How do people with multiracial (or multicultural) backgrounds navigate their social identity?


In this episode, I talk with Dr. Sarah Gaither, Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University in the USA. In this conversation, we focus on Sarah’s work on understanding multiracial identities and the costs and benefits of navigating that social terrain.

Here is the link to the paper we talk about in this week’s show:

Here is the abstract for some context:

Multiracial individuals report that the social pressure of having to “choose” one of their racial groups is a primary source of psychological conflict. Yet because of their ability to maneuver among their multiple identities, multiracials also adopt flexible cognitive strategies in dealing with their social environments—demonstrating a benefit to having multiple racial identities. The current article reviews recent research involving multiracial participants to examine the behavioral and cognitive outcomes linked to being multiracial and pinpoints possible moderators that may affect these outcomes. Limitations in applying monoracial identity frameworks to multiracial populations are also discussed.

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