You Can’t Sit with Us: The Burden of Conditional Acceptance

Majority groups respond more positively to diversity and social change when they believe minority groups will assimilate.

Why do people sometimes accept and other times reject groups different from their own? Differences in values, norms, and other qualities may evoke negative attitudes between groups and result in feelings of cultural threat and resistance to diversity, particularly among the dominant culture. Do people respond more positively to diversity when they believe others will make an effort to fit in?

In this work, two studies were conducted to test this hypothesis. In Study 1, researchers measured White Americans’ assimilation expectations for immigrants and explored how these expectations influenced their reaction to the potential loss of their cultural identity. In Study 2, the researchers examined the perceptions of two key factors among U.S.-born university students: whether the presence of international students was growing, and whether these international students were assimilating to campus norms.

Study 1 revealed that when participants thought immigrants would not conform to existing cultural norms, the participants felt threatened by possible loss of status, which predicted lower support for diversity. Study 2 supported these findings while also highlighting how intolerance of cultural differences led to domestic students wanting fewer international students.

This study reveals that members of dominant groups can readily accept social change and intergroup differences in the present, so long as the minority group eventually conforms to the standards of the dominant group. This kind of conditional acceptance is no acceptance at all — let’s celebrate our differences, not stifle them!

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Study Details

Sample size(s): Study 1: 451 participants, Study 2: 648 participants

Participants: Study 1: White Americans (avg. age = 41 years; 192 men, 256 women, 2 non-binary, 1 prefer not to answer) Study 2: U.S.-born domestic undergraduate students (avg. age = 20 years; 220 men, 424 women, 2 genderfluid, 2 prefer not to answer; predominantly White Americans [73%])

Design: Experimental; Study 1: Single-factor experimental design; Study 2: 2x2 experimental design

Reference:

Danbold, F., & Huo, Y. J. (2022). Welcome to be like us: Expectations of outgroup assimilation shape dominant group resistance to diversity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 48(2), 268–282. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672211004806

Summarized by: Meghan Ash

Graphic by: Juliette Elfar

Edited by: Margie Christ