Effects of threatening or boosting one’s national identity on language learning

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Effects of Threatening or Boosting

one’s National Identity on Language

Learning

Linda van Velzen

Masterthese Sociale Psychologie September 2014

Student:

Linda van Velzen 6180833

Supervisor: Janina Marguc

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Index

Abstract p. 3

Threatening or Boosting one’s National Identity p. 4

Method p. 9 Participants p. 9 Materials p. 9 Procedure p. 11 Results p. 12 Discussion p. 19 References p. 23 Appendices p. 25 Appendix A p. 25 Appendix B p. 28 Appendix C p. 29 Appendix D p. 30 Appendix E p. 33 Appendix F p. 34 2

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Abstract

In the context of globalization, the ability to communicate in a foreign language is becoming increasingly important. To increase understanding of what makes learning a second language easy versus difficult, the present study examined the effect of threats or boosts to national identity. Participants were randomly assigned to a condition in which national identity was threatened, to a condition in which national identity was boosted, or a neutral control condition. Subsequently, they had to learn a wordlist on which they were later tested to see how much they remembered. There was no effect of condition or strength of national identification. However, there was an interaction effect between those two, such that participants in the threat and pride conditions performed worse when their national identity strength was high compared to the participants in the control condition. This suggest that threatening or boosting one’s national identity has a negative effect on learning a second language when national identity strength is high.

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Threatening or Boosting one’s National Identity

Several thousand years ago, human beings lived a nomadic life. They moved on a regular basis from one place to another searching for food and hunting and eating together in small groups. A lot has changed since that time. The number of people on the planet has increased and with this increasing population, the life of human beings has become more complex. New abilities, skills and traditions have been developed. People developed art, culture and technology as well as complex systems of governments, nations and races. These changes will continue due to globalization in communication, trade and technology. Although a lot has changed in the lives of human beings there is still a big overlap with the life of human beings now and then, a big part of our life consists of spending time with others in social groups (Stangor, 2004)

When asked to indicate the things we value the most, we frequently mention our relationships with others (Fiske & Haslam, 1996). Families, colleagues and friends define our lives. They are social groups who teach us what is important, who can help us to reach our goals and who we can rely on. A form of social group that will be discussed in this research will be the social category. Social categories are relatively large and permanent social groups. Examples of social categories are gender, religion, nationality or, for example, a physical disability. The people in those categories normally do not choose to join their respective groups. Physical characteristics like age, gender or ethnicity determine membership (Stangor, 2004). In this research the focus will be on national identity.

Memberships in these social groups create a part of the self-concept that is referred to as social identity (Tajfel & Turner 1979). According to social identity theory by Henri Tajfel (1986), people seek to derive positive self-esteem from their group memberships. Sometimes people consider themselves as an individual and sometimes as group members, however, being member of a valued social group can increase the self-esteem of the particular person

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whenever (even other) members of this group excel. This person will do everything to

emphasize its membership (Snyder, Lassegard, & Ford, 1986). Schmitt, Silvia and Brascombe (2000) demonstrated that people who are highly identified with a group may gain self-esteem from their group memberships even when their own performances are below the group's average.

Identity matters and group membership has consequences for both individual behaviour as well as for behaviour towards others with the same identity and those who do not share this identity (Georgiadis & Manning, 2013). This identity influences individual behaviour partly because membership ‘rules’ of a social group require certain behaviour. In other words, ingroup members conform with ingroup norms. Moreover, members of a group behave in a more social way towards other members of the same group and less pro-socially towards outsiders (Hogg & Vaughan, 2005; mentioned in Georgiadis & Manning, 2013). Similarly, people grant greater weight on the welfare of a member of their own group than on the welfare of an outsider.

Finally, social identity has effects on health: Research shows that negative well-being is linked to having one’s national identity unrecognized (Kim, Wang, Deng, Alvarez & Li, 2011). The study by Kim, et al. (2011) showed that when people feel their social identity is not recognized, they report more depressive symptoms because of the felt discrimination. Considering this perspective, it is easy to understand why it is believed that a positive national identity is desirable for a country.

When their social identity is threatened, group members respond with a range of actions that make their group look better and make the outgroup or the source of the threats look worse (Hewstone, Rubin, &Willis, 2002). It is assumed that people are motivated to see themselves positively, and this motivation leads to biases in information processing,

especially when people feel threatened (Baumeister, 1998; mentioned in De Hoog, 2013).

