You're getting colder: White Americans decrease warmth presentation to high status Black individuals

Abstract: Past research suggests White people aspire to appear warmer when addressing Black, as compared to White, people because of their implicit association of the former with low, and the latter with high, socioeconomic status. However, the workplace is a unique environment wherein people are privy to others’ socioeconomic information (e.g., job role) which may be (in)congruent with group-level stereotypes. Thus, we compared White Americans’ self-presentation towards an explicitly high or low status Black (versus White) target across five experimental studies. We found White Americans smiled less frequently during a video recording (Study 1), and used more language perceived to be low in warmth during a written introduction (Study 2), to a high- (versus low-) status Black target. Meta-analytic evidence revealed the same pattern across self-described traits. We discuss our findings in relation to improving interracial interactions for Black employees in predominately White, high-status professions.

Keywords: Race/Ethnicity; Intergroup Relations; Impression Management; Intersectionality