Signaling safety and fostering fairness: Exploring the psychological processes underlying (in)congruent cues among Black women.

Abstract

Exposure to an organizational diversity cue may help attract Black women to professional spaces. The cue transfer framework contends that because intergroup attitudes co-occur, both cues congruent or incongruent with one's minoritized identity signal an environment that welcomes all minoritized persons. Critically, the utility of such cues had yet to be explored among Black women. Integrating cue transfer with social identity complexity theory, across six studies (N = 2,167), we tested the novel prediction that Black women utilize a racial dominance identity structure and investigated the benefits of organizational diversity cues congruent and incongruent with Black women's identities. We also drew from stigma solidarity and examined whether perceiving an outgroup associated with an incongruent cue as experiencing similar bias (i.e., shared discrimination) facilitated cue efficacy. Ultimately, only racially congruent cues encouraged organizational safety (Studies 1, 2, and 6) and procedural fairness (Studies 2, 4, and 6), while cues aimed at lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or Latino individuals (Studies 1-4) were ineffective. Moreover, despite reporting greater shared discrimination with Latino than lesbian, gay, bisexual & transgender persons (Study 4), shared discrimination was inconsequential for cue efficacy (Study 3). Black women's lay theories revealed that although they perceived negative intergroup attitudes as co-occurring, positive attitudes toward other minoritized groups were seen as unrelated to attitudes toward Black individuals (Studies 5a/5b). Finally, racially (but not gender) congruent cues mitigated organizational invisibility (Study 6). Collectively, the present investigation supports our assertion that Black women adopt a racial dominance lens and, more broadly, underscores the necessity of an intersectional framework when examining cue efficacy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).