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Group members who identify strongly with a group have even more defensive reactions to social identity threats (Branscombe, Ellemers, Spears & Doosje 1999; mentioned in De Hoog, 2013). Results of a study done by De Hoog (2013) shows that high identifiers perceived negative information as more threatening, spent longer time reading the text, had a better recall, reported more defensive thoughts and evaluated the text more negatively. One can conclude that those people have a strong defence motivation. A defence motivation is the desire to hold, form or defend beliefs congruent with existing self-definitional beliefs (Chaiken et al., 1996; mentioned in De Hoog, 2013). This defence motivation seems to be based on the negative emotion of fear to lose ones identity, so people want to restore it with their defensive actions. This defence motivation also applies to social identity threats. When people strongly identify with a group and they are confronted with negative information about the group, they experience threat to their social identity, which induces a defence motivation (De Hoog, 2013). High identifiers will pay more attention to negative group information, they have higher threat perceptions, more defensive thoughts like criticism and minimizing this negative information, and have a more negative evaluation of negative, inconsistent group information than positive or neutral, consistent group information (De Hoog, 2013).

Opposite to a threatened social identity, one can also experience a boosted social identity due to an accomplishment of the group someone belongs to. As mentioned before, people gain self-esteem from their group memberships even when their own performances are below the group average. This phenomenon is known as basking in reflected glory (BIRG). People feel the positive emotion pride due to the accomplishments of their social group, which could be beneficial according to Fredrickson's (1998) proposed the ‘broaden-and-build’ theory of positive emotions. This theory states that positive emotions do not merely reflect momentary happiness or satisfaction, but more importantly serve an evolutionary adaptive function of widening a person’s scope of attention and cognition. Creative and flexible

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thinking, effective problem solving and coping skills are all facilitated by the broadened mind-set associated with positive emotions. This is in line with an earlier study by Isen and Daubman (1984), they showed that under positive affect, people tend to see relatedness and interconnections among cognitions, and perhaps process material in a more integrated fashion. Kok, Catalino & Fredrickson (2008) further showed that individuals who are induced to feel positive emotions exhibit wider visual search patterns as well as more flexible mind-sets. In line with these earlier findings, Abe (2011) found that positive emotions contribute to successful experiential learning mainly by expanding a person’s thought-action repertoire.

So threatening one's identity activates a defence motivation, but boosting ones identity might widen a person’s scope of attention and cognition. These are interesting findings, but it is not yet clear if this is also true for the national identity of people and, more specifically, whether the effect of threats or boosts to one’s national identity might have an influence on the ability to learn a second language. After all, smooth communication is of great importance in a globalized world in which different economies and societies are becoming increasingly integrated and interconnected, particularly through trade and financial flows as well as the transmission of culture and technology. In such circumstances, speaking more than one language can be a great advantage as it ensures smooth international communication.

In this research we examine whether these threatening or boosting situations for one’s national identity also have an effect. Specifically, we examine whether they have an effect on second language learning and see if the ease or difficulty someone experiences during

learning this second language is due through the strength of one’s national identity. Because so little is known, this research will use the existing concept of national identity to examine its effects on language learning. Recapitulatory, we undertook this research to search for the effects of threatening and boosting one’s national identity on second language learning.

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First, we hypothesize that there is an effect of condition on second language learning. We expect that threatening ones national identity has a negative effect on learning a second language. This might be in line with the defence motivation mentioned in the study of De Hoog (2013): People whose national identity is threatened might defend their national identity by blocking other national identities, in this research the language of another nation. The expectation for national identity pride is less clear. In this research there are two opposing possible effects. In line with the ‘broaden-and-build’ theory of positive emotions by Fredrickson (1998) it is possible that people who experience a boosted national identity, national identity pride, are better at learning a second language because of their widened scope of attention and cognition, meaning that they perform better at remembering words and translations of another language. On the other hand, there is also the possibility that this national pride represents beliefs about superiority of one’s own nation, based on these positive feelings toward its characteristics (Ha & Jang, 2014). This superiority feeling is linked with nationalism, a kind of prejudice against other countries. Because of this superiority feeling people possibly do not want to learn anything of other countries and therefore not perform well on learning a second language.

Second, we hypothesize that nationality strength has an effect on second language learning. People who feel strongly connected to their nationality will perform worse at second language learning than people who don’t feel so strongly committed to their nationality. The idea is that people who feel more strongly committed to their nationality do not interest themselves in other nations and therefore will not learn a second language well. Because there is a lack of literature on this topic, this is mainly a speculation.

Third, we hypothesize an interaction effect of condition and nationality. It is possible that people who are highly identified with their national identity compared to people who are less identified are worse at learning a second language when their national identity is

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threatened than when their national identity is not threatened. Again, this would be in line with the defence motivation mentioned by De Hoog (2013). For pride, there is no absolute expectation. It is possible that people who have a strong nationality feeling and whose national identity is being boosted might feel good and have a ‘broaden-and-build’ mind-set and therefore perform well on the second language learning. Alternatively, they might feel superior and not want to learn anything of other nations. The role of motivation will also be examined.

To test the above hypotheses, participants were assigned either to a threat, pride or control condition and were asked about the strength of their national identification. They were then asked to learn a word list from an allegedly foreign country. Next their national identity was threatened, boosted or not influenced at all. Finally, their learning was tested to see whether the manipulation had effect on their word learning skills.

