Race and enculturation are often inextricably linked when investigating how impressions are formed of others. Race has long been held as a “primitive” category, along with age and sex. It has been included as a primitive category because, like a person’s age and sex, it is seen to be immediately discernible as a category upon which we can base assessments of, and form impressions about, others. It is also the basis of social problems such as racial prejudice and racial discrimination, and often incorrect assumptions about individuals and groups are made based on racial stereotypes. This is a serious problem in a world that has increasing immigration and globalisation. The present research investigated how host societies assess immigrants to their country, and how majority group members form impressions of minority group members. Established theories of multiculturalism, acculturation, stereotypes and nonverbal accent have been sourced upon which to base examination of the roles that race and culture play in assessments of immigrant minority groups living in countries with racially and culturally different majorities.

The first chapter introduces concepts and theories of race, enculturation, multiculturalism, acculturation, and stereotyping. It introduces the theory of nonverbal accent and its potential for revealing subtle cues about enculturation. A review of the literature on the effects of race and culture as cues for categorising others provides background information for the overarching research question of this thesis: can culture override racial appearance when majority groups form impressions of racial minority outgroups? Six separate empirical studies were conducted to arrive at the results which are reported in journal article format and comprise three separate journal articles reported in Chapters 2, 3 and 4. The final chapter incorporates the overall findings which are discussed in terms of relevance to modern immigrant societies.

The first article, which is presented as Chapter 2, reports two separate studies conducted in Australia. Both studies explored the attitudes of the host population towards immigrants of different racial appearances who adopted various acculturation strategies when settling into Australia, investigating the influence of race and culture on impression formation. In Study 1 (N=142) survey results demonstrated a strong effect of acculturation strategy on the impressions formed about the immigrant targets, while racial appearance had no effect. The second study (N = 1,051) intended to repeat the findings of the first study but with a more broadly representative sample of Australians. This study also removed the national labels that were offered in the first study, to reduce the possibility that ratings could be based on national stereotypes rather than race. Results confirmed that the acculturation strategy adopted by the immigrant targets was more influential than race in how participants rated them, and that integration and assimilation were the most favoured acculturation strategies.

The next article (Chapter 3) sought to understand how Australians see themselves as a people. National self-stereotypes (descriptors that national ingroup members use to describe the character of their own nation) have been found to be stable over time and resilient to change (Wilson, 2006; Lueptow, Garovich-Szabo, & Lueptow, 2001; Kawakami & Dovidio, 2001). However, they have also been found to be unstable and influenced by the political and social climate in which they are found (Haslam, Oakes, Reynolds, Mein, 1999). Chapter 3 reports a survey which was conducted on 157 Australians to assess current self-stereotypes. The aim was to assess the current self-stereotypes nominated by Australians, and to ascertain if consensus about the stereotypes Australians attribute to themselves has changed in the last two decades. The results revealed that some long held Australian stereotype traits have remained stable. However, the popularity of other traits was found to have dropped since the mid 1990s and since the last Katz-Braly checklist survey which was conducted in 2006. A trend for decreasing uniformity in Australian self-stereotype consensus, which was observed by Haslam et al. (1999), seems to have abated with results demonstrating a return to the rate of the mid 1990s.

The third article, presented as Chapter 4, reports the results of three studies, which further explored the subtle influences of culture and race on impression formation, as well as the influence of individual differences in attitudes towards race. The first study surveyed 205 Australians and the results demonstrated participants could detect Australian nationals from foreign national individuals by briefly observing their enculturated nonverbal accent – with no social interaction. The second study surveyed 212 Australian participants to explore the effect that individual differences in attitude towards race (lay theories of race) have on the ability to perceive subtle enculturation cues via nonverbal accent. All targets were of Asian racial appearance, with half being Australian nationals while the other half were foreign nationals. Results did not show any significant differences between the lay theories of racial essentialism and social constructionism.

The third study in this chapter reports survey results from Australian participants (N = 208) which explored the part stereotypes play in how impressions are formed by national majority group members about racial minority groups. Participants attributed Australian stereotypes to their fellow cultural ingroup members (i.e., fellow Australians) without knowing they were observing two groups of targets (i.e., fellow ingroup nationals and foreign outgroup). This study also investigated the effect for individual differences in lay theory of race. The target individuals all presented a minority Asian racial appearance, and results showed that while there was not any difference between the two lay theories in how participants attributed stereotypes, there was a significant three-way interaction effect. This revealed a weaker effect for participants who endorsed racial essentialism, demonstrating that while nonverbal accent affected how both groups allocated Australian stereotypes in the same way, it had a weaker effect for participants who endorsed racial essentialism.

The research findings presented throughout this thesis offer insight into the perception of race and enculturation when national majority members form first impressions of racial minority groups , specifically by teasing apart the potential difference between a person’s racial appearance and their actual ethnic enculturation. While previous research has examined how we stereotype others according to their “ethnicity”, often it has coupled racial appearance with ethnic enculturation, without separating the influence on attitudes of the two cues. The findings from the current research have implications for how we structure and behave in multicultural and immigrant based societies, understanding that while many cultures may exist and thrive in multicultural nations, racial appearance is not a criterion for the inclusion or exclusion of others to the mainstream cultural society. As majority group members come to understand and become aware of the subtle cues of cultural belonging, it will lead to more effective strategies in the promotion of inclusion and positive perceptions of minority group members who call immigrant nations home.

