Study 2



Running head: CULTURAL NARRATIVES

The Cultural Narratives of Francophone and Anglophone Quebecers: Cultural Identity Clarity, Collective Esteem and Relative Deprivation

Evelyne Bougie

Esther Usborne

Roxane de la Sablonnière

Donald M. Taylor

Word count: 9 963

Authors’ Notes:

Evelyne Bougie, Statistics Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; Esther Usborne and Donald M. Taylor, Department of Psychology, McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada; Roxane de la Sablonnière, Department of Psychology, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada.

Abstract

Research has consistently demonstrated a positive relationship between personal identity clarity and personal esteem (Campbell, 1990). The present research employed a novel methodology in order to investigate the association between identity clarity and esteem at a collective level of self-definition. In Study 1, the cultural narratives of Francophone and Anglophone Quebecers were coded for clarity. Cultural identity clarity was marginally significantly associated with collective esteem for Francophones, but not for Anglophones. In Study 2, the relationship between cultural identity clarity and collective esteem was further explored using information derived from participants’ cultural narratives. Feelings of relative deprivation were incorporated into the analysis. For both Francophones and Anglophones, cultural identity clarity mediated the positive relationship between relative deprivation and collective esteem at important, threatening, and thus defining events in the group’s history.

Keywords: Narrative, Culture, Identity, Esteem, Relative Deprivation

The Cultural Narratives of Francophone and Anglophone Quebecers: Cultural Identity Clarity, Collective Esteem and Relative Deprivation

For many years, social psychologists have sought to understand the human quest for self-esteem and psychological well-being. Although an array of psychological factors have been associated with well-being, some classic and current social psychological theorists posit that a key factor is the clarity of one’s personal identity (e.g., Baumgardner, 1990; Campbell, 1990; Erikson, 1968; Maslow, 1954; Rogers, 1951). Erikson (1968) theorized that knowing oneself and experiencing oneself as possessing continuity and sameness were essential for personal well-being. Similarly, Maslow (1954) and Rogers (1951) asserted that the development and maintenance of a consistent personal identity acted as the foundation of an individual’s well-being. More recently, researchers have empirically tested the association between personal identity clarity and well-being and found that people who have a well-articulated sense of who they are have more positive self-esteem and experience more positive affect about the self (Baumgardner, 1990; Campbell, 1990).

Clarity of personal identity has therefore been theoretically and empirically linked to self-esteem and psychological well-being, but this association has only been tested at a personal level. Identity however, extends beyond the personal level and encompasses social, group, or collective components (Tajfel, 1978; Tafjel & Turner, 1979). This has led to the suggestion that the collective component of one’s self-concept may also be related to psychological well-being and esteem (Taylor, 1997, 2002). Taylor proposes that the clarity of one’s collective or cultural identity, the identity that comes from the groups to which one belongs, is central to self and collective esteem. Without a clear cultural identity the individual has no normative template to rely on when engaging in the process of elaborating a global identity, thereby making it difficult for this individual to achieve a positive evaluation of the self and the group.

Seminal research at the personal level demonstrated a consistent relationship between personal identity clarity and personal self-esteem (Campbell, 1990). The first step then towards an understanding of identity clarity that goes beyond a personal level requires evaluating the relationship between identity clarity and esteem at the level of the group. Study 1 will test this relationship using a novel methodology, the cultural narrative. We argue that this methodology is essential for an in depth understanding of a construct as complex as cultural identity. In Study 2, the relationship between cultural identity clarity and collective esteem will be tested using a more traditional methodology, but one that is derived directly from participants’ cultural narratives. The rich identity information contained in the cultural narratives allows for the incorporation of participants’ experiences of group-level threat (relative deprivation) into our analyses. We first present the theoretical association between collective (cultural) identity clarity and collective esteem before proceeding to the cultural narrative methodology.

Collective Identity Clarity

Social Identity Theory (Tajfel, 1978; Tafjel & Turner, 1979; SIT) suggests that the identity arising from the group or groups to which an individual belongs is a fundamental component of the self-concept. Social or collective identity, be it gender identity, cultural identity or any other group-based identity, represents self-knowledge derived from an individual’s group membership together with the value and emotional significance attached to it. According to social identity theorists, identification with a group or collective involves both a cognitive and an evaluative component (Tajfel & Turner, 1979; Taylor, 1997, 2002). The cognitive component addresses the question “who or what is my group?” and includes characteristics that an individual shares with other members of his or her group and that are group-defining in some respect. These defining characteristics comprise the traits, ideological positions, shared behavior, experiences and history that are associated with the group. For example a person may consider that, like their group, they value relationships at the expense of individual success.

