Objective Subjects, Empirical Identities: Psychology’s Measurement of Ethnic Identity and Critical Race and Ethnicity Theory
Abstract
Objective Subjects, Empirical Identities explores the kinds of questions that emerge
when psychology’s conceptualization of ethnic identity comes into contact with critical
race and ethnicity theory. Jean S. Phinney’s Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM),
for example, conceptualizes ethnic identity as a construct that can be reduced to
its supposedly constituent pieces, operationalized into variables for the purpose
of quantitative assessment in studies. In The Protestant Ethnic and the Spirit of
Capitalism, Rey Chow, a prominent critical race and ethnicity scholar, argues that,
through a process called coercive mimeticism, ethnic subjects are coerced into mimicking
characteristics that are recognizably ethnic (i.e., stereotypes viewed as “inherent
to” ethnic subjects). By placing Chow in conversation with Phinney, this project asks:
What might it look like to bring in thinking from critical race and ethnicity theory
and apply it to psychology’s understanding of ethnic identity? Can these two fields
be made to speak to each other, or are they so inherently ideologically and methodologically
incompatible that any attempt to do so would prove futile? In working through these
questions, I argue that: 1) There is a problem with how ethnic identity is conceptualized
in quantitative psychological research, specifically in its lack of sociocultural
and historical texture; 2) There is a need to recognize the constructed nature of
the terms and concepts psychologists use in their work and apply critical perspectives
to the theory and methodology used in these fields; and 3) There is a need for reflexivity
on the part of researchers such that they acknowledge that they, and the work that
they produce, are products of a particular historical moment. Ultimately, I contend
that mainstream psychology has what critical psychologist Thomas Teo refers to as
a “hermeneutic deficit,” a limitation resulting from the unacknowledged speculative
and ideological interpretations made in (and made invisible by) empirical research.
I call for researchers and scholars in mainstream psychology to learn from critical
psychologists by practicing reflexivity and engaging in the critical reflection of
the work that they produce. Psychology researchers, I conclude, have an ethical responsibility
to be transparent about the hermeneutic deficit in our work.
Type
Honors thesisDepartment
LiteratureSubject
Ethnic and racial identitycritical race and ethnicity theory
quantitative methodology
epistemology
critical psychology
Latino Studies
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/13973Citation
Acosta, Jennifer (2017). Objective Subjects, Empirical Identities: Psychology’s Measurement of Ethnic Identity
and Critical Race and Ethnicity Theory. Honors thesis, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/13973.Collections
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