Situational Flexibility of In-Group-Related Attitudes: A Single Category IAT Study of People with Dual National Identity

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to examine the situational flexibility of in-group-related attitudes at the implicit and explicit level. Seventy-one men and women with dual, Turkish-German, national identities were asked to think about positive aspects of either their German or their Turkish identity. Later, attitudes toward Germans and Turks were assessed using a single category implicit association test (SC-IAT) and self-report scales. Results showed that attitudes toward Turks were generally more positive than attitudes toward Germans, that SC-IAT scores reflecting attitudes toward Turks and Germans were unrelated, and that the identity priming affected men's, but not women's, SC-IAT scores. This finding is discussed in terms of men's greater flexibility in national identification. Explicit attitude measures were largely unaffected by the priming.