The evaluative component of social or collective identity, collective esteem, refers to an individual’s overall evaluation of the worth of his/her collective identity. Collective esteem includes the perceived value placed on the social group by the self and by others, as well as the affective commitment and closeness the individual feels to other members of the social group (Ashmore, Deaux & Mclaughlin-Volpe, 2004). To the extent that one’s social group is valued and compares favorably with relevant comparison outgroups, one’s collective esteem is positive. For example, if an individual feels proud to be a member of a group because valuing relationships at the expense of individual success is something this group values positively and is something that is respected by other groups, this person would have high collective esteem.

The present research takes into account both the cognitive and evaluative components of collective identity, but argues that it is the clarity of the cognitive component that is a necessary precondition for the presence of the evaluative component. Taylor (1997, 2002) proposes that a clear and certain knowledge of a group’s shared history, behaviours, values, norms, and characteristics is essential for an individual to form an evaluation of that group. That is, in order to feel pride in one’s group, one first has to clearly know what one’s group actually is. If an individual has an unclear knowledge of the values and characteristics that define his or her collective identity, if, for example, he or she is unsure if the group values relationships at the expense of individual success, it will be very difficult for this person to compare their group with other groups on this dimension. Without a clear and confident definition of one’s collective or cultural identity, it would be impossible for an individual to even engage in meaningful social comparison processes and to form a confident evaluation of their group. Feelings of group pride or collective esteem then come only after having a clear and certain knowledge of one’s collective or cultural identity. The present research seeks, for the first time, to empirically investigate this theoretical link between cultural identity clarity and collective esteem.

The Cultural Narrative

It is difficult to assess a construct as rich and complex as the identity arising from one’s collective or cultural group. Traditional measures of identity can be grouped into two methodological approaches, the reactive or “traditional” and the spontaneous or “narrative” (McGuire, 1984; McGuire & McGuire, 1981). The first emphasizes the individual’s traits and is evaluated with questionnaires and scales, and the second emphasizes the nature of the individual’s experience as they tell the “story of their group”. Traditional methods have been used most often to study identity and typically require individuals to position themselves on a dimension chosen by the experimenter, such as how they perceive their own, or their group’s particular abilities or traits. A major weakness of the traditional method is that participants are simply reacting to dimensions chosen by the researcher. No information is obtained about whether the individual is genuinely concerned about this aspect of his or her self-concept (McGuire, 1984). Furthermore, self-descriptions measured through the traditional approach are largely de-contextualized and do not make full use of the more detailed, nuanced, and intricately contextualized information involved in one’s self-concept. We therefore argue that a more spontaneous, but nevertheless rigorous approach to measuring the content of people’s self-concepts is necessary to fully account for the richness of individuals’ identities, particularly their cultural identities.

At the individual level, McAdams’ (1996, 2001) seminal narrative approach to personal identity assumes that a unified description of one’s identity can be construed through a story, a spontaneous measure of identity. Indeed, according to McAdams, individuals confer unity and meaning to their sense of self by constructing a coherent story that provides the person with a purposeful self-history. One’s personal identity is thus revealed in the capacity to form and keep a particular narrative, or life story, going. McAdams (1996, 2001) has developed, and extensively used the Life Story Interview as a method of accessing people’s representations of their personal identity. The Life Story Interview is a structured sequence of open-ended questions in which participants are first asked to divide their life into chapters and to then briefly describe the content of each chapter. Participants are also required to describe specific critical events, such as a nadir experience, an event representing a particularly low point in one’s personal story.

In the present research, a Cultural Narrative Interview, modeled on the Life Story Interview, was developed and used to investigate cultural identity clarity. In order to fully account for the complexities of participants’ identities, this spontaneous and contextualized method was employed. One of the foundations of a collective identity is the knowledge of a shared history (Ashmore et al., 2004; Taylor, 1997, 2002). Accordingly, each individual in the present study was asked to “tell” a group story, an internally represented narrative of the particular cultural group of which he/she is a member (Ashmore et al., 2004). Rather than historical accuracy, the cultural narratives could be subsequentally coded for clarity (Baerger & McAdams, 1999). The link between cultural identity clarity and collective esteem could thus be explored.

Research Context

The present research focused on two natural groups with a long, well-established history of intergroup relations: Francophones and Anglophones in Quebec, Canada. Both Francophone and Anglophone Quebecers possess interesting and rich backgrounds on which to draw a cultural narrative. Both groups can be perceived as advantaged or disadvantaged, depending on the social and temporal focus of the comparison. Anglophones have long enjoyed the privilege of being an elite minority in Quebec despite living in a predominantly French province where approximately 80% of the residents are Francophone (Statistics Canada, 2006). Francophones can be viewed as the more historically disenfranchised group, for they have faced economic disadvantages and threats to their language and culture due to their minority status in English-dominated North America. The growth of Francophone nationalism in the 1960s, however, has to some extent reversed the intergroup power distribution in Quebec, leaving Anglophone Quebecers feeling increasingly threatened (Bourhis, 1994; Caldwell, 1984; Lepicq & Bourhis, 1995). There have been two referendums on Quebec sovereignty where Quebecers voted on whether or not they wanted to secede from the rest of Canada. In addition, there has been legislation designed to protect the French language (Bill 101 and Bill 178). We hypothesize that the clarity of the cultural narratives, depicting the competing histories and statuses of both Anglophone and Francophone Quebecers, will be associated with collective esteem.

