Can Acceptance Reduce Anticipated Discrimination? Evidence from Second-Generation Immigrants

I study how the perception of native-born attitudes shapes the anticipated discrimination among the Hispanic second-generation immigrants in the United States. First, I document that the native-born population widely accepted second-generation immigrants as Americans, but the vast majority of the second-generation immigrants underestimated this acceptance. Using an information provision experiment, I causally identify that perceiving increased acceptance lowered the level of anticipated discrimination. When playing a dictator game as recipients, individuals in the treatment group predicted a significant reduction in the payoff gap between signaling their ethnicity as Hispanics compared to Whites. Moreover, perceiving more favorable attitudes also increased the likelihood of individuals signaling as Hispanics. These results suggest that existing anticipated discrimination in society may be reduced by making information on intergroup attitudes more widely known.