Solo status revisited: Examining racial group differences in the self-regulatory consequences of self-presenting as a racial solo

The present study examined the impact of racial group membership on the self-regulatory consequences of self-presenting with racial solo status. Based on the strength model of self-regulation, we proposed that individuals who acquire more practice with solo status by virtue of their racial group membership, may find it less depleting relative to individuals with less practice. To examine this, White and racial minority (Black, Hispanic) students at a predominantly White university were asked to engage in a self-presentation task in which they were assigned either racial solo or nonsolo status. Persistence on a subsequent hidden objects task served as the measure of depletion. Results revealed an interaction between racial group membership and solo status. In particular, consistent with previous research, White participants were more depleted (i.e., persisted less) after self-presenting with solo (vs. nonsolo) status. Racial minority participants, however, were not similarly impaired by solo status. These results suggest that our social group memberships, by virtue of the experiences they typically confer, may play an important role in determining which social demands will be depleting for whom. 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Our social group memberships play a profound role in shaping how we experience the world around us. Not only do social group memberships influence how we perceive and construe our environments, but they also often predict the types of social situations we are likely to encounter. For instance, being in a situation where one is the sole member of one’s racial group—i.e., having solo status—is a far more likely occurrence for racial minority individuals than for members of the racial majority. This increased propensity for solo status implies that members of some groups (i.e., racial minorities) face increased exposure to the costs derived from this situation relative to members of the majority group (Whites). At the same time, however, it also suggests that members of racial minority groups, on average, will gain more experience contending with these demands compared with individuals in the majority. The current study examines one potential implication of this group-level difference in experience. In particular, we explore whether the self-regulatory costs associated with self-presenting as a racial solo differ as a function of racial group membership. Previous research suggests there are any number of costs associated with solo status. For instance, solo status individuals are ll rights reserved. 008 Biennial Meeting of the the 2008 Annual Meeting of Johnson). subject to increased scrutiny and biased evaluation by majority group perceivers (e.g., Crocker & McGraw, 1984; Kanter, 1977; Taylor, Fiske, Etcoff, & Ruderman, 1978). In addition to being more perceptually salient to observers (Kanter, 1977), the distinctiveness of solo status may be burdensome in part because of the increased salience of one’s (discrepant) social identity to oneself. That is, the awareness of being the sole member of one’s group— and thus representing that group—may impose a burden of selfpresentational demands; one that usurps cognitive resources that could otherwise be directed towards the task at hand (Lord & Saenz, 1985). Indeed, solo status has been shown to disrupt cognitive functioning and, as a result, compromise learning and performance (Inzlicht & Ben-Zeev, 2000, 2003; Lord & Saenz, 1985; Saenz, 1994; Sekaquaptewa & Thompson, 2002a). Vohs, Baumeister, and Ciarocco (2005) recently considered the implications of solo status—and particularly the associated self-presentational demands of representing one’s social group—for individuals’ self-regulatory resources. These researchers posited that engaging in selfpresentation with solo status, wherein solos are perceived as representatives of their group, requires individuals to exert additional self-regulatory resources, thereby temporarily depleting these resources. Consistent with this hypothesis, among individuals asked to make a tape discussing a race-related topic for several minutes, those told their tape would be the only one made by a student of their race (i.e., racial group solos) were subsequently more depleted (they persisted for less time on a difficult task), compared S.E. Johnson, J.A. Richeson / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 45 (2009) 1032–1035 1033 with individuals who were not racial group solos. These results provide compelling evidence regarding the self-regulatory costs of managing racial solo status. It is important to note, however, that all of the participants in Vohs et al.’s (2005) study were White students at a predominantly White university. Hence, it likely that self-presenting with racial solo status was particularly unfamiliar to these participants and, we argue, especially demanding. Consequently, it remains unclear whether the Vohs et al. findings will generalize to individuals who are more likely to have encountered this type of self-presentation situation previously; namely, racial minority students at a predominantlyWhite university. We predict that self-presenting as a racial token will be relatively familiar for racial minority students at predominantly White universities, affording them critical experience dealing with the demands of the situation that, in turn, makes it less depleting for them. The notion that familiarity with particular self-regulatory demands can influence the extent to which individuals find them depleting is supportedby the strengthmodel of self-regulation (Baumeister, Vohs, & Tice, 2007; Muraven & Baumeister, 2000), which contends that self-regulation operates like a limited but renewable resource. Moreover, this model suggests that just as a muscle can be developed through training, practice with self-regulatory tasks can increase individuals’ capacity to contend with them, making each exertion less depleting. Indeed, mounting evidence in support of this claim demonstrates that individuals who get practice with self-regulatory demands are subsequently less easily depleted by them (see Baumeister, Gailliot, DeWall, & Oaten, 2006 for a review). In particular, this work has shown that individuals who get practice with self-regulatory tasks by virtue of dispositional characteristics (e.g., highmotivation to respondwithout prejudice), seem to benefit from this practice such that they are less depleted by related selfregulatory tasks (e.g., stereotype suppression), compared with individuals not sharing the relevant disposition (Gailliot, Plant, Butz, & Baumeister, 2007; Seeley & Gardner, 2003). In the current work, we build on these findings to consider differences in patterns of self-regulatory depletion that arise from differential experience based not on individual dispositional differences, but rather on social group membership. Specifically, we adopt the paradigm used by Vohs and colleagues (2005) to examine whether racial group membership moderates the depleting effect of self-presenting with racial solo status. Because the context of a predominantly White university provides racial minority students considerable experience with situations in which they are the sole member of their racial group, racial minority students should not suffer the depleting effects of self-presenting as a racial solo. Replicating Vohs et al. (2005), however, White students should be more depleted after self-presenting with, compared to without, racial solo status.