Study 1

The goal of Study 1 was twofold. The first goal was to test the main hypothesis that cultural identity clarity as measured by the cultural narrative would be positively related to collective esteem. The second goal was to provide a more complete understanding of participants’ cultural identities using, for the first time, a new methodology—the cultural narrative. Although used in the context of personal life stories, the narrative methodology has not been used to explore cultural identity clarity, and may thus provide us with a more comprehensive and contextualized understanding of Francophone and Anglophone cultural identities. We hoped to pinpoint the significant narrative chapters for both Anglophones and Francophones. Because the narratives do not represent an objective history, but rather a history interpreted through the lens of the participant, we expected that this methodology would allow participants to put emphasis on chapters that they deemed to be the most important.

Method

Participants

Twenty Francophone (ten men and ten women) and twenty Anglophone (ten men and ten women) Quebecers participated in Study 1. This relatively small sample size was necessary given the labor-intensive nature of the procedure used to assess and code cultural identity clarity through the Cultural Narrative Interview. The narratives of two Anglophone participants were eliminated because one chose to tell a cultural narrative related to his Asian-Canadian background and one focused on her personal narrative. A total of eighteen Anglophone Quebecers (nine women and nine men) were retained for analysis. The mean age for Anglophone participants was 20.2 years, ranging from 19-23 years old. The mean age of Francophone participants was 21.5 years, ranging from 18-25. All Anglophone participants reported speaking English as their maternal language and sixteen reported having lived in Quebec since they were born. Two Anglophone participants were born in another Canadian province and had been living in Quebec since the age of five and six years old. All twenty Francophone participants reported speaking French as their maternal language, as well as having lived in Quebec since they were born.

Materials and Procedure

All participants took part in the Cultural Narrative Interview first and then completed a questionnaire assessing collective esteem. The Cultural Narrative Interview was a structured sequence of open-ended questions that asked participants to construct and narrate their group’s collective story. One male and one female who were native speakers of English each interviewed five male and five female Anglophone participants. Similarly, one male and one female who were native speakers of French each interviewed five male and five female Francophone participants. Participants took between 40-60 minutes to complete the Cultural Narrative Interview. All interviews were tape-recorded and later transcribed.

Following McAdams’ (1995) protocol, the Cultural Narrative required participants to outline their group’s story organized into chapters, and briefly describe the overall content, key themes, or events of each chapter. In the second part of the interview, participants were asked to concentrate on a few key events that according to them, stood out in the story of their group as particularly important. A key event was described as a specific happening, a critical incident, or a significant episode in their people’s past. One specific request was for participants to report a “nadir” experience, an experience that they considered to be a low point in their group’s history, characterized by extremely negative emotions, such as despair, disillusionment, terror, or guilt.

The construct of cultural identity clarity was operationalized by means of a coding system based on Baerger and McAdam’s (1999) Life Story Coding Criteria for personal life stories. The coding system that we used consisted of three indices: orientation, structure, and integration. The orientation index refers to whether or not the individual provides the background information necessary to understand the story. The structure index refers to the extent to which the narrative displays some linear, chronological, and/or causal structure in the transmission of factual information. Finally, the integration index refers to whether or not the narrative imparts information in an integrated manner, ultimately communicating the meaning of the experiences described within the context of the larger narrative.

Each narrative clarity index was coded according to a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (very low) to 7 (very high). Participants were given an overall clarity score that averaged their narrative clarity indices. One native Quebecer, fluent in both English and French listened to and coded all 38 narratives. Another native Francophone Quebecer, blind to the purpose of the study coded the 20 French interviews, and a native Anglophone, also blind to the purpose of the study coded the 18 English interviews. Intercorrelations among the three cultural identity clarity indices are presented in Table 1.

The questionnaire completed after the Cultural Narrative Interview was comprised of a self-report scale that assessed participants’ collective esteem (Luhanten and Crocker, 1992). This scale was translated into French using a back-translation procedure (Brislin, 1970). The scale assessed global, relatively stable levels of collective esteem and was comprised of four subscales. The focus of the present study was on the evaluative component of this scale, including the two subscales representing membership and private collective esteem. Membership esteem involves individuals’ judgments of how good or worthy they are as a member of their group (e.g., “I am a worthy member of the English (French) Quebecer community”). Private collective esteem assesses one’s personal judgment of how good one’s group is (e.g., “I often regret that I belong to the English (French) Quebecer community (reverse-coded)”). The obtained Cronbach’s alpha for the membership and private scales combined was .71.

