Adult fears of four ethnic groups: whites, Chinese, Japanese and "boat people"

The paper reports the first study of adult fears according to ethnicity. The Chinese endorsed greater fearfulness than the whites. This difference was more marked for the women than the men. However, the Chinese and Japanese, two well-acculturated Asian minorities, expressed no differences in their fears; and Chinese living in two different sites demonstrated only small changes in their pattern of fears. By contrast, Vietnamese "boat people" expressed greatly increased total fearfulness as well as increased fear in all individual fear categories studied. However, unlike the Chinese and whites, sex had no effect on the "boat people's" fears. These results suggest that ethnicity influences overall fearfulness and the patterns of fears held by adults. Furthermore, sex and socioenvironmental factors may interact with ethnicity to modify the pattern of these fears.