The New Identity Theft: Perceptions of Cultural Appropriation in Intergroup Contexts

Cultural appropriation has been described and discussed within academic and everyday discourse, but little research has examined its role in the psychological context of intergroup relations. We sought to examine whether minority and majority group members (i.e., Black and White Americans) would differentially judge instances of cultural exchange as cultural appropriation. Five experiments (3 were preregistered on OSF) using a variety of potential cases of cultural appropriation demonstrated that Black participants were more likely than White participants to view these incidents as appropriation when they involved White perpetrators appropriating Black culture (vs. scenarios of Black perpetrators appropriating White culture), an effect mediated by distinctiveness threat. Black (vs. White) participants were also more likely to perceive White actors who appropriate Black culture as harmful and as intentional. In Study 4, explicit manipulation of distinctiveness threat eliminated the participant race effect: Perceivers viewed White perpetrators as more appropriative than Black perpetrators. When actors were portrayed as using either an ingroup or outgroup cultural product (Study 5), participants perceived use of an outgroup cultural product as more appropriative. Studies 3-5 were preregistered on OSF. This research illuminates how group-based status interacts with and adds to perpetrator prototypically to influence perceptions of cultural appropriation, distinguishes perception of appropriation from perception of racism, and points to the importance of distinctiveness threat as a contributor to differential race-based perceptions. Implications of perceiving cultural appropriation for intergroup relations are discussed.