Results and Discussion

Preliminary Analysis

All the scores were normally distributed. All skewness and kurtosis values fell within an acceptable range of -1.10 to - .03 (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2001). No outliers were identified in the sample based on the criterion that no one deviated by more than 3 standard deviations from the variable mean, and also showed a Mahanalobis distance greater than the exclusion criterion set at p < .001. All 38 participants were thus retained for the analyses. No variable involved more than 5% missing data.

Cultural Identity Clarity and Collective Esteem

In order to address the first goal of Study 1 and test our hypothesis that cultural identity clarity would be positively related to collective esteem, we conducted a stepwise regression analysis. In step 1, language group (Francophones vs. Anglophones) and cultural identity clarity were entered as predictors of collective esteem. In step 2, the interaction between language group and clarity was added to the model in order to test if the relationship between cultural identity clarity and collective esteem differed according to language group. The results of the analysis yielded no main effect of language group on collective esteem, and no main effect of clarity on collective esteem. However, the interaction between language group and clarity was marginally significant, β = 29, p = .09, R2 = .10, implying that the relationship between cultural identity clarity and collective esteem differed depending on a participant’s language group. Although this relationship was only marginally significant, we took this finding seriously as our sample size was relatively small, with only twenty and eighteen participants in each of the language groups. The effect size of the interaction was between small and medium (Cohen, 1988).

Given that the relationship between clarity and collective esteem appeared to be different depending on participants’ membership as either an Anglophone or a Francophone, we conducted separate analyses for each of the groups. For Francophones, the correlation between clarity and collective esteem was found to be marginally, positively significant, r = .41, N = 20, p = .08. Here, a co-efficient of .41 represents a medium effect size (Cohen, 1992). Although only marginally significant, it is noteworthy given the small number of participants, and thus provides modest support for the hypothesized positive relationship between cultural identity clarity and collective esteem. For Anglophones, however, the relationship between narrative clarity and collective esteem was non-significant, r = -.18, N = 18, n.s. Based on the obtained relationships between narrative clarity and collective esteem, our hypothesis was only, at best, partially supported. Cultural identity clarity and collective esteem were positively related for Francophones, but not for Anglophones.

Cultural Narrative Content

The second goal of Study 1 was to provide a more complete understanding of participants’ cultural identities, using, for the first time, the cultural narrative methodology. Here we include a brief description of the cultural narratives of Francophone and Anglophone participants, followed by a discussion of the significant chapters for each group. Both groups were able to successfully generate a coherent story of their group and to pinpoint important events for their people. Francophone participants spontaneously generated an average of 5.6 chapters as constituting their people’s story. One-hundred percent of Francophone participants described the arrival of French colonizers in North America as constituting their first chapter. All of the Francophone participants clearly perceived their cultural narrative beginning as early as the 1500’s, with the discovery of the new world. Next, 95% of Francophone participants described one or more chapters having to do with early conflicts between French and English colonizers in new France, namely the 1754-1760 Conquest War, which resulted in Great Britain taking over New France, and or the Patriot’s Rebellions, also resulting in a defeat for the French at the hands of the English. Finally, 80% of Francophone participants described events related to the theme of Francophone Quebecer nationalism as constituting one or more chapters in their people’s story. The era when Maurice Duplessis was Quebec’s Prime Minister (1936-1939, 1944-1959), the Quiet Revolution in the 1960s, the creation of the separatist party “Parti Québébecois” in 1968, the election of René Levesque as Quebec’s Premier, and/or the general theme of political independence of Quebec from Canada appear to be important narrative building blocks for Francophone participants. Events that Francophone Quebecers reported as being particularly important were most often the 1837-1838 Patriots rebellion and the 1754-1760 British Conquest.

Compared to Francophone participants, Anglophone participants spontaneously generated a smaller number of chapters, describing an average of 3.8 chapters as constituting their people’s story. For eighty-one percent of Anglophone participants, Chapter 1 involved the description of European colonizers’ arrival in North America, and/or the early interactions and conflicts between French and English colonizers in the New World. The next important narrative building block for Anglophones was events related to the theme of growing Francophone nationalism from the 1960s on (the period of the Quiet Revolution), and the consequent feelings of threat within the Anglophone Quebecer community. Seventy-eight percent of Anglophone participants described the Francophone Quebecer separatist movement generally, the 1980 and 1995 referendums, and the introduction of education and language laws in the 1970s as constituting one or more chapters in their people’s history. Events that Anglophone Quebecers reported as being particularly important were events related to Francophone nationalism including the two referendums for Quebec sovereignty and the introduction of Bill 101.

The Significant Chapters for Francophones and Anglophones

Most Francophones and Anglophones reported the same historical events in the story of their respective groups. For example, a large number of participants, regardless of the group they belong to, reported events associated with the five following historical periods: The New World era, The Conquest era, the Duplessis era, The Quiet Revolution era, and finally the present time. Thus, both groups expressed noticeable areas of consensus regarding the basic outlines of their respective groups’ stories.

