Institutional efforts to create safe environments can function as signals to identity safety and reduce expectations of identity threat within the institution. Prior research on institutional identity safety signals, however, has yet to consider an important question: Do people use institutional identity safety signals to inform their expectations of identity threat in their broader social environments? Because people's day-to-day lives are often outside of signaling institutions, it is important to understand whether institutional identity safety signals also influence expectations of identity threat outside of the signaled space. Here, we explore this question by testing how the presence of safe spaces—designated areas where people can feel comfortable in their social identities and safe from prejudice—affect people's expectations of threat in their broader environments. Across four vignette-based studies using US participants sampled from Amazon's Mechanical Turk and an undergraduate subject pool, participants who read about someone observing a safe space sign (compared to signs unrelated to identity safety) reported increased prejudice expectations in their broader environments. These prejudice expectations mediated increased attributions of prejudice (Study 1); motivations to combat prejudice (Study 2); and support for movements and policies addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion (Study 3). These effects were not moderated by group membership. Results suggested that safe spaces increased prejudice expectations because they are perceived as a response to a problem in the broader environment. Together, the present research contributes to existing literature by testing the effects of a new signal (i.e., safe spaces), examining how localized identity safety signals transfer to the broader environment, and highlighting novel outcomes following from prejudice expectations.

创建安全环境的机构努力可以作为身份安全的信号，并降低机构内对身份威胁的预期。然而，先前对机构身份安全信号的研究尚未考虑一个重要问题：人们是否使用机构身份安全信号来告知他们在更广泛的社会环境中对身份威胁的预期？由于人们的日常生活通常在信号机构之外，因此了解机构身份安全信号是否也会影响信号空间之外的身份威胁预期非常重要。在这里，我们通过测试安全空间的存在来探索这个问题——人们可以对自己的社会身份感到舒适并免受偏见影响的指定区域会影响人们在更广泛的环境中对威胁的预期。在使用从 Amazon 的 Mechanical Turk 和本科学科库中抽样的美国参与者进行的四项基于小插图的研究中，阅读有关有人观察安全空间标志（与与身份安全无关的标志）的参与者报告说，他们在更广泛的环境中增加了偏见预期。这些偏见预期介导了偏见归因的增加（研究 1）；反对偏见的动机（研究 2）；支持解决多样性、公平和包容性的运动和政策（研究 3）。这些影响不受组成员身份的影响。结果表明，安全空间增加了偏见预期，因为它们被认为是对更广泛环境中问题的回应。总之，本研究通过测试新信号（即安全空间）的影响，检查局部身份安全信号如何转移到更广泛的环境，以及突出偏见预期之后的新结果，为现有文献做出贡献。