vonsei Univer-sity in Seoul, Korea (68 men and 37 women), and 97 Euro-American(37 men and 60 women) and 151 Asian American (54 men and 97women) college students from introductory psychology courses at New\brk University. The Asian American students included ChineseAmericans, Indian Americans, and Korean Americans. Euro-Ameri-cans were so classified if at least three of their grandpa rents were fromNorthern or Western Europe or if their grandparents were Americans.(Our U.S. sample also included 38 men and63 women with Easternor Southern European backgrounds by the three-grandparent criterion.These Southern-Eastern Euro-Americans were analyzed separately[see Footnote 15].)The m ean age of the Korean sample was 20.5 years; Euro-Americansaveraged 18.9 years of age, and Asian Americans averaged 18.9 years.

Seventy-one Asian Americans were first-generation immigrants, 51were second-generation im migrants, and 1 was a third-generation im-migrant. Ninety-eight of them considered themselves bilingual, whereas32 spoke only English. Gene rational information was unavailable for 28Asian Americans, and some of the language information was unavail-able for 9.The educational and socioeconomic levels of the students wereroughly equivalent. Yonsei University is one of the m ost prestigious p ri-vate universities in South Korea; it is located in a large urban setting,with students ofvarying socioeconomic backgrounds. New York Uni-versity is a highly ranked university, and the socioeconomic diversity ofits students is similar to that ofYonsei University; however, New YorkUniversity is less selective in its admission standards.The U.S. students' ethnicity was established from a personal infor-mation questionnaire given shortly before the TST. This questionnairealso included questions about parents' socioeconomic status, the stu-dents ' own generational status, bilingualism,first anguage learned, ageat which English wasfirst earned, and the exten t of English use at home,at school, in the community, and in general, both while growing upand at present. TheKorean students completed only the TST and aquestionnaire about their parents' socioeconomic status.Materials

The TST instructed participants to provide 20 answers to the ques-tion "Who are you?" This was followed by 20 blank lines beginningwith the stem "I am." It was given to th e U.S. students, in a mass testingsession at the beginning of the fall te rm in introductory psychology, afterthey had completed a personal information questionna ire. The TST wasgiven to the Korean students as the firstquestionnaire in a small surveyduring a regular class. All materials were translated into Korean andback-translated in to English to confirm the sem antic equivalence of thequestions for the Korean sample (Brislin, 1970, 1980).TST Coding System

We developed a coding system for the TST th at preserved traditionalcoding categories and included the two dimensions noted earlier(referred to here as abstract-specific and autonomous-social).5 Thepresent coding system was based on Cousins's (1989) elaboration ofwork conducted by McPartland, Cumming, and Garretson (1961).Cousins used four basic categories, each representing a different level ofabstraction. The present system extended these categories to eight; also,33 subcategories were developed to be as inclusive as possible. They a reshown in Table 1.Each subcategory was classified as either abstract or specific (see Ta-ble 1) ; past practices were followed whenever possible (especially thoseof Cousins, 1989). For example, traits were divided into abstract(autonomous) and specific (social) states, the social traits being morespecific because they referred to specific interpersonal contexts. The au-tonomous-social categories were designated in the same way, relyingheavily onMarkus and Kitayama's (1991) description of independentand interdependent selves. Self-descriptions that are invariant over timeand context and that c onstitute an internal re pertoire of thoughts, feel-ings, actions, desires, preferences, a nd abilities were classified as auton-omous. Self-descriptions th at refer to social context, other people, time ,

4 This category is similar to Bond and C heung's (19 83) "self and so-cial category," although the present coding did no t include name s.5 We refer to the abstract-concrete distinction as abstract-specific toavoid the negative connotation tha t concrete has among academics. Werefer to independent-interdependent as autonomous-social for greaterprecision.