However, the importance given to the reported key historical events differed dramatically between the two cultural groups. Francophone participants spent more time than Anglophones on the early conflicts between Anglophones and Francophones, showing the importance of this historical period (the Conquest era). In contrast, Anglophones accorded relatively greater importance to more contemporary historical events. This is evidenced by, as we reported in the previous section, the fact that Francophones provided an outline of their people’s story that contained significantly more chapters than did Anglophones. Anglophone participants generated an average of 3.8 chapters when telling their people’s story, significantly fewer than their Francophone counterparts (M = 5.6; t(34) = -4.60, p < .001). This difference is linked to the fact that Francophones provided a more detailed account of the colonial historical period. Indeed, for more than half (53%) of our Anglophone participants, Chapter 2 was situated in the second half of the 1900s. However, Chapter 2 focused on events that took place before 1838 for all of our Francophone participants (100%), namely, the settling of the French people in Nouvelle-France and the inter-colonial conflicts. In short, the Anglophone Quebecers’ narrative mostly took place after the 1960s-1970s (the Quiet Revolution era); whereas, several important narrative building blocks for Francophones refer to events that go back to the period ranging from the early 1500s to 1867 (The Conquest era).

Asking participants of both groups about their “nadir” experience provided another example of the striking differences in the importance given to historical events. A “nadir” experience represents a low point in the participant’s cultural narrative. Such a narrative nadir occurred between the years 1754 and 1838 for almost half of Francophones (45%), compared to six percent of the Anglophones. In fact, for Anglophones, their main narrative nadir occurred much more recently: in the 1970s for a third (33%) of them (compared with fifteen percent of Francophones), and between the years 1990 to 2002 for another third (33%) of them (compared with 10% of Francophones). Overall, we found that the early years of the Conquest Era during which the French fought and were defeated by the English played a key role in shaping the cultural narrative of Francophone Quebecer participants. The Anglophone Quebecer participants described a cultural narrative that was primarily shaped by the growing threat from Francophone Quebecers from the era of the Quiet Revolution on.

Interpreting the Results

The hypothesized positive relationship between cultural identity clarity and collective esteem, measured using the cultural narratives of Anglophone and Francophone Quebecers, was only partially supported. This relationship was marginally, positively significant for Francophones, and non-significant for Anglophones. These results are disappointing in that they provide only weak support for our hypothesis, and are not consistent with the strong relationship obtained between clarity and esteem at a personal level (Campbell, 1990). At first glance, our findings appear to indicate that clarity may not be as central for collective esteem as we had anticipated. However, a comprehensive analysis of participants’ cultural narratives is of great value when attempting to interpret these results. The narratives provided us with a wealth of information pertaining to Francophones’ and Anglophones’ overall perceptions of the history of their group and pointed to certain important, and especially threatening, periods for each group. The fact that very different historical periods, characterized by the experience of group-level threat, appear to shape and heavily influence the cultural narratives of each group signals that our evaluation of clarity based on the participants’ overall group narratives may have diluted or glossed over the crucial impact of certain key events, events that actually had the most impact in shaping a group’s identity.

In Study 2, we thus examine perceptions of cultural identity clarity at different key periods of a group’s history, rather than in an overall, gestalt fashion. In addition, the information gleaned from the narratives points to another important factor often involved in predicting collective well-being, namely the centrality of the experience of group-level threat for both groups, and the impact that it had on shaping the group’s overall narrative. Feelings of group-level threat, also known as group-based relative deprivation, at key points in the group’s history are also assessed in Study 2 and related to participants’ experiences of collective esteem.

According to the cultural narratives, Francophones found the early years of the Conquest era to be particularly important and threatening for their group. Anglophones, on the other hand, found the later period from the Quiet Revolution onwards to be the most important and threatening. These differences in the importance of key events for each group are reminiscent of recent advances in the field of relative deprivation (de la Sablonnière, 2008; de la Sablonnière, Taylor, Perozzo & Sadykova, in press). Research has long investigated feelings of group-based or social relative deprivation, which refers to an overall, subjective feeling of threat that arises when group members engage in social comparison, and perceive their group to be receiving less than what they feel they are entitled to (Crosby, 1982). However, the results of recent studies suggest that: 1) it is important to use more than one past or future point of social comparison when predicting collective esteem using relative deprivation, and 2) to have an impact on collective esteem, the selected point of social comparison has to be an important historical event for group members (de la Sablonnière, 2008; de la Sablonnière, et al., in press). Specifically, instead of an overall impression of a group’s history, it is certain important events in the past that are the group’s primary reference points against which their experience of well-being is assessed. In Study 2 then, instead of an overall impression of a group’s history, we propose to use specific events that are perceived to be particularly important for the group.

