Department of Sociology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305.
Baruch Ivcher School of Psychology, Reichman University (IDC Herzliya), Herzliya 4610101, Israel.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2024 Jan 2;121(1):e2307736120. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2307736120. Epub 2023 Dec 26.
In ethnically and linguistically diverse societies, disadvantaged groups often face pressures to acquire and speak the advantaged group's language to achieve social inclusion and economic mobility. This work investigates how using the advantaged group's language affects disadvantaged group members' in-group pride and collective self-esteem, relative to using their native language. Across six experimental studies involving Palestinian citizens of Israel (total = 1,348), we test two competing hypotheses: Disadvantaged group members may experience greater in-group pride when using a) their native language, due to its emotional significance (the ), or b) the language of the advantaged group, due to activation of habituated compensatory responses to dominance relations (the ). We found that respondents reported significantly higher in-group pride when responding to a Hebrew survey when compared to performing the same activity in Arabic (Studies 1a and 1b), regardless of whether the researchers administering the survey were identified as Jewish or Arab (Studies 2a and 2b). Study 3 replicated this effect while employing the "bogus pipeline" technique, suggesting the pride expression was authentic, not merely driven by social desirability. Finally, Study 4 (pre-registered) examined additional measures of positive regard for the in-group, finding that participants described their group more positively in an attribute selection task, and reported greater collective self-esteem, when surveyed in Hebrew, rather than in Arabic. Taken together, these findings suggest that language use influences disadvantaged group members' perceptions and feelings concerning their group when those languages are associated with relative position in an intergroup hierarchy.
在种族和语言多样化的社会中，弱势群体往往面临着学习和使用优势群体语言的压力，以实现社会包容和经济流动。这项工作调查了使用优势群体的语言如何影响弱势群体成员的群体自豪感和集体自尊心，相对于使用他们的母语。通过涉及以色列巴勒斯坦公民的六项实验研究（总计 = 1348），我们检验了两个相互竞争的假设：弱势群体成员在使用 a）他们的母语时可能会感到更高的群体自豪感，因为母语具有情感意义（即），或者 b）使用优势群体的语言，因为习惯化的补偿反应对支配关系的激活（即）。我们发现，与用阿拉伯语回答相同的问题相比，参与者在以希伯来语回答调查时报告的群体自豪感明显更高（研究 1a 和 1b），无论管理调查的研究人员是否被认定为犹太裔或阿拉伯裔（研究 2a 和 2b）。研究 3 复制了这一效应，同时采用了“虚假管道”技术，表明这种自豪感表达是真实的，而不仅仅是出于社会期望的驱动。最后，研究 4（预先注册）考察了对群体的积极评价的其他措施，发现参与者在属性选择任务中更积极地描述了他们的群体，并且在以希伯来语进行调查时，而不是在阿拉伯语中，报告了更高的集体自尊心。总之，这些发现表明，语言使用影响弱势群体成员对群体的看法和感受，特别是当这些语言与群体在群体层次结构中的相对地位相关联时。
