Navigating the Workplace: The Costs and Benefits of Shifting Identities at Work among Early Career U.S. Black Women

Although much progress has been made in race relations in the United States, discrimination still persists in the workplace. As a result, Black women, among individuals from other underrepresented groups, develop coping strategies, such as identity shifting, to diminish the negative consequences of discrimination. We used the phenomenological variant of ecological systems theory to examine shifting racial, gender, and class identities among early career (recent college graduates) U.S. Black women working in predominantly White environments. Drawing on ten semi-structured interviews with college-educated Black women, data were analyzed with an interpretative phenomenological analysis. The results revealed two major themes: (a) benefits of identity shifting and (b) the costs of identity shifting, the latter with five subthemes: (a) managing interpersonal rejection: frozen effect, (b) assimilation to the dominant culture and inauthenticity, (c) confronting and dismantling stereotypes, (d) model Black citizen, and (c) mixed feelings toward identity shifting. The findings indicate that Black women vacillate between the benefits and costs of identity shifting, altering their dialect and behavior to meet social norms. Our study’s implications suggest the necessity of a multicultural approach by employers to affirm their workers’ social identities, strengthen employee relationships, and lessen the need for shifting identities.     

The Eating Attitudes Test: development of an adapted language form for children

The purpose of this study was to determine the comparability of scores generated by two forms of the Eating Attitudes Test, the original form for adults and an adapted language form for children. Analysis of data indicated that the adapted language form of the test can be used effectively.     

What's the Point?*

We present a theory of conversation comprehension in which a line of the conversation is “understood” by relating it to one of seven possible “points”. We define these points, and present examples where it seems plausible that the failure to “get the point” would indeed constitute a failure to understand the conversation. We argue that the recognition of such points must proceed in both a top down and bottom up fashion, and thus is likely to be quite complicated. Finally, we see the processing of information in the conversation to be dependent upon which point classification the user decides upon.