Study 2

In Study 2, we continue to examine the centrality of cultural identity clarity in determining collective esteem; however, we do so while taking feelings of relative deprivation into account. We hypothesize that the clarity of a group’s cultural identity, assessed at a specific point in time that is important and threatening for the group would mediate the relationship between relative deprivation and collective esteem. A period that is considered by group members as a major threat is particularly influential in defining a group’s identity, which in turn is associated with increased collective esteem. At key points in a group’s history, certainty about one’s group identity caused by a threatening evaluation of a specific period will drive the positive relationship between group level threat and collective esteem. Specifically, for the context of the present study, we propose that this mediational relationship will be obtained for both Francophones and Anglophones if the historical period in question represents an important and threatening period for the members of each group respectively. From Study 1, we predict that the most important and threatening period for Francophone Quebecers will be the time of the Struggle between Anglophone and Francophone Quebecers (The Conquest era). For Anglophones, the most important and threatening period will be the time of the Quiet Revolution.

Based on the narratives of both Anglophones and Francophones obtained in Study 1, we created a measure that allowed a new group of Anglophone and Francophone participants in Study 2 to rate their group’s experience of relative deprivation and cultural identity clarity at a selection of times in the group’s history. We thus measured both social relative deprivation and cultural identity clarity at selected key points in time, rather than evaluating cultural identity clarity based on the groups’ entire histories.

Method

Participants

Native French- and English-speaking students who had been living in Quebec since they were born participated in Study 2. Participants were recruited by verbal announcements made in classrooms, and by means of posters placed in one major Anglophone university as well as two major Francophone universities in Montreal. Francophone and Anglophone Quebecers, between 18 and 27 years of age and of European descent, interested in completing a “History and Well-Being” questionnaire in exchange for monetary compensation were asked to contact the principal investigator to schedule an appointment.

A total of 61 Anglophone Quebecers (24 males and 37 females) and 61 Francophones Quebecers (18 males and 43 females) completed the questionnaire. All Anglophone participants reported English as their maternal and dominant language, and all Francophone reported French as their maternal and dominant language. The mean age for Anglophones was 20.9 years old (ranging from 18 to 27), and the mean age for Francophones was 21.5 years old (ranging from 18 to 27).

Measures

Study 2 was devised in a more structured manner than Study 1. In Study 1, participants spontaneously narrated their own perception of their ingroup’s story. In Study 2, the important elements of the Anglophone and the Francophone Quebecer cultural narrative that were generated in Study 1 were integrated into a single summary of the narratives’ shared points and then presented to both Anglophone and Francophone participants. Moreover, while the methodology in Study 1 precluded the use of a large sample size, Study 2 used a questionnaire format, which allowed testing a greater number of Anglophone and Francophone Quebecers. Finally, Study 2 utilized self-report measures in order to assess the constructs of cultural identity clarity, relative deprivation, and collective esteem.

In the first part of the questionnaire, participants were asked to read the summary of Quebec’s history. Following the cultural narrative interviews that were conducted with Anglophone and Francophone Quebecers in Study 1, the history of Quebec was divided into five chapters: The New World era (Chapter 1), The Conquest era (Chapter 2), the Duplessis era (Chapter 3), and The Quiet Revolution era (Chapter 4) and a chapter about the present (Chapter 5). Each chapter was described as objectively and neutrally as possible by respecting facts and refraining from editorial comments. Following is a brief description of each chapter.

Chapter 1, ‘The New World Era’ ranged from the late 1400s through to 1754 and described the various European people who reached “The New World”. Chapter 2, ‘The Conquest Era’ which ranged from 1754 to 1867, described the struggles between French and English colonies in the New World, which resulted in the domination of Britain over the French colonies in Quebec. Chapter 3, ‘The Duplessis Era’ ranged from the Canadian Confederation in 1867 through to the death of Premier Maurice Duplessis in1959. Chapter 4,‘The Quiet Revolution Era’ which ranged from 1960 to 1995, described the period of Quebec modernization and empowerment and discussed the arrival of the separatist party “Parti Québécois” onto Quebec’s political scene, the introduction of language laws aimed at making French the predominant language in Quebec, and the two referendums on Quebec sovereignty. Finally, Chapter 5, ‘The Present’ alluded to the main issues faced by Quebecers today including Quebec’s growing ethnic diversity; and the globalization phenomenon.

Participants were asked to read each of these chapters, and then answer questions pertaining to how they perceived what happened to their own ingroup during each chapter of Quebec history. These questions assessed group-based relative deprivation. Participants were also asked to indicate how confident or sure they felt about their overall ratings for each chapter. This question assessed cultural identity clarity for each chapter. Following is a detailed description of these two measures, along with our measure of collective esteem.

