Determinants of anglo-Australian stereotypes of the Vietnamese in Australia

This study investigated whether Anglo-Australian subjects differentiated the Vietnamese from a broader Asian group on the basis of ethnocentrism, suburb of residency, gender, and orientation to “group fictions” about the Vietnamese. Eighty-four third-generation Anglo-Australians from suburbs with either large numbers of Vietnamese residents, or with relatively few, completed a set of semantic differential scales for Asians, Anglo-Australians and Vietnamese, and a questionnaire of “group fictions” based on published statements and possible stereotypic concepts about the Vietnamese. Results indicated that, regardless of where subjects lived, they did differentiate the Vietnamese from the more general Asian group. Subjects from a suburb with high potential for daily contact regarded the Vietnamese most favourably. Females rated both the Vietnamese and Asians more highly than did males.In a second part of the study, a path analysis showed that subjects' orientation to group fictions about the threat posed by Vietnamese predicted to both status and solidarity, whereas group fictions about family cohesion and the extent to which Vietnamese could be seen as deserving battlers, did not. With the exception of gender to status, the predictions from ethnocentrism, residency, and gender were best mediated through the threat variable.