Not all egalitarianism is created equal: Claims of nonprejudice inadvertently communicate prejudice between ingroup members

Abstract Caucasian-Americans' manner of expressing egalitarianism may inadvertently communicate racial prejudices to ingroup members. Despite most hypothesizing the contrary (Preliminary Study), Caucasian-American perceivers were able to infer ingroup targets' underlying racial attitudes using only targets' written claims of being egalitarian (Experiment 1; N = 256) and regardless of whether targets' had the goal to be honest or as unprejudiced as possible (Experiment 2; N = 456). A Brunswikian lens analysis identified several linguistic cues associated with perceiver accuracy. Language humanizing African-Americans was especially strongly associated with both targets' underlying attitudes and perceivers' inferences of targets' underlying attitudes. Experiment 3 (N = 811) revealed that Caucasian-Americans' egalitarian statements communicate racial attitudes in an epidemiological sense: Perceivers reported higher racial prejudice after being exposed to egalitarian statements from targets higher, versus lower, in underlying prejudice, regardless of whether perceiver and target had congruent or incongruent political identifications. Therefore, egalitarian declarations may ironically perpetuate inegalitarian attitudes.