Method Participants

One hundred and six participants at the University of Amsterdam completed this 30-minute study in exchange for 0.5 credits. The study was available in the online sign up system. All participants were students. The sample consisted of twenty-six men and eighty women with an age between seventeen and forty-one (M = 20.59, SD = 2.64). Participants were randomly assigned to one of the three conditions, in which national identity was threatened, boosted, or not influenced at all.

Materials

National identity strength was measured with the National Identity questionnaire developed by Doosje, Ellemers & Spears (1995). The National Identity questionnaire consists

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of the four following questions; ‘I see myself as a Dutch citizen’ (Ik zie mijzelf als

Nederlander); ‘I am happy to be Dutch’ (Ik ben blij Nederlander te zijn); ‘I identify myself

with other Dutch people’ (Ik identificeer mij met andere Nederlanders) and ‘I feel a strong connection with other Dutch people’ (Ik voel een sterke verbintenis met Nederlanders).

As mentioned before, there were three experimental conditions. In the first condition the national identity of the participants was threatened. Threat was manipulated by asking participants to write down an event where they felt ashamed, bad or guilty about being Dutch. Furthermore, as a manipulation check, they had to indicate on a scale from one to five (1 = not at all ashamed/bad/guilty; 5 = very ashamed/bad/guilty) how ashamed, bad or guilty they felt about that event at the time of the event. Next, participants were asked to pick one of the three events mentioned and describe this event in more detail, the participants had four

minutes to write this down (see Appendix D). Pride was manipulated by asking participants to write down an event where they felt good or proud to be Dutch. Again, they also had to indicate on a scale one to five (1 = not at all good/proud; 5 = very good/proud) how good or proud they felt about being Dutch at the time of the event as a manipulation check. Next, participants had to pick one of the two events mentioned and describe it in more detail, they had four minutes to do so (see Appendix D). In the neutral control condition, national identity was not threatened nor boosted. Instead, participants were asked to describe a typical day in their lives in four minutes. The exact wording of the manipulations can be found in Appendix D.

Performance at language learning was measured with the help of a self-constructed fictitious wordlist with a total of twenty-five foreign words. There were two different

wordlists for the learning phase, they contained the same words but in two different sequences (see Appendix C) and these two were also used for the test phase (see Appendix E).

Participants were randomly assigned to the wordlists. With the help of a cued recall memory

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task, people were tested on their language learning skills after manipulating the national threat, national pride or the control condition. The use of cued recall memory task is typical for vocabulary learning where one part of the word pair is presented and the other has to be filled in by the participants. Participants had to learn twenty-five words so the maximum score, if they knew all the translations of the language learning task, was twenty-five.To correct for possible differences in motivation, a short questionnaire was added on which participants had to rate their motivation on a scale from one to five (1 = completely disagree; 5 = completely agree). An example of a question is ‘I will do my best for this task’ (‘Ik ga

mijn best doen voor deze taak’). For the full scale, see Appendix E.

Procedure

Students at the University of Amsterdam could register and participate in the study via the university online research portal. As a cover story, participants were told that the study tested the effects of emotion on memory. Each participant was randomly assigned either to the threat, the pride, or the control condition. Participants started the online questionnaire by signing an informed consent. Next, they had to indicate whether they were in a quiet environment. If not, the study ended immediately. They had to be in a quiet place to make sure they could learn the words in peace. Participants then started to rate multiple propositions about themselves. The questions about national identity were interspersed amongst these propositions (Appendix A). The questions were hidden so that participants were less likely to guess the true purpose of the study. Before participants started the word learning task, they were asked to indicate how motivated they were to do the word learning task (see Appendix B). Then participants read the instructions for the learning task they were about to do. All participants received the following instruction:

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“We would like to ask you to learn the following wordlist of the non-western country Zambia. You will get 5 minutes to learn the words. Try to learn the words as well as you can. It is important for this research not to write anything down. So just use your brain and this digitally presented wordlist. Good luck!”

As mentioned in the instruction, participants then had five minutes to learn the words (see Appendix C). The manipulation of threat, pride or control, took place after those five minutes and therefore the effect of the manipulation could not occur at the encoding phase of learning a second language but at the retrieval phase. A study by Dalton and Huang (2014) showed that priming people with identity-linked promotions improves memory, compared to priming people with social identity threat, impairing memory. Meaning that the effect of threatening or boosting one’s identity does not occur at the learning phase but at the retrieval phase. In this study it is examined whether or not this is true, therefore the manipulation took place after the learning phase to make sure all participants had the same learning phase which was not manipulated. After the manipulation, the cued recall memory task on their second language learning skills took place (see Appendix E). Directly after this cued recall memory task, participants were asked how satisfied they were with their performance, whether it was easy to remember the words, whether they liked the task, and how well they thought they had performed (see Appendix F).

