A Functional Framework of Asian American Ingroup Identification

ABSTRACT Asian Americans are vastly heterogenous. Despite being seen as a homogenous group, the social category of ‘Asian American’ may not always be a meaningful ingroup for its constituent members. Taking a functional approach, we review previous theories on motivations for ingroup identification and apply them to research on Asian American identification. Different motivations facilitate and hinder identification with a broad Asian American ingroup and smaller ethnic ingroups. We explore the unique aspects of Asian Americans as a social group in North America, then offer a framework to predict when Asian Americans might identify as Asian American and when they might identify with smaller ethnic ingroups. In this framework, identification with an ingroup serves functional goals. Both the active goals and the utility of a given ingroup are situationally determined. We explore implications of our framework and highlight future research directions.