Four aspects related to self-esteem and academic achievement were addressed in the review. The first goal was to address methodological considerations of self-esteem measurement. Support for some self-esteem measures, as well as caveats and directions for future research, were indicated. The second goal was to determine whether a relationship…

Results show that the drawings attributed to the Aboriginal "artist" produced more positive impressions and were rated more highly on the semantic differential. This research was presented at the Rocky Mountain Psychological Convention, Denver, Colorado, April, 1978. (Author)

"Indian" mascots of athletic teams can be offensive to Native Americans when they portray negative and stereotypical images. The notion of the "tomahawk chop" invented by Atlanta Braves fans and all the antics that go along with such images prevent millions of Americans from understanding the authentic Indian America, both long…

This paper describes the appearance of the first Mexican-American fictional hero in American literature. In 1878 a book entitled, "Live Boys; or, Charley and Nasho in Texas" was published in Boston; the book described the adventures of a Mexican-American hero called Nasho from the Southwestern United States. The author was Thomas…

During the past 40 years, several generations of American children have grown up with the Nation of Israel as a historical reality. Whether Jewish or Gentile, juvenile readers have absorbed a version of the story that recapitulates in modern dress the biblical story of the children of Hagar and Sarah, reinforced by American attitudes toward people…

Eric Campbell, an English teacher, spent most of his working life in New Guinea and in East Africa, where he lived in the shadow of Kilimanjaro. He now lives in England and writes about Africa. People could expect an objective, and perhaps, a dispassionate account or depiction of African children and adults--their individual lives and…

The connection between sustained high-level critical and creative thought and positive disposition is explored in this paper. The purpose of the paper is three fold: (1) to present the main ideas behind a dispositional conception of thinking; (2) to discuss research on this topic; and (3) to demonstrate the relationship between high-level thinking…

In teaching Asian American literature on the college level, the first consideration is to try to choose works that dispel the dominant stereotypes. One of these stereotypes is the "otherness" myth that Asian American culture is very exotic, distant, mysterious, as in "the mysterious and far East." In reality, Asian Americans…

Walter Dean Myers has gained distinction as an insightful and entertaining writer of imaginative adolescent literature that breaks stereotypes, tells stories of Blacks as people with complex dimension, and redefines the images of African Americans. Myers has written historical works, biography, novels for adolescents, plays, historical fiction,…

This study investigated the relationship between variables of ethnic and sex-role stereotype and job satisfaction based on Festinger's dissonance avoidance theory and Bruner and Tagirui's implicit personality theory. The respondents were 114 American Indian female supervisors, out of a representative sample of 200. The data were collected using a…

Latin elements or themes made for the North American market have been used in American films, but at the same time these films have been playing in a Latin American market, making it useful to examine how Latin America has been portrayed in these films. The taste for exotic locales and themes is an element that has been present since the…

Canadian Indians have long been represented by stereotypes presented by non-native writers. Only recently have Indians begun to create their own literature and re-examine historic sources of native speech and tales. This paper traces early European views of the bloodthirsty native and the noble savage, but contrasts them with recorded comments of…

A study was conducted to test the hypothesis that most persons will act differently as they process information and form impressions about another person when that person is familiar than when the other person is unfamiliar to them. The subjects were 79 undergraduate students enrolled in the basic communication course of a midwestern university…

Within the framework of "symbolicity" and "nativistic movement" the paper presents a "reasonably balanced and illustrative" examination of selected negative and positive trends in Native American symbolicity. Symbolicity is defined as the state, condition, and tendency of people to organize their perceptions and…

This paper discusses bias against southern and eastern European ethnic groups as it appears in current elementary school textbooks, popular fiction, newspapers, television, and movies. Anti-ethnic sentiment expressed by nineteenth and twentieth century politicians is also mentioned. It is held that bias and stereotypes in the media perpetuate and…