Over eighty years after its publication, Richard LaPiere’s (1934) study titled “Attitudes vs. Actions” continues to be one of the most influential and well-known papers in the field of social psychology. We like to cite it when discussing attitudes, the validity of surveys, and even racial issues – but frequently, we base our information on brief summaries of the study found in social science textbooks, without having read LaPiere’s actual writing and its critiques, or any of the follow-up investigations done on the topic. This goes for social psychologists just as much as the non-academic public, and, as we will see, can lead to plenty of misinterpretations. This essay aims to present and analyse the methods and conclusions of “Attitudes vs. …show more content…
In 1930, he had the unique opportunity to conduct the perfect study on the topic, without even having to enter a lab. He was taking several trips through the Eastern US with a Chinese-American couple over two years, staying in a variety of different accommodations and eating at restaurants around the country. This was, of course, a time when prejudice against Asians in the States was widespread. Yet, out of the 67 hotels and auto camps, they were refused only once, and none of the 184 restaurants declined to serve …show more content…
Actions” may be considered a classic, but this certainly does not preclude its experimental procedure from being flawed to certain extents. While critiquing LaPiere’s paper, however, we cannot forget his aim, as previously mentioned. For instance, one could argue that the fact that the Chinese couple “spoke unaccented English” (pp. 6), or that they were often accompanied by a white man, would be confounding factors, which would have been important to indicate in the questionnaire, if searching for the “true attitudes” – but of course, this is the very fact which LaPiere is trying to highlight. Still, there are issues which may have lowered the experiment’s validity. For instance, the way in which the questionnaire was conducted was not ideal (again, it may be argued that this is simply more evidence of the inaccuracy of surveys, but we will evaluate them nonetheless for completion’s sake). It was sent to the establishment six months after LaPiere’s visit – and with good reason, since he wanted any possible effects of having Chinese guests fade. The downside to this, however, is that attitudes can change over time. In addition, there was no way to ensure that the person dealing with the guests was also the person answering the question. There is also the issue of possible biases, including the self-selection bias, since only 128 of 251 of the surveys were returned, and the social desirability bias, which is difficult to avoid in surveys, but which might
Dr. Stanley Sue is an Asian American clinical psychologist whose research focus is on Asian American minorities. Dr. Sue was born in Portland, Oregon and was the third of six children to his Chinese immigrant parents. As a child “his first career ambition was to repair televisions, but soon he got bored with shop classes. Then, he developed great fascination with psychotherapy and the idea of helping emotionally disturbed individuals (Rockwell 2001).” Dr. Sue recalled, “I told my parents that I wanted to become a clinical psychologist, not fully knowing what a clinical psychologists did (Rockwell 2001).” He also remembered what his father said and thought after making this declaration: “My father, who was born in China, said, ‘What is that?’ He couldn’t believe that people would pay me to listen to their problems – indeed, he wondered if I could make a decent living (Rockwell 2001).”
Tachiki, Amy; Wong, Eddie; Odo, Franklin, eds. (1971). Roots: An Asian American Reader. University of California, Los Angeles Press.
For nearly a century, spanning from the latter half of the 19th century to the first half of the 20th century, Chinese-Americans and Chinese immigrants endured discrimination from the United States government and its people. The Chinese are another group of people that were treated as less than in America’s long history of legal racism. The Chinese experience is often overlooked as other
With the passing of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, the first significant restrictive immigration law in United States history was instituted that would provided a framework to be used to racialize other threatening, excludable aliens. Furthermore, this marked the first time that groups of immigrants were excluded based on their race and nationality. At the time, America could be identified as being an Anglo-Saxon dominated nation where native-born citizens had the ultimate say in government and societal issues. The influx of Chinese immigrants in the 19th century posed a problem for many of these nativists. The Chinese immigrants were coming to America at an astounding rate and willing to work for less money, thereby, endangering American values and civilization. Additionally, they were deemed as a threat to the white supremacy in the West. In order to bring this racial threat to light, many Anti-Chinese activists’ compared the new immigrants to African Americans in that both were believed to be inherently inferior savages only suitable for degrading labor in which they were often employed (Lee 34). However, the strongest argument against the Chinese focused on them being unwilling and incapable of assimilating into society. In the ...
