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Abstract
Bilingualism has often been studied in the context of binary categories. However, this does not capture its multidimensional nature. In the first study, I tested bilingualism while treating it as a continuous, multidimensional variable to see how it relates to social essentialism and intergroup bias. This is based on studies that have shown an association of bilingualism with less outgroup bias and less essentialist beliefs. I hypothesized that social essentialist beliefs would play a mediating role in the relationship between bilingualism and intergroup bias, as modeled by the simple mediation model. I tested this hypothesis by assessing a group of undergraduate students using a bilingualism assessment, an assessment of their belief in social determinism, an adapted implicit association test that focuses on words associated with ingroups and outgroups, as well as an explicit bias task focused on generalized ethnocentrism. Participants showed mixed results with a lack of significant relationships for implicit bias assessment, but some significant relationships for explicit bias assessment. In the second study, I focused on testing whether a priming procedure for bilingual identity would be effective at getting bilingual participants to more strongly identify with their bilingualism and show differences in how they respond to assessments of essentialist beliefs and explicit outgroup biases. Participants did not show any differences between the bilingual and control groups.