Got hot sauce?
If you’re black, then it’s not in your head. White people really are talking down to you. At least, the liberal ones are, according to a new study to be published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
As reported Friday by the Washington Post, the study looked at people from different ideological perspectives and their word choices when communicating with blacks and whites. When choosing words off a list, liberal participants selected ones “that would make them appear significantly less competent with a Black interaction partner than with a White one,” the study said.
“White liberals may unwittingly draw on negative stereotypes, dumbing themselves down in a likely well-meaning, ‘folksy,’ but ultimately patronizing, attempt to connect with the outgroup,” said the study, titled “Self-Presentation in Interracial Settings: The Competence Downshift by White Liberals.”
The authors , Cydney Dupree, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at Yale University, and Susan Fiske, a psychology professor at Princeton University, described the phenomenon as “competence downshifting.”
They didn’t attempt to explain why it occurs, but offered some possible explanations. For example, white liberals do this because they think blacks require a more rudimentary form of language. Or, as a white liberal might put it to a black person: “You no get big words.”
The authors suggested it may also be white liberals’ way of ingratiating themselves to blacks by trying to “get on their level.”
“[T]hey may be using them to try to get along in a setting that we know is tricky — navigating an interaction with someone who’s different from you,” said Dupree.
Conservative participants, on the other hand, demonstrated no modulation in their word choice, whether the person they were communicating with was black or white.
“[I]f you’re a white conservative,” the study said, “your diction won’t depend on the presumed race of your interlocutor.”