At the end of the session, participants were asked whether they participated seriously, what their ethnicity was, and if they had any idea concerning what the study was about. They could also leave their e-mail address if they wanted to receive the study results, were thanked, and debriefed.

Results

Of the one hundred and six participants, sixteen (15.09%) participants were excluded: One participant was not in a quiet place to do the study; seven participants were immigrants,

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whereas the study was only relevant for individuals with a Dutch national identity; one

participant marked his results as unusable due to lack of dedication; three participants guessed the true purpose of the study; two participants scored extremely low on the manipulation check (i.e., they scored not once above three on the scale rating how ashamed/bad/guilty they felt), suggesting that the manipulation did not work; and finally, three participants scored extremely low on national identification (i.e., more than 3 SD below the mean; a datapoint more than 3SD from the mean may have a disproportionately strong influence on the data). This leaves a total sample of ninety participants aged between 17 and 26 years (M = 20.36,

SD = 1.78). Twenty-two of these were men and sixty-eight were women.

National identity strength was measured with the National Identity Questionnaire. A reliability analysis was carried out to test if the items were a good measure for national identity strength. With a Cronbach’s α of .85, the questionnaire shows a very good internal consistency. The manipulations of threat and pride were tested with scale ratings (see Appendix D) to test whether the manipulation had the desired effect. The ratings were from one to five, with five indicating that the manipulation was completely successful and one indicating that the manipulation was completely unsuccessful. We set a threshold at the score of three, anyone scoring not once above this threshold was excluded from the analysis. As mentioned before, this was the case for two of the participants. A reliability analysis was also performed for the motivation questionnaire. By deleting one question from the set; ‘It seems hard for me to do this task’’ (‘Het lijkt me moeilijk om de taak te doen’), Cronbach’s alpha could be increased from α = .61 to α = .71. Due through a fault in the developmental stage there were two different groups created, one group received the words of the wordlist in the same sequence twice, at the learning phase as well as the test phase (wordlists the same), where the other group did not (wordlists different). To examine possible differences between these two groups an extra independent variable called ‘wordlist’ was created.

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A between-groups ANCOVA was conducted to compare the effect of threatening or boosting one's national identity on learning a second language. A custom model was used in which both categorical and independent variables could serve as predictors. Specifically, the independent variables were condition (threat vs. pride vs. control), wordlist (same vs.

different, i.e., whether the sequence of the words in the wordlist learned was the same or different as the wordlist test), and national identity strength. The dependent variable was the performance of the second language learning task. The means of the performance per condition are presented in Table 1. There was a significant Condition x Wordlist x National Identity Strength interaction, F(2, 78) = 3.77, p = .03, η2p = .09, suggesting that the effect

national identity strength on the performance of the second language learning task depends on condition and the wordlist variable. There was a significant two-way interaction Wordlist x National Identity Strength F(1, 78) = 4.14, p = .05, η2p = .05, suggesting that the effect of

wordlist is different depending on national identity strength. All other two way interactions were non-significant (all F < 1.29, all p > .28). Whereas there were also no significant main effect for Condition or National Identity Strength (all F < 1.24, p > .27), the effect of Wordlist was marginally significant, F(1, 78) = 3.20, p = .08, η2p =.04, suggesting that whether wordlist

learned was the same or different as the wordlist test, has an effect on the performance of learning a second language.

Because there was a marginally significant effect of wordlist and a significant two- and three-way interaction with the factor wordlist, we decided to analyse the two groups separately. Again, a between-groups ANCOVA (custom model) was conducted to compare the effect of threatening versus boosting one's national identity on learning a second language depending on the strength of national identity. The independent variables were condition (threat vs. pride vs. control) and national identity strength. The dependent variable was the performance on second language learning. Means of the performance per condition are

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presented in Table 2. For participants who received two different wordlists, there was a main effect of National Identity Strength, F(1, 44) = 5.37, p = .03, η2p = .11. There was no main

effect of Condition F(2, 44) = .65, p = .53, η2p = .03. There was, however, a significant

Condition x National Identity Strength interaction, F(2, 44) = 4.66, p = .02, η2p = .18. This

suggests that condition only has an effect depending on national identity strength. To inspect this interaction, simple slopes of national identification within each group were inspected. When the control condition was the reference group, the simple slope of national identity strength was non-significant, β = 1.51, t = 1.07, p = .29. The effect was non-significant

because the control condition does not differ from having no condition assigned. Meaning that the main effect does not differ for the control condition. When the pride condition was the reference group, the simple slope of national identity was marginally significant, β = -2.70, t = -1.80, p = .08. Meaning that the effect of national identity strength differed from the positive main effect. At last the simple slope of national identity strength was significant when threat was the reference group, β = -5.07, t = -2.90, p < .01. Both the threat and pride conditions score lower on the wordlist test when their national identity strength is higher. For participants who received the same wordlist twice, there were no significant effects (all F < .58, all p > .53), see Scatterplot 2.

