I’m not White but You Treat Me that way: The Role of Racial Ambiguity in Interracial Interactions

I’m not White but You Treat Me that way: The Role of Racial Ambiguity in Interracial Interactions

SPSP 2010
The Eleventh Annual Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology
2010-01-28 through 2010-01-30
Las Vegas, Nevada

Jessica D. Remedios
University of Toronto

Alison L. Chasteen
University of Toronto

Interracial interactions are complicated by concerns that both majority and minority group members hold. Although a large body of work has examined interactions between Whites and minorities, no research has examined the complications that racial ambiguity may introduce into these already anxiety-provoking situations. Unlike other minorities, people who belong to multiple racial groups (multiracial people) cannot always be categorized as members of a particular race. Furthermore, their physical ambiguity may have consequences for how they are perceived and how they perceive others. In two studies, we examined the role of racial ambiguity in individuals’ expectations for an upcoming interracial interaction. Participants in Study 1 were led to believe that they would interact with a White, Black, or multiracial individual. The results revealed that participants expecting to meet a Black partner rated him more positively and anticipated a more positive interaction than those expecting to meet a White or multiracial partner. In Study 2, multiracial, monoracial non-White and White participants expected to interact with a White person during the study. Multiracial participants expressed the greatest concern that others would be confused by their appearance; the more concern they expressed, the more negative emotions they experienced. Taken together, these findings suggest that although multiracial people express concerns about how others perceive them, monoracial people ignore these concerns and expect to treat multiracial people in the same way that they would treat White people. The results also imply that monoracial people may not accommodate the worries that multiracial people hold about interracial interactions.

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