Fostering Inclusion: Understanding the Cues and Mechanisms that Enhance and Undermine Identity-Safety
There is a rich and continually growing literature recognizing cues that spark identity-safety, or beliefs that one’s ingroups are valued, even in the face of socially threatening information or environments. During this talk, I will outline a new pathway to identity-safety framework, noting that cues can foster identity-safety by 1) suggesting that the group’s lived experiences are valued, 2) indicating that the group’s characteristics and goals are valued, and 3) signaling that the group’s core beliefs are valued. Integrating models on social identity complexity, I will emphasize how this framework can derive hypotheses specifically for multiply marginalized individuals. Throughout the talk, I will discuss studies demonstrating the importance of each pathway. Many of these findings focus on the lived experiences pathway and highlight shared discrimination – similar life experiences with bias and mistreatment interpersonally and in society – as a mechanism for fostering connections with people-related cues. A benefit of this framework is that it allows cues (particularly people-related cues) to be multifaceted, with the potential to positively impact one pathway while having no impact or harming another.