To make sure motivation was not responsible for the non-significant effects, we first performed a between-groups ANCOVA (custom model) to compare if condition, wordlist, or national identity strength had an effect on motivation. There was a significant effect of the variable Wordlist on motivation, F(1, 78) = 5.97, p = .02, η2p = .07. We again split the file

into the two different wordlist groups. In the group where the wordlist were different National Identity Strength, F(1, 44) = 9.61, p < .01, η2p = .18, had a significant effect on motivation.

Overall meaning that the higher the national identity strength was, the higher their motivation was to do the task, β = .24, t = 2.14, p = .04. There was also a Condition x National Identity

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interaction, F(2, 44) = 3.63, p = .04, η2p = .14. The Threat Condition differed significantly

from the Pride Condition concerning the effect of National Identity Strength on Motivation, β = .48, t = 2.66, p = .01, suggesting that the higher the national identity strength, the higher the motivation in the threat condition, for the pride condition this effect is the other way around.

To examine whether motivation had an effect on performance, we performed the same analysis with condition, national identity strength, and motivation as predictors, and

performance on the second language learning task as the dependent variable, the file was split by wordlist. There was a significant Condition x National Identity Strength interaction, F(2, 38) = 4.73, p < .02, η2p = .20, meaning that condition and national identity strength have an

effect when depending on each other. To inspect this interaction, simple slopes of national identity strength within each group were inspected. The interactions of Threat x National Identity Strength, β = 8.72, t = 2.98, p < .01, and Pride x National Identity Strength, β = -5.33, t = -2.18, p = .04, differed significantly of the Control x National Identity Strength interaction, meaning that the performance on the wordlist test decreased for the threat and pride condition when national identity strength increased, see Scatterplot 1. There were no main effects for Condition and National Identity Strength (all F < 2.74, p > .11). There was a marginally significant effect for Motivation, F(1, 38) = 3.20, p = .08, η2p = .08. When the

received wordlists were the same there were no effects at all, (all F < 2.07, p > .16). In sum, the results were not all as expected, but nevertheless give reason to believe that threats and boosts may influence language learning depending on the strength of national identification. First, there was an unexpected three-way interaction involving the factor wordlist as well as a marginal main effect of this factor. Examining effects for the two wordlist groups separately yielded effects that were more interpretable. Among participants who received two different wordlists at the learning and test phases, the Condition x National Identity Strength interaction was significant and both participants in the threat and pride

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condition performed significantly worse as the strength of their national identity increased. Whereas the former is in line with our hypothesis, the latter suggests that a superiority feeling made participants who recalled a proud moment more reluctant to learn a new language (Ha & Jang, 2014). In the control condition, performance increased with national identification strength and, as mentioned before, there were no significant effects when participants received the same wordlist twice. The three-way interaction and the latter effects were not expected and we will speculate about possible reasons for them below.

Table 1.

Mean Performance on the Wordlist Test as a function of Condition (SD in parentheses)

Condition Mean performance

Threat Condition 9.71 (4.17) N 31 Pride Condition N Control Condition 9.75 (5.26) 28 10.71 (5.06) N 31 Table 2.

Mean performance on the Wordlist Test Divided by the Wordlist Variable as a function of condition (SD in parentheses)

Condition Wordlist

The Same Different Threat Condition 9.29 (3.73) 10.06 (4.58) N 14 17 Pride Condition N Control Condition 8.82 (4.47) 11 9.53 (4.66) 10.35 (5.77) 17 11.81 (5.32) N 15 16 17

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Scatterplot 1.

Scatterplot 2.

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Discussion

The purpose of this study was to examine whether threatening or boosting one's national identity has an influence on the ease or difficulty of learning a second language. To better understand the nature of this relationship, we also examined a potential moderator: national identity strength. Because of an unwanted difference in procedure during the study, half the participants received the same learning wordlist as the wordlist test, meaning that the words had twice the same sequence, and the other half received two different wordlists, meaning that the words in the wordlist had a different sequence in the two phases, the file was split up in these two different groups. This split up facilitated valuable information as the results without the split up were almost all non-significant. As mentioned before, there was only an interaction effect of condition and nationality when participants had a different learning wordlist and a different test wordlist compared to the same wordlist twice, meaning that our third hypothesis was confirmed for the different wordlists group. People who have strong national feelings and who feel threatened perform worse on learning a second language than the people who are not threatened. The same is true for people who feel national pride. The people who feel threatened or national pride do not perform different compared to one another. This implicates that people who feel strongly committed to their nation have more trouble with their nationality being threatened and learning a second language than people who feel not as committed. This seems in line with the defence motivation mentioned by De Hoog (2013). As mentioned the defence motivation seems to be based on the negative emotion of fear to lose ones identity, people want to restore it with their defensive actions. The people who are high national identifiers and feel their national identity is being threatened might defend their national identity by blocking the learned language and not perform well on the cued recall task of the second language to restore their national identity. In case of people who experience national pride and have a high national identity strength,

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this national pride may represent beliefs about superiority of one’s own nation as mentioned before. This superiority feeling is linked with nationalism, prejudice against other countries. People who have a high national strength and experience pride, therefore not perform well on learning a second language.

