Running head : Implicit and explicit centrality Implicit and explicit racial centrality and their differential implications for behavior

Using survey data from a sample of African-American youth, we examined the relation of implicit racial/ethnic identity centrality to three different measures of explicit centrality. We also examined the differential relations of these four measures to the following race/ethnicity related attitudes and behaviors: perceptions of discrimination and race relations at school, salience of race/ethnicity in the family, and preference for same race/ethnicity friendships. Results indicated that implicit centrality was related to all three measures of explicit centrality, but only to a small degree; all three explicit measures were moderately related to one another. Additionally, whereas implicit centrality was a better predictor of racial/ethnic attitudes, explicit measures were better predictors of race/ethnicity related behaviors. Chatman, Malanchuk, & Eccles 3 When asked during an interview what her accomplishments meant to her as an AfricanAmerican woman, Debbye Turner, Miss America 1990, explained that being Black was the least of whom she was. News reports following these remarks highlighted the discontent expressed by some members of the African American community who perceived Ms. Turner as rejecting her “Blackness”. Alternatively, however, Ms. Turner’s statement may have reflected her belief that, like most people, her identity was based on many characteristics, some or even most of which may have exceeded race in their self-definitional importance. Many terms have been used to denote this sort of hierarchical significance of multiple identity elements, including identity strength, salience, importance, prominence, and centrality (e.g., add Eccles et al cites; Ethier & Deaux, 1990, 1994; James, 1902; Markus & Wurf (? ), year; Oyserman, Sakamoto, & Lauffer, 1998; Sellers, Rowley, Chavous, Shelton, & Smith, 1997; Sellers, Smith, Shelton, Rowley, & Chavous, 1998; Stryker & Serpe, 1994). But these terms, particularly centrality, have also been used to refer to the extent to which a given identity element is psychologically prominent or accessible in individuals’ self-definitions, relative to their other identity elements (Banaji & Prentice, 1994; Gurin & Markus, 1988; Stryker & Serpe, 1994). In the present paper, we distinguish between explicit and implicit forms of centrality. The former refers to individuals’ conscious appraisals of the personal value they attach to a given identity element relative to other elements, whereas the latter represents the extent to which a given identity element is more chronically accessible than others in individuals’ everyday experiences. Although there is likely to be some overlap between these two constructs, we propose that they are empirically distinct from one another and have different implications for individual thought and behavior. Chatman, Malanchuk, & Eccles 4 What is centrality? There is no consensus as to whether the terms noted above—identity strength, salience, importance, prominence, and centrality—are equivalent, and a complete review of their varied conceptual and empirical usage is beyond the scope of this paper. Here we focus exclusively on definitions of identity centrality, in particular (except where others have used another term but a conceptualization similar to ours). Specifically, we explore whether the self-attributed appraisal of an identity element (in this case, race and ethnicity) as being central to one’s self-definition is distinct from the extent to which that identity element is a primary factor in individuals’ experiences across various situations. Both notions are included in common definitions of centrality, which we briefly review below. In the Multidimensional Model of Racial Identity (MMRI, Sellers et al., 1998) and the Multidimensional Inventory of Black Identity (MIBI, Sellers et al., 1997) designed to test it, racial identity centrality is defined as “the extent to which a person normatively defines himself or herself in terms of race” (p. 25). Unlike the situational salience of race, centrality is considered to be a stable aspect of personality (Sellers et al., 1998) that drives behavioral choice across various situations. Although Sellers and his colleagues acknowledge that centrality consists of both a self-attributed importance of race in defining the self and a tendency for individuals to be particularly sensitive to racial cues across situations, the centrality subscale of the MIBI focuses only on the first of these two components. In addition, given the self-report nature of questionnaire instruments such as the MIBI, these measures assess only the individuals’ conscious appraisals of the extent to which race structures their everyday experiences. In contrast to Sellers and his colleagues, Stryker and Serpe (1994) limit their definition of centrality to a “self-ascribed importance, based on the value of activities representing an Chatman, Malanchuk, & Eccles 5 identity” (p. 