Pounding hearts and brittle smiles

In contemporary interactions between Black and White Americans, there is often a discrepancy between the automatic responses of White Americans--which often suggest anxiety or negativity--and their more consciously controllable responses towards their Black interaction partners--which often appear quite positive. The present research explored whether this overcorrection --or exaggerated positivity--towards outgroup members results from a deliberate and conscious strategy to appear unprejudiced. Because this strategy is effortful, it requires controlled processes that can be disrupted when resources are not available. Thus, overcorrection is theorized to be a self-regulatory behavior in which participants cannot engage without sufficient cognitive resources. This study explored a resource-dependent model of overcorrection, testing whether depleting cognitive resources causes a marked reduction in overcorrection from White participants. This hypothesis was partially supported, as White females high in external motivation to control prejudice demonstrated overcorrection towards their Black partners when cognitive resources were available, but not when cognitively depleted. As interracial interactions are dyadic, it is not only the White participants who engage in meta-cognitive monitoring of possible signs of prejudice, since Black participants are also concerned about the possibility of bias. For the Black participants, this work examines a resource-dependent model of hypervigilance for prejudice, testing whether attention for possible signs of prejudice is also decreased when cognitive resources are depleted. Black females high in race-based rejection sensitivity demonstrated hypervigilance towards their White partners when they had the cognitive resources to do so but not when cognitively depleted. This study also examined whether overcorrection or hypervigilance are successful interpersonal strategies for Whites and Blacks, respectively, and found that overcorrection--though fragile --is perceived positively by Black partners, while hypervigilance is received poorly by White partners. Finally, this study examined whether depletion of cognitive resources ironically increases participants' chances to have a shared emotional experience with their cross-race partner--where both partners agree about the quality of their interaction and experience similar physiological reactivity--and the results supported this hypothesis. In sum, this study examined dyadic intra- and interracial interactions and which factors influence shared experience and trust between partners.