Interracial Contact and Self-Disclosure: Implicit Trust, Racial Categorization, and Executive Functioning

Abstract

High quality interactions with racial outgroup members have been shown to improve explicit racial attitudes. However, the links between high quality interracial interactions with other cognitive and social factors have received less attention in the research literature. Contact theory posits that more contact with outgroup members leads to less bias towards outgroup members. The disclosure-liking effect posits that we like those who we have disclosed to and those who have disclosed to us. Therefore, some researchers have explored whether intimate self-disclosure in contact experiences can be used as a strategy to foster better interracial interactions. The current study found support for the use of self-disclosure as a strategy in interracial interactions to reduce executive functioning impairments typically found for both African-Americans and Caucasians following interracial interactions. This strategy was not as effective for other interracial interaction outcomes. Although implicit trust for the outgroup increased for Caucasians who interacted with an outgroup member, it decreased for African-Americans following an outgroup interaction. Intimacy of self-disclosure was unrelated to these observed changes in implicit outgroup trust. Furthermore, while this strategy reduced the salience of racial category differences for those who interacted with an outgroup member with high intimacy, the strategy also increased racial category salience for African-Americans. The study's results suggest that for some outcomes the quantity of contact may be as important as quality of contact and highlights the importance of studying effects for both minority and majority group members in interracial interactions.