The first Chinese immigrants to arrive in America came in the early 1800s. Chinese sailors visited New York City in the 1830s (“The Chinese Experience”); others came as servants to Europeans (“Chinese Americans”). However, these immigrants were few in number, and usually didn’t even st...
When thousands of Chinese migrated to California after the gold rush the presence caused concern and debate from other Californians. This discussion, popularly called the “Chinese Question,” featured in many of the contemporary accounts of the time. In the American Memory Project’s “California: As I Saw It” online collection, which preserves books written in California from 1849-1900, this topic is debated, especially in conjunction with the Chinese Exclusion Act. The nine authors selected offer varying analyses on Chinese discrimination and this culminating act. Some give racist explanations, but the majority point towards the perceived economic competition between the Chinese and the lower class led to distrust and animosity.
A nativist minister during the 1870’s gave this testimony during a Congressional hearing on Chinese immigration, “Coolieism, with very slight exceptions, leaves the Chinese just what they were in their native land, with all their idolatry, immorality, vice, and heathen customs, habits, dress, tastes, prejudices, and most unacquirable language a large, distinct class of people, adverse to all that is American.
Wu, Ellen D. "Asian Americans and the 'model Minority' Myth." Los Angeles Times. 23 Jan. 2014. Los Angeles Times. Web. 04 Feb. 2014. .
When the Chinese Exclusion Act was signed into law in May 1882, it was followed by a rapidly decreasing amount of new immigrants to the United States. Regardless of problems that the United States attempted to solve with the Act, violent massacre and persecution of Chinese people in the United States continued. Because of this, many Chinese immigrants that did stay in America continued on for years to receive prejudice and racism in the labor market and cultural society. This then continued to force many Chinese immigrants further and further down the path of segregation and into the protection of Chinatowns and poverty, counteracting the great American idea of the “melting pot.”
As a minority, coming from an international country to a foreign nation has been the most crucial decision that my family has concluded to live the possibility of the "American Dream". However, growing up as an Asian-American student wasn’t simple; I was faced with the challenge of malicious racial slurs, spiteful judgment, and unjustified condemnation that attacked my family's decision to come to America.
In chapter thirty five, author Shelley Sang-Hee Lee explains that “Immigration is an important part of our understanding of U.S. social experience” (Hee 128). Asian immigrants bring their diverse culture, language and custom from various Asian countries. They help improve American economic development. Also, they play an important role in American society. The first Asian immigration flow is the Chinese Immigration in the mid-19th century to work in the gold mines and railroads. The Asian immigrant population grew rapidly between 1890 and 1910 (Hee 130). The increasing of population of Asian immigrants have brought a lot of problems. Many of them were facing the issue of ethnicity, discrimination, and the process of assimilation. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which banned the immigration of Chinese laborers and proscribed foreign-born Chinese from naturalized citizenship and the Asian Exclusion Act League in 1907 which limited the entry of Asian immigrants have reshaped the demographic of Asian immigrants in the U.S (Hing 45). With the rise of anti-Asian movements, many Asian immigrants were rejected from entering America or deported to their homeland. In the early history of immigration in America, the issue of deportation is an important part of the Asian American experience in the
Psychologist’s definitions of attitudes include assessing problems, persons, or actions. These assessments are regularly affirmative or adverse, and unclear. Humans have established attitudes about such issues, and these attitudes influence his or her beliefs as well as behavior. Because people are largely unaware of his or her implicit attitudes, they can have difficulty changing these attitudes.
Fiske, S. (1989). Examining the role of intent: Toward understanding its role in stereotyping and
Eiser,J and Van der Plight,J (1988) Attitudes and Decisions: New essential Psychology:.Channel Islands:The Guernsey Press Co
In essence, he was shunned” (Hongo 4) by the white people who could not believe that he would attack their superior American ways. According to writers such as Frank Chin and the rest of the “Aiiieeeee!” group, the Americans have dictated Asian culture and created a perception as “nice and quiet” (Chin 1972, 18), “mama’s boys and crybabies” without “a man in all [the] males.” (Chin 1972, 24). This has become the belief of the preceding generations of Asian Americans and therefore manifested these stereotypes. Those authors who contest these “American made” stereotypes are said to betray the American culture and white power around them, and to be “rocking the boat” in a seemingly decent living situation.