To be liked versus respected: Divergent goals in interracial interactions.

People often treat diversity as an objective feature of situations that everyone perceives similarly. The current research shows, however, that disagreement often exists over whether a group is diverse. We argue that diversity judgments diverge because they are social perceptions that reflect, in part, individuals’ motivations and experiences, including concerns about how a group would treat them. Therefore, whether a group includes in-group members should affect how diverse a group appears because the inclusion or apparent exclusion of in-group members signals whether perceivers can expect to be accepted and treated fairly. Supporting our claims, three experiments demonstrate that racial minority group members perceive more diversity when groups included racial in-group members rather than members of other racial minority groups. Moreover, important differences exist between Asian Americans and African Americans, which underscore the need for more research to explore uniqueness rather than commonalities across racial minority groups.

Section: Racial Minority In-group Representationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diverse According to Whom? Racial Group Membership and Concerns about Discrimination Shape Diversity Judgments

Bauman

Trawalter

Unzueta

2014

“…Because most people want to be liked and respected by others (Baumeister, 1982), they use their social behavior as a means of communicating this type of information about themselves to others (Bergsieker, Shelton, & Richeson, 2010). Within groups, individual members adjust their behavior to seek acceptance from other ingroup members and avoid rejection (Leary, Tambor, Terdal, & Downs, 1995).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Outgroup Helping as a Tool to Communicate Ingroup Warmth

Leeuwen¹,

Täuber

2012

The authors extend previous research on the effects of metastereotype activation on outgroup helping by examining in more detail the role of group impression management motives and by studying direct helping (i.e., helping the outgroup believed to hold a negative view of the ingroup). Data from three experiments provided full support for the communicative nature of direct outgroup helping by demonstrating that outgroup helping in response to a negative metastereotype was predicted by participants’ concern for the image of their ingroup, but not by their self-image concerns. Moreover, group image concerns predicted outgroup helping but not ingroup helping and predicted outgroup helping only when a negative metastereotype was activated, compared with a positive metastereotype, or a (negative or positive) autostereotype. The results also ruled out an alternative explanation in terms of denying the self-relevance of the metastereotype.

“…Such previous findings represent one type of self-presentation motive: to appear non-racist. Research has repeatedly identified this as a major goal of White people in their reporting and experience of interracial contact (Bergsieker et al, 2010;MacInnis & Hodson, 2012;Smith, 2002), and it may be sought by overreporting or over-emphasizing their interracial contact. The present findings, however, demonstrate that reported contact can be affected by other self-presentation motives.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The contact literature to date has overwhelmingly focused on the advantagedgroup perspective (see Tropp & Pettigrew, 2005). However, increasing attention has highlighted that contact may not have the same outcomes for disadvantaged-group members, in terms of intergroup attitudes and behaviors (e.g., Barlow, Hornsey, Thai, Sengupta, & Sibley, 2013;Bergsieker, Shelton, & Richeson, 2010;Tropp & Pettigrew, 2005). The same between-group differences may thus apply to the potential signaling function of contact.…”

Section: Research-article2015mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Whitewashing Effect

Macchia

Louis

Hornsey

et al. 2015

The present research examines whether people use racial contact to signal positive and negative social attributes. In two experiments, participants were instructed to fake good (trustworthy/competent) or fake bad (untrustworthy/incompetent) when reporting their amount of contact with a range of different racial groups. In Experiment 1 (N = 364), participants faking good reported significantly more contact with White Americans than with non-White Americans, whereas participants faking bad did not. In Experiment 2 (N = 1,056), this pattern was replicated and was found to be particularly pronounced among those with stronger pro-White bias. These findings suggest that individuals may use racial contact as a social signal, effectively "whitewashing" their apparent contact and friendships when trying to present positively.