(checked) another study: despite claims they view blacks and other ethnic minorities as equals, liberals tend to dumb down their language when communicating with them. conservatives do not do this, fascinatingly. subconsciously, liberals view their "minority allies" as less competent and inherently unequal relative to europeans/whites. > most whites, particularly socio-political liberals, now endorse racial equality. archival and experimental research reveals a subtle but reliable ironic consequence: white liberals self-present less competence to minorities than to other whitesthat is, they patronize minorities stereotyped as lower status and less competent. in an initial archival demonstration of the competence downshift, study 1 examined the content of white republican and democratic presidential candidates campaign speeches. although republican candidates did not significantly shift language based on audience racial composition, democratic candidates used less competence-related language to minority audiences than to white audiences. across five experiments (total n = 2,157), white participants responded to a black or white hypothetical (studies 2, 3, 4, s1) or ostensibly real (study 5) interaction partner. three indicators of self-presentation converged: sophistication of vocabulary selected for an assignment, competence-related traits selected for an introduction, and competence-related content of brief, open-ended introductions. conservatism indicators included: self-reported political affiliation (liberal-conservative), right-wing authoritarianism (values-based conservatism) and social dominance orientation (hierarchy-based conservatism). internal meta-analyses revealed that liberalsbut not conservativespresented less competence to black interaction partners than to white ones.   v2ab
Canada