Relative deprivation. Measures of relative deprivation used for chapter 1 to 5 were adapted from previous studies that assessed both the cognitive and the evaluative components of social relative deprivation (Dambrun et al., 2006; de la Sablonnière & Tougas, 2008). The cognitive component of social relative deprivation was assessed by asking participants to indicate “the extent to which English/French Quebecers were advantaged or disadvantaged compared to French/English Quebecers in terms of… a) social rights, b) political leverage, c) economic prosperity and d) language and culture”. The scale for these questions ranged from -5 (definitely disadvantaged), to 0 (Equal), to +5 (definitely advantaged). The following two questions evaluated the affective component of relative deprivation: “To what extent are you satisfied with regards to the general situation for English/French Quebecers during this chapter.”(recoded); “To what extent are you frustrated/angry with regards to the general situation for English/French Quebecers during this chapter.” The scale for these questions ranged from 0 (totally satisfied/not at all frustrated), to 5 (moderately), to 10 (not at all satisfied/totally frustrated). For these two last items, responses were recoded such that the scale ranged from -5 to 5 to be consistent with the cognitive component of social relative deprivation. Responses from the 6 items of social relative deprivation were added and averaged to form a composite score so that 5 indicated high relative deprivation. The Cronbach’s alpha values for Anglophones’ and Francophones’ perceived social relative deprivation were .79 for Chapter 1, .95 for Chapter 2, .89 for Chapter 3, .94 for Chapter 4 and .84 for Chapter 5.

Cultural identity clarity. Cultural identity clarity was assessed by asking participants to rate how confident or sure they felt about their overall ratings of what happened to their ingroup during each chapter of Quebec history. The scale for these questions ranged from 0 (not at all sure) to 10 (totally sure). This format for evaluating cultural identity clarity has been used successfully by de la Sablonnière and colleagues (in press). In that study, cultural identity clarity at the “present time” was found to be moderately related to collective esteem (r = .25, p< .001), suggesting that although cultural identity clarity and collective esteem constitute two distinct concepts, they are indeed related.

Collective esteem. This concept was assessed using 6 items from the Luhtanen and Crocker’s Collective Self-Esteem Scale (CSES; 1992). The membership component and the private component of collective self-esteem were assessed because both refer to the evaluative dimension of collective esteem and subsequently to well-being. Membership esteem involves individuals’ judgments of how good or worthy they are as members of their social ingroup. Private collective self-esteem assesses one’s personal judgments of how good one’s social ingroup is (for a discussion see also Roccas et al., 2008). Three statements assessed the membership component of collective self-esteem: “I am a worthy member of the English (or French) Quebecer community”; “I feel I don’t have much to offer to the English (or French) Quebecer community” (recoded) and “I often feel that I am useless member of the English (or French) Quebecer community” (recoded). Three questions evaluated the private component of collective self-esteem: “I often regret that I belong to the English (or French) Quebecer community” (recoded); “In general, I am glad to be a member of the English (or French) Quebecer community”; “I feel good about the English (or French) Quebecer community”. All ratings were made using 11-point Likert scales, where 0 = strongly disagree, 5 = neither agree nor disagree, and 10 = strongly agree. Responses from the 6 items of collective esteem were added and averaged to form a composite score. Appropriate items were reverse-scored such that a high score on this variable indicated positive collective esteem. The Cronbach’s alpha for the collective esteem scale was .79.

Results and Discussion

Preliminary analysis

All the scores were normally distributed. All skewness and kurtosis values fell within an acceptable range of -1.59 to + 1.31 (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2001). No outliers were identified in the sample based on the criterion that no one deviated by more than 3 standard deviations from the variable mean, and also showed a Mahanalobis distance greater than the exclusion criterion set at p < .001. One-hundred-and-twenty-two participants were thus retained for the analyses. Considering that no variable possessed more than 5% of missing data (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2001), no variable was excluded.

Descriptive Analysis

In this section, we first present descriptive analyses for all variables. Second, using group-based trajectory modeling (Jones & Nagin, 2007; Jones, Nagin & Roeder, 2001; Nagin, 1999), we explore each cultural group’s trajectory of relative deprivation over time. This was done in order to determine if the group members’ experiences of group-based relative deprivation was consistent with what we would predict based on our analysis of participants’ cultural narratives in Study 1. This analysis will help us determine if the Conquest Era for Francophone Quebecers and the Quiet Revolution Era for Anglophone Quebecers, are indeed perceived by members of these groups as important periods in which their group experienced high levels of group-based relative deprivation.

Descriptive Statistics. Descriptive analyses, as depicted in Table 2, of cultural identity clarity, revealed two main findings. First, the means indicated that both Anglophones and Francophones reported moderate levels of cultural identity clarity for Chapter 1, but relatively high levels of cultural identity clarity for Chapters 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, as scores were situated above the scale’s midpoint. Additionally, the means for collective esteem indicated relatively high levels of collective well-being among both Anglophones and Francophones, as scores for both groups were situated above the scale’s midpoint (MA = 8.2 and MF = 7.4). An ANOVA comparing Anglophones and Francophones revealed a significant difference on collective self-esteem (F (1, 120) = 13.7, p < .001), such that Francophone Quebecers had a higher level of overall collective esteem (M = 8.2) than did Anglophone Quebecers (M = 7.4).

