Individual vs. Interconnected: The impact of self-construal on perceptions of intragroup marginalization

This study investigates how identity denial and intragroup marginalization affect bicultural individuals, particularly when their membership in a cultural group is questioned by ingroup members. Identity denial, defined as the experience of being unrecognized as a member of a group one identifies with, has been linked to negative psychological outcomes. While prior research has focused on appearance-based biases and social network influences, fewer studies have explored how individual differences and self-construal priming might buffer these effects. This uses a priming task to activate independent or interdependent self-construals to examine whether self-construal impacts perceptions intragroup marginalization, identity integration, essentialism beliefs, and contingencies of self-worth. Results showed that the priming task effectively influenced participants’ self-construals. Although the prime did not significantly affect overall perceptions of intragroup marginalization, an interaction with gender revealed that men primed with interdependence reported lower marginalization than men primed with independence. No such difference emerged among women. These findings suggest that interdependent self-construals may buffer against identity-related rejection for some individuals, though effects may vary by gender.