To Identify and Disidentify

Arndt’s study implies, even if a membership in a particular group is important, if it affects their self-esteem; they are likely to distance themselves from that particular group, especially if mortality is induced. This suggests that people are more focused on self-esteem than belonging to a group. It would be interesting to see if the extent of group identification contributes the disengagement of a particular group. For example, the difference between people who were raised highly accustomed to their culture, people who were raised moderately accustomed to their culture, and people who were not raised accustomed to their culture. The level of identification within that particular group may influence people to not disengage from their group, regardless of their self-esteem.
A limitation of this study was that the researchers did not differentiate between the various Hispanic ethnicities (i.e Mexican, Dominican, Puerto Rican, etc.). Although they fall into the category as Hispanics, they differ in terms of culture, traditions and stereotypes. In other words, there are different stereotypes within an ethnic group. For example, Koreans and Chinese are of Asian decent, however, within the Asian groups; Korean people are stereotyped as materialistic and untrustworthy compared to Chinese people and Chinese people are considered to have poorer hygiene and parsimonious. This shows that, different backgrounds may influence people in distinctive ways.
Kaiser and Miller’s study indicates if women were forewarned about prejudice, they were evaluated more negatively and distanced themselves from the traditional stereotype than women who were told after their essay was written. This shows that women are very susceptible to prejudice. However, the researchers only induced prejudice before/after and had them write about their future, but did not give them a chance to defend themselves. It would be interesting to extend the research by seeing how women would defend