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  • July 2021
  • Article
  • Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

Structuring Local Environments to Avoid Diversity: Anxiety Drives Whites' Geographical and Institutional Self-Segregation Preferences

By: Eric Anicich, Jon M. Jachimowicz, Merrick Osborne and L. Taylor Phillips
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Abstract

The current research explores how local racial diversity affects Whites’ efforts to structure their local communities to avoid incidental intergroup contact. In two experimental studies (N=509; Studies 1a-b), we consider Whites’ choices to structure a fictional, diverse city and find that Whites choose greater racial segregation around more (vs. less) self-relevant landmarks (e.g., their workplace and children’s school). Specifically, the more time they expect to spend at a landmark, the more they concentrate other Whites around that landmark, thereby reducing opportunities for incidental intergroup contact. Whites also structure environments to reduce incidental intergroup contact by instituting organizational policies that disproportionately exclude non-Whites: Two large-scale archival studies (Studies 2a-b) using data from every U.S. tennis (N=15,023) and golf (N=10,949) facility revealed that facilities in more racially diverse communities maintain more exclusionary barriers (e.g., guest policies, monetary fees, dress codes) that shield the patrons of these historically White institutions from incidental intergroup contact. In a final experiment (N=307; Study 3), we find that Whites’ anticipated intergroup anxiety is one driver of their choices to structure environments to reduce incidental intergroup contact in more (vs. less) racially diverse communities. Our results suggest that despite increasing racial diversity, White Americans structure local environments to fuel a self-perpetuating cycle of segregation.

Keywords

Segregration; Structural/institutional Racism; Organizational Exclusion; Diversity; Race; Organizations; Local Range; Prejudice and Bias

Citation

Anicich, Eric, Jon M. Jachimowicz, Merrick Osborne, and L. Taylor Phillips. "Structuring Local Environments to Avoid Diversity: Anxiety Drives Whites' Geographical and Institutional Self-Segregation Preferences." Art. 104117. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 95 (July 2021).
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About The Author

Jon M. Jachimowicz

Organizational Behavior
→More Publications

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