Suspicion of motives predicts minorities' responses to positive feedback in interracial interactions

Abstract

Strong social and legal norms in the United States discourage the overt expression of bias against ethnic and racial minorities, increasing the attributional ambiguity of Whites’ positive behavior to ethnic minorities. Minorities who suspect that Whites’ positive overtures toward minorities are motivated more by their fear of appearing racist than by egalitarian attitudes may regard positive feedback they receive from Whites as disingenuous. This may lead them to react to such feedback with feelings of uncertainty and threat. Three studies examined how suspicion of motives relates to ethnic minorities’ responses to receiving positive feedback from a White peer or same-ethnicity peer (Experiment 1), to receiving feedback from a White peer that was positive or negative (Experiment 2), and to receiving positive feedback from a White peer who did or did not know their ethnicity (Experiment 3). As predicted, the more suspicious Latinas were of Whites’ motives for behaving positively toward minorities in general, the more they regarded positive feedback from a White peer who knew their ethnicity as disingenuous and the more they reacted with cardiovascular reactivity characteristic of threat/avoidance, increased feelings of stress, heightened uncertainty, and decreased self-esteem. We discuss the implications for intergroup interactions of perceptions of Whites’ motives for nonprejudiced behavior.

What Lies Beneath? Minority Group Members’ Suspicion of Whites’ Egalitarian Motivation Predicts Responses to Whites’ Smiles

“…As previous research on attributional ambiguity theory has relied upon carefully scripted feedback and confederate responses (e.g., Crocker et al, 1991;Major, Kaiser, & McCoy, 2003;Major et al, 2016;Mendes et al, 2008), these situational manipulations precluded tests of social accuracy. The current results fill this gap in the attributional ambiguity literature by employing the SOMI.…”

Does socioeconomic status mediate racial differences in the cortisol response in middle childhood?

“…Research evaluating threat response and discrimination has suggested that individuals may experience a greater stress response when they are given feedback that is discrepant to their performance, especially when the feedback is provided by individuals of different racial/ethnic backgrounds (Major, Kunstman, Sawyer, Townsend, & Mendes, 2016). …”

I Don't See Race (or Conflict): Strategic Descriptions of Ambiguous Negative Intergroup Contexts

“…While racial color blind strategies may ostensibly be used to foster the same treatment of all, the ultimate goal in employing these tactics may be more related to self‐presentation concerns and masking bias rather than preventing it. Notably, recent research has demonstrated that attempts to appear nonprejudiced, such as avoiding negativity, may not be well‐received by racial minority group members (Major et al., ). In fact, Black participants who were suspicious of White interaction partners’ motives reacted negatively to positive evaluations and found the feedback of Whites to be disingenuous.…”