Membership in a racial or ethnic minority group may increase the likelihood of being inappropriately classified or being denied the opportunity to accurately self-categorize. As a result, racial/ethnic minorities may feel less valued as a member of society that fails to recognize these preferred identities. This dissertation offers a model for exploring whether giving ethnoracial minorities the opportunity to self-categorize with their preferred ethnoracial group affects minorities’ emotions and feelings of belonging or inclusion as U.S. Americans. With this model, I investigated whether the unavailability of a preferred racial/ethnic identity leads to experiencing social identity threat, and whether social identity threat mediates the relationship between preferred racial/ethnic identity availability and emotions, such that increased feelings of social identity threat would lead to more negative emotions. I also examined whether emotions, in turn, mediated the relationship between social identity threat and feelings of belonging and inclusion as Americans, such that more negative emotions would lead to decreased feelings of belonging and inclusion as Americans. I predicted that when people’s preferred ethnoracial identities were unavailable for them to self-identify, they would feel the most negative emotions and least feelings of belonging as Americans. Finally, I proposed that racial/ethnic identity centrality would moderate the relationship between preferred race/ethnicity availability and feelings of social identity threat, such that those with higher ethnoracial identity centrality would feel more social identity threat when their preferred racial/ethnic identities were unavailable. Three studies tested different aspects of this model. In Study 1a, I tested the overall model using samples of Middle Eastern or North African and Hispanic or Latino/a Americans, and found that participants felt more social identity threat when their preferred races/ethnicities were unavailable versus when their preferred races/ethnicities were available, but did differ in their feelings of satisfaction, anger, or belonging as Americans. The moderated serial-parallel mediational pathways from preferred race/ethnicity availability to social identity threat to satisfaction to belonging as an American were significant, while the same pathways replacing satisfaction with anger were not. In Study 1b, I elucidated the types of social identity threat that Hispanic or Latino/a participants may experience, and developed a 15-item Social Identity Threat Scale measuring different dimensions of this construct. In Study 2, I replicated and expanded upon findings from Study 1a, and demonstrated the effects experienced from having one’s preferred race/ethnicity inadequately represented, using items generated from Study 1b. In this study, the moderated serial-parallel mediational paths from preferred race/ethnicity representation to social identity threat to satisfaction and sadness to belonging as an American were significant, while the same paths including the emotions of anger and pride were not. When the outcome variable was inclusion as an American, the pathways including the emotions of satisfaction and sadness were again significant, in addition to the pathways including anger, while the paths including pride were not. This research sheds light on the negative consequences of inadequately representing people’s preferred races/ethnicities as they relate to people’s emotions and feelings of belonging and inclusion as Americans.