Our first and second hypothesis were not confirmed in this study. The first hypothesis stated that there would be an effect of condition on learning a second language. There was no effect of condition, the three conditions did not differ. The interaction effect shows that condition only has an effect when depending on national identity strength. Although a main effect of condition was hypothesized, the lacking main effect is not unexpected. Whether someone feels their national identity is threatened or boosted might depend on whether or not someone has a strong national identity feeling. Hypothesis two stated that there would be an effect of national identity strength. More specifically, people who have a high national identity strength would perform worse at learning a second language. This hypothesis was also not confirmed. The effect of national identity strength seems to depend on the condition where one was in. Although the interaction of condition and nationality was as expected, we did not expect it to differ between the groups with the wordlists the same and the wordlists different. As this was the case, it is interesting to explore further that the effect was only present in the ‘wordlists different’ group. We did not have any expectations beforehand about this variable because it emerged due through an error in the developmental stage of the study. It is possible that for the group with the same wordlists twice are blocked by the initial

sequence advantage. A wordlist test with the same sequence of the words might seem as an advantage at first but might also be responsible for a blockage in retrieving the words learned. They might give up more easily because they hold on to the sequence and therefore are worse at retrieving single words, in comparison with the group that received a different wordlist test. This is speculation so further exploration is needed to possible confirm this.

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There are some shortcomings to this study, first of all the participants of this study were students and most of them were psychology students. They are not a good representation of the Dutch society as a whole. We have to be very careful when generalizing this study to the entire Dutch population. As mentioned before, due through a fault in the developmental stage there were two different groups created, one group received the words of the wordlist in the same sequence twice (wordlists the same), where the other group did not (wordlists different). Although this gave some interesting and promising results, it reduced the number of participants per condition, which means that a well-powered replication with proper procedures would be helpful. To further optimize the study, it might be better to add an extra motivation questionnaire after the manipulation has taken place to investigate whether a possible drop down in motivation has a mediating effect on the performance of the word learning task. A better measure for the manipulation check is also desirable. The manipulation check was now situated after they shortly had to write down a when they felt

ashamed/bad/guilty or good/proud about being Dutch. It is possible better to check whether the manipulation worked after their detailed story of a threatening Dutch event or a boosting Dutch event. At last we did not control for the part where participants were asked not to write anything down when learning the language. Because the study did not take place in a

controlled laboratory, we are not sure if participants truly did not write anything down. A controlled replication would be helpful to examine if there are any differences in performance when people cannot write anything down. At last it would be interesting to examine if the placement of the manipulation has different effects on language learning. We choose to make sure the learning phase was the same for all participants. Therefore the manipulation took place after this phase to examine whether the effect occurred during the retrieval phase. In a follow-up study it would be interesting to examine whether the effect also takes place at the learning phase.

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Despite these shortcomings, it seems likely that the ease or difficulty of learning a second language is due to an interaction of national identity and whether someone’s national identity is threatened or boosted. The study gives more insight in the importance of one’s identity, more specifically one’s national identity. Furthermore these results contribute to the knowledge of smooth international communication in a globalized world in which different economies and societies are becoming increasingly integrated and interconnected. Speaking more than one language can contribute to this globalization. A person with high nationalistic feelings will most likely encounter more difficulties in learning a second language compared to a person with lower nationalistic feelings. When others want to learn a second language it is important to respect their national identity to create the best circumstances for global communication and to have a sustainable collaboration which can be profitable for all parties involved.

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Appendix A Items Measuring National Identity

1. Ik vind het belangrijk te weten wat anderen ergens van vinden.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

(helemaal mee niet mee eens) (helemaal mee eens)

2. Ik ben blij werknemer te zijn (bijbaan)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

3. Ik help graag anderen.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

4. Ik identificeer mij met mijn collega's.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

5. Ik kom niet gemakkelijk tot nieuwe ideeën.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

6. Ik voel een sterke verbintenis met studenten.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

7. Ik heb graag mensen om mij heen.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

8. Ik blijf opgewekt, zelfs als zaken mislopen.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

9. Ik vind het moeilijk kalm te blijven wanneer ik onder druk sta.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

10. Ik zie mijzelf als Nederlander.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

(helemaal mee niet mee eens) (helemaal mee eens)

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11. Ik bekommer mij weinig om anderen.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

