Measures

Participants' implicit identities were measured using an APT, which required participants to respond to positive and negative words that were primed by pictures that represented either English or Pakistani identities. As noted by Plant et al. (2009), faster responses to positive words that appear after primes representing a specific identity indicate a preference for this group (e.g., faster responses to positive words that follow Pakistani primes indicate Pakistani identification). Participants may identify with both ethnic groups; thus, the two constructs were measured independently.

The primes were selected after a pilot test with 20 individuals who were recruited through informal networks in the same town as the higher education institute. They were older than 18 years, identified as being of Pakistani heritage, and were born in England. They were shown 20 pictures representing Pakistani culture and 20 pictures representing English culture and were asked to rate them on a 7-point Likert scale depending on how representative they were of the two ethnic groups. The response options ranged from 1 (not at all) to 7 (completely). The 12 English and 12 Pakistani images that were rated as being the most representative of the respective ethnic groups were then included in the APT. All images were presented in black and white to prevent color from influencing the participants’ responses. Examples included the flags of both countries, maps of both countries, and photographs of culturally specific foodstuffs and of well-known political figures.

The positive (e.g., fun) and negative (e.g., hate) words that followed the images were selected from the Affective Norms for English Words (Bradley and Lang, 1999) and have been used in previous APT studies (Thomas et al., 2017). The lengths of the positive (mean, 6.08; SD, 2.23) and negative words (mean, 6.16; SD, 1.89) did not differ (t[22] = 0.2, p > 0.05). Two APT performance scores were calculated for each participant, one for implicit Pakistani identity and one for implicit English identity, using the method proposed by Wentura and Degner (2010): APT score (for Pakistani identity) = (median response time (RT) for negative target words following Pakistani images − median RT for positive target words following Pakistani images); APT score (for English identity) = (median RT for negative target words following English images − median RT for positive target words following English images). Hence, a positive APT score indicated strong implicit Pakistani/English identification.

Explicit identities were measured using the Four-Item measure of Social Identification (Postmes et al., 2013). For each identity, participants indicated on a 7-point scale the extent to which they identified as Pakistani or English, for example, “I am glad to be Pakistani/English.” Response options ranged from 1 (disagree completely) to 7 (agree completely). The internal consistency for the scale was excellent (α = .91).

Paranoia was assessed using the 10-item persecution subscale of the Persecution and Deservedness Scale (PaDS; Melo et al., 2009). Participants rated their agreement on a 5-point scale with statements such as “I'm often suspicious of other people's intentions towards me” and “You should only trust yourself.” Response options ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). The level of internal consistency for the scale was very good (α = .84).

Participants' current mental health status was measured using a single-item: “Are you currently in contact with mental health services?” Response options were 1 (yes) or 2 (no).

To assess perceived discrimination against the Pakistani ethnic group, participants rated their agreement with two statements using a 6-point scale (Major et al., 2007). The statements were as follows: “My Pakistani ethnic group is discriminated against” and “Other members of my ethnicity (Pakistani) experience discrimination.” Response options ranged from 0 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree) (α = .82). The mean of the two scores was used for analysis purposes.

Participants were asked to indicate whether they identified as being male or female. This was coded as 0 (male) or 1 (female).