Flattering or fetishizing? Racial minority group members respond negatively to racial dating preferences favoring their racial ingroup.

OBJECTIVES Dating spaces can represent minefields for racial minority group members, who must often discern whether any interest they receive is driven by genuine attraction to them as a person or by fetishization of their racial group. The present work explored how racial minority group members react to dating prospects disclosing a racial preference favoring their minority ingroup.

METHODS Three experiments were conducted with heterosexual Asian American women (Study 1, N = 127, Mage = 25.1 years), Asian American women and men (Study 2, N = 240, Mage = 24.8 years), and Black American women and men (Study 3, N = 343, Mage = 29.2 years). Participants were presented with dating profiles that either included an explicit preference for their racial minority group or no such preference. Their expectations of racial fetishization and evaluations of the target (e.g., attraction, anticipated ease of connection, general evaluations, racism) were measured.

RESULTS Participants expected that the minority-preferencing dating prospect would be more likely to fetishize them (e.g., reduce them to their race, stereotype them, exoticize them, objectify their appearance) and less likely to consider them for their individual qualities. Through these racial fetishization expectations, participants reported less attraction to the minority-preferencing prospect, anticipated greater difficulty in forming a genuine connection with them, attributed greater racism to them, and evaluated them more negatively as a person.

CONCLUSIONS This research shows that sexual preferences favoring racial minority group members are taken by racial minority group members as indicative of racial fetishization and have negative implications for how the person espousing them is perceived. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).