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INDIVIDUALISTIC, COLLECTIVISTIC SELF-DESCRIPTIONS 145Table 1Coding System for the Twenty Statements Test

Category and subcategories Meanproportion Abstract orspecific Autonomousor socialTraitsPure (kind, friendly)QualifiedContextualized (with someone, at home)Tem poral (sometimes, a little)Social identitiesRole-status (student, major)Family inform ation (sister, son, last child)Ethnicity/race/nationalityGender (boy, woman)Self-ascribed identities (m usician, danc er)Origin (from Hong Kong)Religion (Christian, child of God)Occupation (salesperson)Negation (not a Christian)NameSpecific attributesPreferences (interests, likes, dislikes, fond of)

Autonomous (like books)Social (like children)Aspirations (wishes, hopes, wants)Autonomous (be a doctor)Social (help people)Activities (activities, habits)Autonomous (take the bus)Social (visit friends)Evaluative desc riptions (abilities, evaluations, beliefs)Autonomous (good in math, may not know myself)Social (good listener, have man y friends)Physical descriptionsDescriptive (cute, short, sexy)AgeFactual (height, weight, eye co lor)Physical condition (ne ar sighted)Emotional statesAutonomous (worried, afraid)Social (in love)Peripheral informationImm ediate situations, states (tired, hungry)Present residence (live at hom e)Other's descriptionsPossessions (clothes, ears)Global descriptionsUniversal-oceanic (hum an being, earthling)Existential (me, myself)

30.024.75.33.22.121.68.33.42.52.41.20. 90. 90.70. 20.113.16.05.20.84. 93.91.02.22.00.1o 7O. /6.52. 36.33.11.61.20.45.04. 90.13.62.40.70. 30. 22.21.40.9

AbstractSpecificSpecificSpecificSpecificSpecificSpecificSpecificSpecificSpecificSpecificSpecificSpecific

SpecificSpecificSpecificSpecificSpecificSpecificSpecificSpecificSpecificSpecificSpecificSpecificAbstractSpecificSpecificSpecificSpecificSpecificAbstractAbstract

AutonomousSocialSocialSocialSocialSocialSocialSocialSocialSocialSocialSocialAutonomous

AutonomousSocialAutonomousSocialAutonomousSocialAutonomousSocialAutonomousAutonomousAutonomousAutonomousAutonomousSocialAutonomousSocialSocialAutonomousSocialAutonomous

Note. Proportions are rounded upward. Responses such as "I am a wha le" and repeated descriptions werecoded as nonsense.and specific locations and are thus situation bound were classified associal.Following Bond and Cheung (1983), our unit of analysis was mean-ings rather than responses, because one response may contain severalmeanings. For instance, "I am a good student" contains "I am a stu-dent" and "I am good." Such responses that contained an evaluationand a role were coded for the m ore distinctive role rather than the lessdistinctive evaluation. However, if "I a m a studen t" had been a previousresponse, then "I am a good student" was coded as an evaluative de-scription. When several closely related de scriptions were given in a re -sponse (e.g., "I am friendly and kin d" or "I am a daughter and siste r"),only thefirstdescription was coded, and the subsequent elaboration wasignored. If a response was repe ated, the second one was ignored.

Scoring the TSTResponses from the Korean sam ple were translated in to English andthen back-translated into Korean. Translation reliability was .99 on asubset of 20% of the responses (approximately 400 of 2,00 0). The firstauthor and a native-English-speaking coder unaware of the hypothesesassessed coding reliability on a subset (20%) of all of the responses(approximately 1,800 of 9,0 00). Coders were unaware of all informa-tion not on the TST. Interrater reliabilities for the two dimensions' c at-egories were .97 for abstract, .96 for specific, 1.00 for autonomous, and.84 for social. Reliabilities for the specific categories were .98 for puretraits, 1.00 for qualified traits, .95 for social identities, 1.00 for specificattributes, .83 for evaluative descriptions, 1.00 for physical descriptions,

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146 RHEE, ULEMAN, LEE, AND ROMAN.76 for emotional states, 1.00 for peripheral information, and 1.00 forglobal descriptions. The native-English-speaking coder's scores wereused in data analyses.Fifty Asian Am erican students (33%) did not identify themselves onthe TST as Asian, Asian American, or of a particular nationality(Chinese, Indian, or Ko rean ); 82 (54%) identified themselves either byethnicity (8) or na tionality (74); and 19 (13%) identified themselves asAsian, as Asian American, and by nationality.

