Is my manager feeling threatened by me? Racial differences in content and activation of threat metastereotypes

Metastereotypes—an individual's or group's projection of what members of outgroups think about that individual or group (e.g., “I think they think I'm ignorant”)—are an important factor in intergroup interactions, particularly interracial interactions. Metastereotype content varies by race of the perceiver, yet research has not yet explained the mechanisms of this variation, nor has research determined how context might shape metastereotype activation. We examine these questions of mechanisms and contextual activation in the case of manager-employee interactions, as managers are especially important in advancing workplace diversity and inclusion. Our original vignette experiment explores how White and Black teachers interpret a potentially racially biased action by a school principal, and how the workplace racial composition and principal's race moderate teachers' perceptions of the scenario. We find that differing awareness of other groups' perspectives, akin to Du Bois' double-consciousness , helps explain diverging metastereotype content between White and Black teacher respondents. Further, we find that workplace racial composition and the principal's race independently and additively activated Black teachers' threat-based metastereotypes. White teachers' threat-based metastereotypes, in contrast, were not influenced by contextual factors. Our findings extend metastereotype theory by addressing predictors of metastereotype content and activation and showing that these operate asymmetrically across dominant and dominated racial groups. We conclude by considering practical contributions of our findings in terms of the need for more contextually informed managerial approaches to diversity and inclusion in the workplace.