Department of Management and Organizations, Stern School of Business, New York University.
Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley.
Psychol Sci. 2022 Jun;33(6):889-905. doi: 10.1177/09567976211054090. Epub 2022 Apr 28.
Although White Americans increasingly express egalitarian views, how they express egalitarianism may reveal inegalitarian tendencies and sow mistrust with Black Americans. In the present experiments, Black perceivers inferred likability and trustworthiness and accurately inferred underlying racial attitudes and motivations from White writers' declarations that they are nonprejudiced and egalitarian (Experiments 1 and 2). White writers believed that their egalitarianism seemed more inoffensive and indicative of allyship than was perceived by Black Americans (Experiment 1a). Linguistic analysis revealed that, when inferring racial attitudes and motivations, Black perceivers accurately attended to language emphasizing humanization, support for equal opportunity, personal responsibility, and the idea that equality already exists (Experiment 1b). We found causal evidence that these linguistic cues informed Black Americans' perceptions of White egalitarians (Experiment 2). Suggesting societal costs of these perceptions, White egalitarians' underlying racial beliefs negatively predicted Black participants' actual trust and cooperation in an economic game (Experiment 3). Our experiments ( = 1,335 adults) showed that White Americans' insistence that they are egalitarian itself perpetuates mistrust with Black Americans.
尽管白种美国人越来越多地表达平等主义观点，但他们表达平等主义的方式可能揭示出不平等的倾向，并与黑种美国人产生不信任。在本实验中，黑人知觉者推断出喜好度和可信度，并从白人作家宣称他们没有偏见和平等主义的声明中准确推断出潜在的种族态度和动机（实验 1 和 2）。白人作家认为，他们的平等主义似乎比黑种美国人认为的更不冒犯，更能表明他们是盟友（实验 1a）。语言分析表明，在推断种族态度和动机时，黑人知觉者准确地关注强调人性化、支持平等机会、个人责任和平等已经存在的观点的语言（实验 1b）。我们发现因果证据表明，这些语言线索为黑种美国人对白人平等主义者的看法提供了信息（实验 2）。这些看法可能带来社会成本，因为白人平等主义者的潜在种族信仰预测了黑人参与者在经济游戏中的实际信任和合作（实验 3）。我们的实验（n=1335 名成年人）表明，白种美国人坚持认为他们是平等主义者，这本身就会使黑种美国人产生不信任。
