Cueing authenticity via curls, kinks, and coils: Natural hair as an identity-safety cue among Black women.

Abstract

Black women professionals face pressure to alter their natural hair (i.e., naturally textured hair and/or styles associated with Black individuals), undermining their identity-safety in the workplace. An identity-safety cue can signal social fit, or an environment that values attributes associated with one's identity, and foster identity-safety among Black women. Integrating social identity threat theory and the state authenticity as fit to environment model, we exclusively recruited Black women (N = 1,693) and investigated whether identity-safety cues conveying that natural hair was valued in the workplace promoted general identity-safety beliefs, as well as aspects of identity-safety specific to natural hair. Exploring Black women's workplace experiences (i.e., Study 1) revealed that perceptions of their organization that favored natural hair (i.e., hair-based social fit) significantly predicted their authenticity and hair discrimination, even when controlling for the presence of Black employees and/or employees with natural hair. Our experimental studies found that exposure to a Black or white employee with a natural (vs. traditional) hairstyle promoted authenticity, while only viewing a Black employee with natural hair mitigated hair discrimination (i.e., Studies 2-4). At the same time, only a Black (vs. white) employee-regardless of hairstyle-encouraged belonging and trust (i.e., Studies 2 and 3). In Study 4, our direct manipulation of hair-based social fit promoted Black women's authenticity and alleviated hair discrimination, even in the absence of viewing a Black employee and/or employee with natural hair. Collectively, we demonstrated that conveying natural hair is valued cues social fit and cultivates identity-safe professional spaces for Black women. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).