Bicultural individuals often must select between different responses to a task implied by their dual identities. When one identity has been situationally primed, one strategy is to assimilate to the situational demand. However, another strategy is contrastive, to express their other identity. This second strategy has been called ethnic affirmation (Yang & Bond, 1980) and cultural contrast (Mok & Morris, 2013). It has been primarily explained as a defense against perceived threat to the specific identity that is excluded. The present studies posit that contrastive responses to cultural priming also may reflect a defense of biculturals' global self-integrity. We provide the first direct test of this mechanism by examining the effect of self-affirmation on the contrastive response tendency. In two experiments that varied self-affirmation and cultural priming, non-affirmed Chinese Americans showed contrastive responses—they exhibited greater extraversion in response to Chinese primes than to American primes in Study 1 or than to neutral primes in Study 2, but this pattern was significantly attenuated among Chinese Americans who engaged in self-affirmation. Theoretical implications are discussed.

双重文化个体通常必须在对双重身份所隐含的任务的不同回应之间进行选择。当一种身份在情境中得到了预备时，一种策略就是吸收情境的需求。但是，另一种策略是对比性的，以表达他们自己的另一种。身份。第二种策略被称为民族认同（Yang＆Bond，1980）和文化对比（Mok＆Morris，2013）。最初将其解释为针对被感知的对排除的特定身份的威胁的防御措施。目前的研究认为，对文化启动的对比反应也可能反映了对双重文化人的全球自我完整性的辩护。通过检查自我肯定对对比反应趋势的影响，我们对这种机制进行了首次直接测试。在两个改变自我肯定和文化倾向的实验中，未确认的华裔美国人表现出对比的反应-他们对华人素养的反应比在研究1中对美国素养或在研究2中对中立素养表现出更大的外向性。但是这种模式在从事自我肯定的华裔美国人中被大大削弱了。理论意义进行了讨论。