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Whether a group membership is salient in one’s mind is a key determinant of its impact. Accordingly, group membership salience figures prominently in theories of intergroup cognition, affect, and behavior. Based on individuals’ ready attention to how they are perceived and might be rejected by others, we reasoned that metaperceived group membership salience—perceptions of a group membership being salient to others—might constitute a critical form of group membership salience that can be distinguished from personal salience and have unique consequences. Further, the threshold for metaperceived salience of visible distinctive group memberships might be sufficiently low during intergroup interaction that it is increased not only by reference to the group but also by seeing oneself. Specifically, we examined visual access to the self, as provided by online communication platforms, as a novel potential trigger for salience, focusing on metaperceived salience of race-relevant characteristics in particular. A combined sample of 392 White/POC dyads (784 individuals) had an exchange in which individuals’ self-view was manipulated while their interaction partner’s ability to see them was held constant. Self-observation led persons of color to feel that their race and nationality were more salient to their interaction partner than in their own mind, and this discrepancy constituted a path to less powerful interaction behavior by these individuals. No such pattern was evident for other self-aspects or White individuals. Additional research is needed to clarify the robustness and generalizability of these findings, which suggest that a way self-observation during online interaction might uniquely disadvantage persons of color. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