12. Ik zie mijzelf als werknemer.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

13. Ik ben vaak aan het woord.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

14. Ik schat mijn IQ hoger in dan dat van anderen.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

15. Ik identificeer mij met studenten.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

16. Ik hou ervan met anderen samen te werken.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

17. Ik voel een sterke verbintenis met collega's.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

18. Voor ik aan een taak begin, plan ik elk aspect ervan.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

19. Ik ben blij Nederlander te zijn.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

20. Ik maak soms fouten.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

21. Ik ben het liefste alleen.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

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22. Ik identificeer mij met mijn vrienden.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

23. Ik geef niet gemakkelijk op wat ik begonnen ben.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

24. Ik identificeer mij met andere Nederlanders.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

25. Ik ben blij student te zijn.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

26. Ik ga vlot om met extra druk of stress.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

27. Ik voel een sterke verbintenis met Nederlanders.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

28. Ik zie mijzelf als student.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

29. Ik blijf rustig wanneer ik geconfronteerd wordt met belangrijke kwesties.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

30. Ik vind een goede relatie met anderen belangrijk.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Note. Participants have to rate all items on a scale from one to seven. The items used for measuring national identity stem from the study of Doosje, Ellemers & Spears (1995) and are italic. All the other items are just used as a cover.

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Appendix B

Motivation questionnaire

1. Het is voor mij belangrijk om deze taak goed te maken.

1 2 3 4 5

(helemaal niet mee eens) (heel erg mee eens)

2. Ik verwacht dat ik deze taak goed zal maken.

1 2 3 4 5

(helemaal niet mee eens) (heel erg mee eens)

3. Ik ga mijn best doen voor deze taak.

1 2 3 4 5

(helemaal niet mee eens) (heel erg mee eens)

4. Ik ga deze taak zo goed doen als ik kan.

1 2 3 4 5

5. Ik wil graag weten hoe goed ik deze taak maak.

1 2 3 4 5

6. Ik ben gemotiveerd om deel te nemen aan dit experiment.

1 2 3 4 5

7. Het lijkt me leuk om de taak te doen.

1 2 3 4 5

8. Het lijkt me moeilijk om de taak te doen.

1 2 3 4 5

Note. Participants had to rate their motivation on a scale from one to five. The questionnaire was presented before the learning task.

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Appendix C Word-pair task Wordlist 1 1. Vasata - Wakker 2. Ederoi - Engelen 3. Beliana - Dag 4. Marara - Kind 5. Era - Aarde 6. Narwa - Onthouden 7. Pira - Klein 8. Easaahae - Vrede 9. Sear - Nacht 10. Zelsatu - Bewust 11. Caumel - Fiets 12. Lekrons - Pijn 13. Kieran - Zus 14. Milana - Bos 15. Basan - Zorgen 16. Malanai - Moeder 17. Yeata - Vuur 18. Glora - Zon 19. Sukana - Donker 20. Ama - Bloed 21. Anda - Kleur 22. Ave - Nu 23. Ela - Sterren 24. Siafanar - Bloem 25. Suliana - Licht Wordlist 2 1. Era - Aarde 2. Ama - Bloed 3. Anda - Kleur 4. Beliana - Dag 5. Pira - Klein 6. Easaahae - Vrede 7. Ederoi - Engelen 8. Lekrons - Pijn 9. Glora - Zon 10. Sear - Nacht 11. Kieran - Zus 12. Narwa - Onthouden 13. Siafanar - Bloem 14. Sukana - Donker 15. Vasata - Wakker 16. Marara - Kind 17. Malanai - Moeder 18. Caumel - Fiets 19. Yeata - Vuur 20. Ela - Sterren 21. Milana - Bos 22. Suliana - Licht 23. Zelsatu - Bewust 24. Ave - Nu 25. Basan - Zorgen Note. The word-pair task will in all three conditions be the same. The only difference between the two wordlists is the sequence of the words presented.

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Appendix D Manipulations National Identity Threat

In dit onderzoek zijn we benieuwd wat de relatie is tussen emotie en geheugen. We willen je nu vragen om een moment in te vullen waarbij je je slecht voelde om Nederlander te zijn, een moment waarop je je schuldig voelde Nederlander te zijn en een moment waarbij je je

schaamde om Nederlander te zijn.