Anglophones’ and Francophones’ perceptions of relative deprivation over time. In order to identify Anglophones’ and Francophones’ perceptions of group-based relative deprivation over time, group-based trajectory modeling (Jones & Nagin, 2007; Jones, Nagin & Roeder, 2001; Nagin, 1999) was conducted. This analysis, which has been successfully used in the domain of social psychology (see de la Sablonnière, Taylor, Perozzo, & Sadykova, in press) allowed us to test whether Francophones and Anglophones follow a different pattern of group-based relative deprivation across time, and furthermore which historical period was judged to be the most threatening for Francophones and Anglophones.

Group-based trajectory modeling provided a flexible method for identifying distinctive clusters of individual trajectories within a population. The statistical model underlying group-based trajectories uses finite mixtures of specified probability distributions to determine, by maximum likelihood, the parameter estimates describing the model that best fits the data (Jones & Nagin, 2007; Nagin, 1999, 2005). In order to estimate the optimal model, the number and shape (linear or U-shaped for example) of trajectories is a key step in model selection. Consistent with the recommendations of D’Unger, Land, McCall, and Nagin (1998) and Nagin (2005), the Bayesian Information criterion (BIC) was used to select the optimal model. The BIC provides an index of how well the model selected fits the data, in addition to favouring parsimony. In general, the BIC closest to zero denotes the most appropriate model. As all the variables explored in the present study were measured using Likert-type scales, the censored normal distribution (CNORM) was used to estimate trajectories and group memberships (Jones & Nagin, 2007; Jones et al., 2001; Nagin, 1999, 2005). The program used to perform group-based trajectory modeling is a customized SAS-based procedure (PROC TRAJ; Jones et al., 2001). An important output of the model is the posterior probabilities of group membership. These probabilities estimate the probabilities of belonging to each group for each individual. Consequently, each participant in the sample is assigned to the group with the largest posterior probabilities of group membership.

Table 3 reports BIC scores for different models tested. A model with two trajectories, model 4, was found to be the best fitting model as revealed by the BIC. Figure 1 shows the estimated trajectories associated with relative deprivation perceived by Anglophones and Francophones regarding the pattern of their group’s general condition in terms of social rights, political leverage, economic prosperity, language and culture.

Inspection of Figure 1 shows that the optimal model includes two different trajectories that follow the “typical” expected trajectory of Relative Deprivation for Francophones and Anglophones. Indeed, each trajectory is directly linked to the particular history of each language group in question. Specifically, all Francophones, that is 100 % or 61 persons, follow the typical trajectory of Francophones. Ninety-eight point 4 percent or 60 Anglophones followed the Anglophone’s typical pattern; whereas, 1.6 % of the Anglophones, that is one Anglophone, followed the Francophone’s typical pattern. This case was removed from further analysis because it differed significantly from other members of the group and thus, was considered an outlier.

The typical expected trajectory of Francophone Quebecers revealed that almost all Francophones who participated in the study had first seen their level of Social relative deprivation increase from the New World (Chapter 1) to the struggle between Francophone and Anglophone Quebecers (Chapter 2), to then decrease in the transition between the Struggle and the Quiet Revolution periods (Chapter 4). Finally, the level of relative deprivation increases at a slightly slower pace until the time of our study (Chapter 5). Thus, the Struggle between Anglophone and Francophone Quebecers (Chapter 2) appears to represent a major threat for Francophones.

Anglophones that followed the “typical” trajectory perceived quite a different pattern of group-based relative deprivation, such that their level of relative deprivation greatly decreased from the New World (Chapter 1) to the struggle between Francophone and Anglophone Quebecers (Chapter 2), to then increase until the Quiet revolution (Chapter 4). However, Anglophones felt less relative deprivation in the present (Chapter 5) than during the Quiet Revolution. Accordingly, the Quiet Revolution (Chapter 4) constituted the most major threat for Anglophone Quebecers.

Mediation Analysis

Once we were certain that these two periods (the Conquest era for Francophones and the Quiet Revolution era for Anglophones) constituted the most threatening periods for the two groups involved, we tested our hypothesis that cultural identity clarity acts as a psychological mechanism that mediates the relationship between group-based relative deprivation and collective esteem for these periods. However, we first examined the intercorrelations between cultural identity clarity and collective esteem across all periods in order to confirm that during a period representing the greatest threat to the group, the association between cultural identity clarity and collective esteem would be the strongest. For Francophones we then tested the hypothesized mediational relationship for the Conquest Era, and for Anglophones, we tested the mediational relationship for the era of the Quiet Revolution.

First, the intercorrelations between cultural identity clarity and collective esteem were examined across all chapters for Francophone and Anglophone Quebecers (See Table 4), providing preliminary evidence in support of our hypothesis. As expected, for Anglophones, the link between cultural identity clarity and collective esteem was significant and positive at the time of the Quiet Revolution (Chapter 4) (r = .30, n = 60, p ................
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