6This subjective ethnicidentification was used to categorize the A sian Americans a s unidenti-fied, singly identified, or doubly identified.To control for variations in the number of TST meaning units, wecalculated proportions of responses in each category and subcategoryon the basis of the total num ber of me aning units for each participa nt,excluding ethnic identifications. Table 1 presents the mean proportionsof each category and subcategory for the entire sample.

ResultsThe resu lts are organized as follows. Table 2 presents the cor-relations between the two dimensions in each subsample. Table3 presents the proportion of self-descriptions that fell withineach category. Figure 1 displays the propo rtion of each sub-

group's self-descriptions that were abstract or specific, and Fig-ure 2 displays the proportion that were autonomous or social.These results point to (a) the need to distinguish between thetwo dimensions and (b ) the similarity between the Korean andthe doubly identified U.S. groups and the difference betweenthese two subgroups and all others.Correlations Between the Two Dimensions

The structure of the scoring system almost ensured that theproportion of abstract self-descriptions would correlate posi-tively with the proportion of autonom ous self-descriptions andtha t specific self-descriptions would corre late positively with so-cial self-descriptions. Three of the four abstract subcategories(representing about 95% of the abstract responses) were alsoautonomous, and 18 of the 29 specific subcategories (repre-

Table 2Correlations Between Poles of EachDimension by Ethnic GroupEthnic group

Euro-AmericansAutonomousSocialUnidentified Asian Am ericansAutonomousSocialSingly identified Asian AmericansAutonomousSocialDoubly identified Asian Am ericansAutonomousSocialKoreansAutonomousSocial

Abstract.77**- .58**.75**- .52**.74**- .61**.58**- .29.34**- . 08

Specific- .49**.74**- .32*.74**- .27*.73**

.08.69**

.42**.37**

senting about 60% of the specific responses) were also social(see Table 1). However, this did not prevent correlations fromdiffering among subsamples. Accordingly, the proportion of ab-stract self-descriptions was correlated with the proportion ofautonomous self-descriptions within each subsample, specificdescriptions were correlated with social descriptions, and thesecorrelations were compared between subsamples.7 Cohen's(19 88) effect sizes for differences between two correla tions werecalculated to test the significance of differences betweencorrelations.The use of abstract and autonomous categories and specificand social categories was highly correlated am ong Euro-Am eri-cans and unidentified and singly identified Asian Americans butonly moderately correlated among doubly identified AsianAm ericans and Ko reans (see Table 2 ). These correlations weresignificantly higher among Euro-Americans than Koreans forabstract and autonomous categories, q{ 104) = .67, p < .01, andfor specific and social categories, q( 104) = .56, p < .01. Theywere also higher among unidentified and identified AsianAmericans than among Koreans for abstract and autonomouscategories, q(67) = .62, p < .01, and 0(92 ) = .60, p < .01,respectively, and for specific a nd social categories, q(67) = .56,p < .01, and

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INDIVIDUALISTIC, COLLECTIVISTIC SELF-DESCRIPTIONS 147Table 3Category Proportions by Ethnic Group

CategoryTraitsPure traitsSocial identitiesSpecific attributesEvaluative descriptionsPhysical descriptionsEmotional statesPeripheral informationGlobal descriptions

Euro-Americans(n = 97)35 b29 b21 b09 .07 .07 b07 b03 b02 .

