The ways people adapt their language and mannerisms in different social settings is known as code switching, and it’s something everyone does to varying degrees. For example, a professor might explain how to write an essay differently to a middle school student than to a graduate student.
For people facing marginalization, however, code switching can be a way to avoid bias. Black Americans, for example, may switch between using features of African American English and “Standardized English” when speaking, depending on the environment.
Many studies have focused on how other groups view Black Americans, says former Annenberg School for Communication Ph.D. student Darin Johnson , now an assistant professor at the University of South Carolina . But he wanted to focus on “how Black Americans are seeing ourselves, and how that relates to our own understandings of how we’re communicating and existing.”
He and other Annenberg researchers surveyed Black Americans to assess whether the feeling that Blackness or Americanness is central to one’s identity is correlated with their perceptions of how much they code switch—and what social factors drive self-reported code switching. Their findings are published in Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology .
“We saw that people’s perceptions of their Black identity were related to their perception of how much they tend to switch,” says Annenberg professor Emily Falk , the paper’s senior author. This was not true of their perceptions of American identity, she adds.
Researchers looked not only at how participants see themselves but also how they relate to others. They found that the more concerned someone was about confirming a negative stereotype of Black Americans—known as stereotype threat—the more likely they were to report code switching.
Participants self-reported how frequently they were concerned they might appear to be confirming stereotypes about their ethnic group related to, for example, talking a certain way or dressing a certain way.
“The unchallenged stereotypes that people have about others, in tandem with inequitable policies and cultural practices, might constrain how people are navigating their daily lives, their social lives, and the workplace,” Johnson says. “I think it’s really important to have that connective tissue between oppressive systems, interpersonal biases, and individual behaviors.”
The researchers also found that participants with a greater desire for belonging were more likely to report code switching. The more socially connected someone felt—relating to others and participating in a group, for example—the less likely they were to report code switching.
Both assimilationist ideologies (the belief that Black Americans should align themselves with the mainstream culture) and nationalist ideologies (which emphasize the distinctiveness and value of Black American culture) were associated with increased code switching.
But researchers found that the tendency to take the perspective of others and express empathy—called mentalizing—was not associated with code switching.
These findings matter because code switching can take a psychological toll. Past research has shown that demands for code switching in the workplace, for example, can add cognitive labor, hinder performance, and contribute to burnout.
“The racialized context of identity in the United States puts certain kinds of demands on some people more than others,” Falk says.
The authors of this new study note that their work “may prove useful for creating and, particularly, testing the efficacy of interventions designed to reduce the necessity of code switching to avoid bias.”
Darin G. Johnson is an assistant professor of communication at the University of South Carolina and a former Ph.D. student at Annenberg.
Emily B. Falk is professor of communication, psychology, marketing, and operations, information, and decisions; vice dean of Annenberg; director of the Communication Neuroscience Lab ; and director of the Climate Communication Division at the Annenberg Public Policy Center .
The other co-authors are Annenberg’s Laëtitia Mwilambwe-Tshilobo, Bradley D. Mattan, and José Carreras-Tartak.
This research was supported by Hopelab.
Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology
Survey
People
Psychological Correlates of Self-Reported Code Switching Among Black Americans
20-Jul-2026
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