RESEARCH ABSTRACT Stephanie Fryberg, Ph.D (Tuyalip) Social Psychology | Stanford University December, 2002

Social representations provide the images and the language for answering the questions,"Who am I," "Who are we," and "Who are they?" (Moscovici, 1988).

Five studies examined the psychological costs and benefits of social representations on minority groups, in this case American Indians, when the widely shared representations are limited in scope.

Study 1 - Content analyzed articles from major newspapers and Hollywood movies and revealed that almost all representations of American Indians could be categorized into one of three major categories: the romanticized Indian, the broken Indian, and the progressive Indian.

Studies 2 and 3 - American Indian high school and college students were primed with a prevalent social representation of their group (i.e., Pocahontas, Chief Wahoo, or Negative Stereotypes) and then completed self-esteem or collective self-efficacy measures. In both studies, American Indian students primed with these social representations showed depressed self-esteem and collective self-efficacy when compared to American Indian students in the control (no social representation) condition.

Study 4 - American Indians attending a predominantly American Indian university with an American Indian mascot were also shown a social representation of American Indians (either Chief Wahoo, Chief Iliniwek, the Haskell Indian, or an American Indian College Fund advertisement). Participants in the mascot conditions reported fewer achievement related possible selves than did American Indians in no-prime control condition or the advertisement.

Study 5 - European American students were explicitly primed with social representations of American Indians (i.e., Pocahontas, Chief Wahoo or Negative Stereotypes). They reported heightened self-esteem when compared to European Americans in the no-prime control condition. This boost in self-esteem for European Americans suggests that the dominant social representations of minority groups have significant implications for the psychological functioning of both minority and majority group members.