UnidentifiedAsianAmericans( = 50)45C39C12.08 .10b04 .0 5 *02.0 2*

SinglyidentifiedAsianAmericans(n = 82)

31 b25 b23 b09.06.09 c06 b04 b02 .

DoublyidentifiedAsianAmericans(n = 19)

24*17 *30 *12.07*l l * c0 3 *05 *0 1 *

Koreans(n = 105)17.12.16.26b17C03.03.02 ,04 b

Note. Decimal points are omitted. Proportions are rounded up, and, as a result of rounding errors, somedo notadd to 1.00. Proportions with different subscripts in each row are significantly different from eachother at the .05 level by protected t tests.

doubly identified Asian Americans, #(28) = .56, p < .05, orKoreans, A (68) = .61, p > .01 . Singly identified Asian Ameri-cans differed from Koreans, h(92) = .32, p < .05, whereas dou-bly identified Asian Americans did not, h(32)= .05, ns.To examine differences in the use of abstract-specific descrip-tions within groups, we calculated difference scores for eachgroup and tested against the null hypothesis of no difference. Asexpected, Koreans used specific more often than abstract self-descriptions, h'( 105) = \Al,p< .01. Singly identified and dou-bly identified Asian Americans also used specific more oftenthan abstract self-descriptions, /i'(82) = 0.75, p < .01, andh'(19) = 1.46, p < .01, respectively. Unidentified Asian Ameri-cans showed no difference in the use of specific and abstract self-descriptions, /i'(50) = 0.11. Unexpectedly, Euro-Americansused specific more often than abstract self-descriptions, h'(91)= 0.40,p

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148 RHEE, ULEMAN, LEE, AND ROMAN

EURO UNID SINGL Y-ID DOUBLY-ID KOREAN

ABSTRACT SPECIFICFigure 1. Proportion of abstract and specific categories (see Table 1) by subgroup. EURO = EuropeanAmericans; UNID = unidentified Asian Americans; SINGLY-ID = singly identified Asian Americans;DOUBLY-ID = doubly identified Asian Americans.

earlier result for traits, this result is open to the simple and un-interesting alternative interpretation that the use of some socialidentities (e.g., ethnicity) predicts the use of others such asmem bership in a family or institutions.Because specific attributes (preferences, aspirations, andactivities) and physical descriptions are specific rather than ab-stract categories, we expected them to be most frequent am ongKoreans' and doubly identified Asian Americans' self-descrip-tions. As predicted, Koreans used specific attributes (pref-erences, aspirations, and activities) most frequently (26%),whereas the other groups did not differ (less than 13%), F(4,348) = 35.97, p < .001. The particular subcategories that ac-counted for this effect were preferences, F( 4, 348) = 12.80,p

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INDIVIDUALISTIC, COLLECTIVISTIC SELF-DESCRIPTIONS 1490.8

EURO UNID SINGLY -ID DOUBLY -ID KOREAN

AUTONOMOUS SOCIALFigure 2. Proportion of autonom ous and social categories (see Table 1) by subgroup. EURO = EuropeanAmericans; UNID = unidentified Asian Americans; SINGLY-ID = singly identified Asian Americans;DOUBLY-ID = doubly identified Asian Am ericans.

Acculturation Predictions of Ethnic Identity and Self-DescriptionsAcculturation variables were examined to determine whetherthey could predict Asian Am ericans' spontan eous ethnic identitiesor self-descriptions. The Asian American groups did not differ ingeneration status, F{2, 116) < 2.0; socioeconomic status, F(2,139) < 1.0; or bilingualism, F( 2, 139) < 1.0. The three groupsalso did not differ in English use at home while growing up, atschool, in the comm unity, and in general, Fs(2, 139) < 2.0, ps >

. 10. They did differ marginally on present English use at home,F(2, 139) = 2.52, p = .084. The only clear differences were in theage at which they learned English, F( 2, 139) = 4.80, p = .01, an dwhether English was their first language, F(2, 139) = 6.75, p