There are many ways to go about building a theory. We will demonstrate one way that utilizes the definition of explanatory theory that we have adopted in this book:

An explanatory theory identifies (a) the variables important for understanding some observed outcome and (b) explains how those variables interact to produce that outcome.

The following are steps that can be taken to devise a theory of cultural selfidentity that fits our definition of theory.

An Illustrated Process of Theory Building

We now demonstrate those steps with a hypothetical example.

Step 1: Select a phenomenon to explain

Imagine that we've read about couples from different cultural backgrounds who bear children of mixed cultural heritage. In our reading, we have encountered such passages as the following:

All my life I've been aware of being half and half. I feel like I'm on the fringes of things in a lot of ways. I'm half Jewish and half Christian. I was raised a political radical, but I don't really have any politics. I don't have any geographical roots. I just feel there are a whole lot of ways I don't belong. I've wanted to know who I was ever since I was a teenager. ( Cowan & Cowan, 1987, p. 246)

[My white maternal grandfather] wasn't exactly thrilled when he heard my mother was about to marry a black man. "I want to crawl inside a hole," he had said. ( Funderburg, 1994, p. 9)

Don [white American] and Cherry [Japanese] lived in Australia. . . . Don forbade Cherry to speak Japanese to their girls or teach them anything about Japan. "If they grow up to speak Japanese, they'll speak it to each other at school," he said. "That will make them different. They stand out among the other kids as it is. But they're not Japanese, they're Australian, and they're going to speak English." In response to such pressure, Cherry counseled her daughters, "You're not Jap, you're Australian girl. I'm Australian, too." ( Spickard, 1989, p. 147)

Imagine, as well, that these passages are relevant to one of our interests, which is people's self-identities and the ways those identities are formed. We consider self-identity to mean a person's conviction about "who I am." Part of self-identity consists of an individual's feelings about "the cultural groups I really belong to, the groups whose members accept me as one of their own." Such groups can be defined by ethnicity, religion, social class, age, language, and more. We are particularly curious about the development of identity in bicultural individuals--in persons whose parents are from different cultural origins. Unfortunately, we have been unable to locate a formally organized explanation of that process, so we propose to create our own theory of bicultural self-identities development. In the following description of our approach, we identify the mother's original culture as Culture A and the father's as Culture B.

Step 2: Identify causal factors

From our reading and personal observations we estimate that three variables are particularly significant in forming a bicultural person's sense of cultural belongingness: (1) perceived comparative advantages (desirability) of cultures A and B, (2) the treatment that the bicultural individual receives from family members of the two cultures (A and B) and (3) the treatment the individual receives from other people of the two cultures (A and B). We recognize that these three are not the only causal factors, but we think they are powerful and will thus contribute significantly to our understanding how personal identity evolves. Our next task is to cast the factors in the form of propositions or hypotheses that reflect the influence we think each factor exerts.

Proposition 1: Bicultural individuals tend to adopt characteristics of the culture (A or B) that would appear to offer them greater advantage in terms of personal welfare. If one culture appears to be more desirable in one aspect of life and the other in a different aspect, then the individual's self-identity will be an amalgam of features from the two cultures.

Proposition 2: The better the bicultural person is treated by relatives, the more likely the person will identify with the culture of those relatives. If treated well by relatives of both A and B, the person will incorporate features of both cultures into his or her self-identity. But if treated well by relatives on only one side of the family, then characteristics of that culture will be featured in the person's identity. If treated badly by relatives on both sides of the family, the individual will suffer identity confusion and distress.

Proposition 3: Influential, but somewhat less significant than family members' treatment (particularly in childhood), is the treatment the bicultural person receives from nonfamily members of cultures A and B. If treated well by people of both cultures, the person will adopt features of both cultures. But if treated well by people from only one of the two cultures, then characteristics of that culture will be featured in the person's identity. If treated badly by people of both cultures, the individual will suffer identity confusion and distress.

So, we are proposing that our three factors are causal variables that we think contribute significantly to the outcome variable--the bicultural person's selfidentity.

We now speculate about how the causal variables interact in the process of self-identity development. We imagine that the interaction follows the pattern proposed in Figure 5-1. The diagram shows what we estimate happens when a bicultural person participates in an event which influences how that person (a) perceives comparative advantages of cultures A and B and/or (b) is treated by relatives from A and B and/or (c) is treated by nonfamily members of A and B.

The pattern begins at the top with events in daily life that involve one or more of the three causal variables, events that serve as influential life conditions. For instance, a bicultural 16-year-old girl observes the quality of language usage by classmates from cultures A and B, she newly meets a relative from culture A, and she attends a high school social club's rush party where there are girls from both culture A and culture B. She is warmly greeted by her newly met relative from culture A, and at the rush party is treated well by girls from culture A but snubbed by ones from culture B. Thus, we predict that these experiences strengthen her tendency to adopt the language usage of culture A in preference to the usage typical of culture B.

Therefore, we propose that the girl interprets each event in a way that affects her welfare--her happiness, sense of confidence, disappointment, and distress. As the arrow from individual's welfare to influential life conditions indicates, this interpretation feeds back to influence the three life-condition factors, altering them a bit or else confirming her original conception of them. For example, the experience may confirm her expectation that being identified as a member of culture A is more advantageous than as a member of culture B.

The results of the round-cornered box at the top (life conditions interacting with self-interpreted welfare) influence the person's self-identity ("who I am culturally" and "the groups to which I truly belong"). This revised or confirmed concept of self influences how the person subsequently acts (individual's behavior)--confident, diffident, aggressive, submissive, friendly, antagonistic, or such. Other people respond to such behavior (others' responses). Then the individual interprets those responses as praise, criticism, acceptance, rejection, approval, disgust, reward, punishment, or the like. That interpretation serves as a factor feeding back to the beginning of the cycle as a further life condition.

Figure 5-1 An Envisioned Process of Self-Identity Development

In effect, by depicting a process of development, we have added four additional factors or components that affect self-identity--(a) the bicultural persons' interpretation of how life conditions affect her or his welfare, (b) the individual's behavior as influenced by self-identity, (c) other people's reactions to such behavior, and (d) the individual's interpretation of such reactions.

Step 4: Propose a scheme for evaluating causal variables

If we are to render our theory useful for judging bicultural people's selfidentities and in understanding the process through which those identities evolve, we need to establish a way to assess the status of the three life-condition variables and the four additional process variables.

Figure 5-2 Casual Desirability Scale

To begin, we assume that each of those variables represents a scale and that a bicultural person's perceptions can be located at a particular place on each scale at any given time of life. In Figure 5-2 we diagram the first three scales and demonstrate how they may serve to display different individuals' perceptions of the three causal factors. We illustrate the use of the scales by showing how hypothetical information could be charted. For instance, we can show how, in the eyes of a bicultural boy,

We can create similar scales for displaying the additional variables: (a) the bicultural person's interpretation of how life conditions affect her or his welfare, (b) the individual's behavior as influenced by self-identity, (c) other people's reactions to such behavior, and (d) the individual's interpretation of such reactions.

Step 5 & 6: Devise and apply assessment methods

Finally, the task of rendering our operation by creating specific techniques for evaluating the variables and their interactions and applying those techniques to bicultural people's self-identity is a daunting assignment that we won't attempt here. Instead, we will simply note that a thesis or dissertation may either involve performing only the first three steps of the theory development process or consist of all five steps. The latter option is obviously the more difficult, but it produces more useful knowledge.

Explanatory Theory Resources

The following books illustrate explanatory theories in various academic fields.