Benoem een moment waarop je je slecht voelde over Nederland / het zijn van Nederlander (dit mag in het kort)

___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ Hoe slecht voelde je je over Nederland / het zijn van Nederlander

1 2 3 4 5

(helemaal niet slecht) (heel erg slecht)

Benoem een moment waarop je je schuldig voelde over Nederland / het zijn van Nederlander (dit mag in het kort)

___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ Hoe schuldig voelde je je over Nederland / het zijn van Nederlander

1 2 3 4 5

(helemaal niet schuldig) (heel erg schuldig)

Benoem een moment waarop je je beschaamd voelde over Nederland / het zijn van Nederlander (dit mag in het kort)

___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ Hoe beschaamd voelde je je over Nederland / het zijn van Nederlander

1 2 3 4 5

(helemaal niet beschaamd) (heel erg beschaamd)

We hebben je gevraagd naar verschillende momenten waarop je je slecht, schuldig of beschamend voelde over Nederland of het zijn van Nederlander. We willen je nu vragen om één van deze momenten uit te kiezen en uitgebreid te omschrijven. Hoe voelde je je? Welke emoties kwamen er bij kijken? Heb je iets met het gevoel gedaan? Zo ja, wat? Probeer een zo gedetailleerd mogelijke omschrijving te geven van de situatie en het gevoel dat daarbij kwam kijken.

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Hiervoor krijg je vier minuten de tijd, daarna kun je pas verder met de volgende vraag. ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ National Identity Pride

In dit onderzoek zijn we benieuwd wat de relatie is tussen emotie en geheugen. We willen je nu vragen om een moment in te vullen waarbij je je goed voelde om Nederlander te zijn en een moment waarop je je trots voelde Nederlander te zijn.

Benoem een moment waarop je je goed voelde over Nederland / het zijn van Nederlander (dit mag in het kort)

___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ Hoe goed voelde je je over Nederland / het zijn van Nederlander

1 2 3 4 5

(helemaal niet goed) (heel erg goed)

Benoem een moment waarop je je trots voelde over Nederland / het zijn van Nederlander (dit mag in het kort)

___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ Hoe trots voelde je je over Nederland / het zijn van Nederlander

1 2 3 4 5

(helemaal niet trots) (heel erg trots)

We hebben je gevraagd naar verschillende momenten waarop je je goed of trots voelde over Nederland of het zijn van Nederlander. We willen je nu vragen om één van deze momenten uit te kiezen en uitgebreid te omschrijven. Hoe voelde je je? Welke emoties kwamen er bij kijken? Heb je iets met het gevoel gedaan? Zo ja, wat? Probeer een zo gedetailleerd mogelijke omschrijving te geven van de situatie en het gevoel dat daarbij kwam kijken.

Hiervoor krijg je vier minuten de tijd, daarna kun je pas verder met de volgende vraag. ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ 31

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Controle Conditie

We willen je nu vragen om zo gedetailleerd mogelijk een gemiddelde dag uit je leven te omschrijven vanaf het moment dat je opstaat tot het moment dat je gaat slapen.

Hiervoor krijg je vier minuten de tijd, daarna kun je pas verder met de volgende vraag. ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ Note. With this questionnaire ‘identity threat’ or ‘identity pride’ will be evoked. Participants need to think of events that made them feel bad, ashamed or guilty about being Dutch. Or events that made them feel good or proud about being Dutch.

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Appendix E Word-pair task test Wordlist 1 1. __________ - Aarde 2. Ama - __________ 3. __________ - Kleur 4. __________ - Dag 5. Pira - __________ 6. Easaahae - __________ 7. __________ - Engelen 8. __________ - Pijn 9. __________ - Zon 10. Sear - __________ 11. __________ - Zus 12. Narwa - __________ 13. Siafanar - __________ 14. __________ - Donker 15. Vasata - __________ 16. Marara - __________ 17. __________ - Moeder 18. Caumel - __________ 19. Yeata - __________ 20. __________ - Sterren 21. __________ - Bos 22. Suliana - __________ 23. Zelsatu - __________ 24. Ave - __________ 25. __________ - Zorgen Wordlist 2 1. __________ - Wakker 2. Ederoi - __________ 3. __________ - Dag 4. __________ - Kind 5. __________ - Aarde 6. Narwa - __________ 7. Pira - __________ 8. __________ - Vrede 9. Sear - __________ 10. Zelsatu - __________ 11. __________ - Fiets 12. __________ - Pijn 13. __________ - Zus 14. Milana - __________ 15. Basan - __________ 16. __________ - Moeder 17. Yeata - __________ 18. Glora - __________ 19. Sukana - __________ 20. __________ - Bloed 21. __________ - Kleur 22. Ave - __________ 23. __________ - Sterren 24. __________ - Bloem 25. Suliana - __________ Note. The word-pair task test will in all three conditions be the same. The only difference between the two wordlists tests is the sequence of the words presented

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Appendix F Prestation questions

1. Hoe tevreden ben je met je prestatie op de taak?

1 2 3 4 5

(helemaal mee niet tevreden) (heel erg tevreden)

2. Hoe gemakkelijk was het om de woorden te herinneren?

1 2 3 4 5

(helemaal mee niet gemakkelijk) (heel erg gemakkelijk) 3. Hoe leuk vond je de taak?

1 2 3 4 5

(helemaal mee niet leuk) (heel erg leuk)

4. Hoe goed heb je denk je gepresteerd?

1 2 3 4 5

(helemaal mee goed) (heel erg goed)