19). They distinguish this component of identity from the “readiness to act out an identity as a consequence of the identity’s properties as a cognitive structure or schema” (p. 17). This latter concept, referred to as identity salience, refers to the extent to which a given identity element is likely to be activated in individuals’ self-definitions across situations. Similarly, psychologists have often described identity centrality as a property resulting from an identity element’s being chronically (or durably) salient across situations (Gurin & Markus, 1988; McGuire, McGuire, Child, & Fujioka, 1978; Sellers et al., 1998). Implicit versus explicit centrality Inherent in the definitions described above is the notion that centrality consists both of individuals’ conscious appraisals of the relative importance of a given identity element to their overall self-definition and the extent to which that identity element is implicitly accessible across various situations. Like Stryker and Serpe (1994), we consider these phenomena to represent different but related constructs. We consider the former, to which we refer as explicit centrality, to be the result of a conscious process about which individuals are self-aware, as it is a selfattributed value attached to a specific identity element (c.f., McClelland, Koestner, & Weinberger, 1989); the latter, to which we refer as implicit centrality, is not necessarily within the realm of individuals’ self-awareness. This distinction is consistent with Stryker’s and Serpe’s (1994) distinction between centrality and salience, wherein they argue that centrality “assumes a level of self-awareness that is not inherent in salience” (p. 19). The question remains, however, as to whether these two constructs are indeed empirically distinct from one another. There have been substantial developments in research on implicit constructs, particularly with regard to attitudes, self-esteem, and stereotypes and prejudice (for a review, see Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). These efforts have been applied in recent work on social identity as well. For Chatman, Malanchuk, & Eccles 6 example, findings based on implicit measures have indicated that non-prejudiced Blacks and Whites (based on self-reported levels of “modern racism”) demonstrated in-group favoring preferences (Dasgupta, McGhee, Greenwald, & Banaji, 2000) on implicit tasks; Blacks demonstrated implicit self-stereotyping when their group’s distinctiveness was threatened (Smith & Henry, 1996); individuals from collectivistic cultures demonstrated tensions between implicit but not explicit self and group regard (Pelham & Hetts, 1998); and African-Americans, Latinos, and Asian-Americans indicated lower implicit group regard but higher implicit self regard relative to European-Americans (Pelham & Hetts, 1998). Stryker and Serpe (1994) studied the relation between explicit and implicit social identity centrality directly; unfortunately, however, although they distinguished between implicit (which they referred to as identity salience) and explicit centrality conceptually, they did not effectively maintain this distinction in their operationalizations of these two constructs. Specifically, the measures they employed for both constructs required participants to actively reflect on and report the hierarchical organization of their identity elements. That is, in assessing explicit centrality, they asked participants to rank order the important elements of their identities; and in assessing implicit centrality, they asked participants to name the elements they would most likely include when describing themselves to someone who has never met them. Thus, although the authors purported to measure implicit centrality (“salience” in their terms) as “the likelihood with which a given identity element would be invoked,” they in fact measured the likelihood that individuals would explicitly choose to enact that identity element. Research on attitudes has indicated that knowledge activation is not necessarily linked to subsequent behavior (for a review, see Higgins, 1996). Therefore, we examine the relation between implicit and explicit centrality in the present paper using different measures of both constructs. Chatman, Malanchuk, & Eccles 7 Psychological and behavioral implications If implicit and explicit centrality are in fact separate constructs, they are also likely to have different implications for individual behavior. For example, recent research on the personalgroup discrepancy in perceived discrimination has indicated that this discrepancy occurs only with explicit and not with implicit measures of discrimination (Ruggiero, Mitchell, Krieger, Marx, & Lorenzo, 2000). Specifically, when asked about their experiences with discrimination, women reported very few personal experiences but, consistent with previous research, agreed that women as a group were frequent targets of discrimination. On the other hand, findings based on implicit measures in the same study indicated that women were just as likel