Over four years, we examined a regional town's attitudes before and after hundreds of refugees settled in the area. Our surveys found residents of Armidale, in northeastern New South Wales, started out reasonably positive about the settlement program, and became even more so.

Over time, they had fewer concerns about the impact of refugees on the town, more contact with the refugees, and more positive attitudes towards refugees and the settlement program.

Over the past decade, a surge of right-wing populism has occurred across the globe. High populist votes have been found in regions experiencing economic challenges (especially following the financial crisis of 2007-2008), high unemployment rates, and rising immigrant populations. Examples are the Brexit vote of 2020 in the United Kingdom and the 2016 presidential election of Donald Trump, where populist rhetoric centered on immigration and multiculturalism and was used by conservative populist leaders in a bid to appeal to the people. The popular nationalism literature has argued that such rhetoric contributes to a climate of fear, where the ingroup perceives the "other" (the outgroup) as threatening, which in turn creates symbolic boundaries of national inclusion and exclusion.

The current research explored an analysis of popular nationalism in Australia, which proposed that symbolic boundaries of national inclusion and exclusion are based on perceptions of cultural threat to the nation and the national way of life. From this, we introduced the concept of right-wing protective popular nationalism (RWPPN), which concerns the desire to protect the dominant culture and way of life from outside cultural differences. This construct is based on a four-point interdisciplinary framework in which RWPPN is theoretically derived from political science and sociology, conceptually related to social psychology constructs, and contextually related to contemporary political and societal phenomena. RWPPN is theorised to originate in and be strengthened by right-wing populist rhetoric and is measured as an individual differences variable reflecting the individual's desire to protect a particular way of life.

We conducted four studies that were reported in two journal articles and a book chapter. Studies 1 and 2 operationalised RWPPN as a social psychological construct and generated a new psychometric tool, the RWPPN Scale, which measures this novel construct. These two studies found preliminary evidence of RWPPN in a general sample of the Australian population and provided validation for the RWPPN Scale. As hypothesised, RWPPN related to established social psychological constructs, including symbolic threat, social dominance orientation (SDO), and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA). The results found support for RWPPN as a unique construct. RWPPN was also related to national identity, opposition to multiculturalism, prejudice, and negativity towards ethnic minorities living in Australia (emotional responses of fear, anger, and aggressive tendencies). In Study 2, the effects of RWPPN on aggressive tendencies held when controlling for SDO and RWA. RWPPN also mediated the relationship between RWA and aggressive tendencies.

Study 3 offered theoretical advances regarding the connections between RWPPN and conservative populism in Australia. Using audience segmentation, this study demonstrated that a population could be segmented into groups that varied in their level of RWPPN and a range of psychological profiling variables that relate to right-wing populism. The results suggested that RWPPN is associated with notions of national identity, negative consequences for ethnic minorities living in Australia, and a preference for monoculturalism. Given the multicultural nature of Australian society, these findings suggested that prevalent high RWPPN would have negative consequences for social cohesion.

Study 4 extended the findings of the previous studies regarding the relationship between RWPPN and aggressive tendencies towards ethnic minorities living in Australia by exploring the moderating effects of RWPPN on aggressive tendencies. A series of multiple regression analyses found that RWPPN predicted aggressive tendencies towards ethnic minority groups living in Australia. Furthermore, RWPPN moderated the effects of nationally related variables (collective narcissism, identity fusion, and threat perceptions) on these aggressive tendencies.

This research program provides preliminary evidence for RWPPN as a novel social psychological construct in contemporary Australian society. The results indicate that high RWPPN sentiment is associated with an exclusive sense of national belonging and opposition to multiculturism and predicts negative outcomes for ethnic minority groups living in Australia, including aggressive tendencies towards them. Future research is required to test the causal connections between RWPPN sentiment and political populist rhetoric and ascertain if RWPPN sentiment is present outside Australia. These future directions are important and necessary as the current research suggests that RWPPN can shed light on the implications and consequences for intergroup dynamics of desiring to protect the national culture and way of life.

In 2017, Armidale NSW became a new refugee resettlement location under the Humanitarian Settlement Program. Around 650 Ezidis settled in Armidale from March 2018 to March 2020, when new arrivals were paused due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Armidale refugee resettlement program offers an opportunity to study a regional community’s response to refugee resettlement in Australia. While there have been many studies of refugees’ resettlement in Australia’s major centres and regional communities, very few studies have closely examined the receiving community’s response. However, the success of refugee resettlement goes both ways. It requires mutual positive relations between refugees and the receiving community, and the receiving community’s responses to the newcomers form an important contextual element of refugee resettlement. The well-being of both is entwined as refugees become part of the fabric of the receiving community.

Armidale, NSW, is Australia’s newest regional refugee settlement location, with around 600 Ezidis settling there from early 2018 onwards. The University of New England, in partnership with SSI, initiated research to empirically gauge community attitudes during the first four years of refugee settlement. The research provided regular insights to SSI and others on the concerns and hopes of different segments of the Armidale community in the evolving two-way process where refugees and the host community adapt to one another and become entwined in the fabric of the local community life.