Defining characteristics
Stigma by Prejudice Transfer: Racism Threatens White Women and Sexism Threatens Men of Color
Diana Sanchez et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
In the current research, we posited the stigma-by-prejudice-transfer effect, which proposes that stigmatized group members (e.g., White women) are threatened by prejudice that is directed at other stigmatized group members (e.g., African Americans) because they believe that prejudice has monolithic qualities. While most stigma researchers assume that there is a direct correspondence between the attitude of prejudiced individuals and the targets (i.e., sexism affects women, racism affects racial minorities), the five studies reported here demonstrate that White women can be threatened by racism (Study 1, 3, 4, and 5) and men of color by sexism (Study 2). Robust to perceptions of liking and the order in which measures were administered, results showed that prejudice transfers between racism and sexism were driven by the presumed social dominance orientation of the prejudiced individual. In addition, important downstream consequences, such as the increased likelihood of anticipated stigma, expectations of unfair treatment, and the attribution of negative feedback to sexism, appeared for stigmatized individuals.
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White Female Bystanders' Responses to a Black Woman at Risk for Incapacitated Sexual Assault
Jennifer Katz et al.
Psychology of Women Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
We investigated White female college students' responses to risk for an incapacitated sexual assault involving a Black potential victim. Participants (N = 160) read about attending a party where they saw a man lead an intoxicated woman into a private bedroom. The potential victim was referred to as having either a distinctively Black name (e.g., LaToya) or a non-distinct control name (e.g., Laura). After random assignment to one of these two conditions, participants reported on their intent to intervene and their perceptions of the situation and the potential victim. As expected, participants assigned to the Black potential victim condition reported less intent to intervene, less personal responsibility to intervene, and greater perceived victim pleasure than participants assigned to the control condition. Neither the certainty of risk nor the perceived victim blame differed as a function of the potential victim's race. In path analyses, personal responsibility to intervene mediated the relationship between victim race and intent to intervene. The current results suggest that White women in college may choose not to help Black women at risk for sexual assault. Bystander education programs should explicitly address race as a potential barrier to helping others in need.
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Two Axes of Subordination: A New Model of Racial Position
Linda Zou & Sapna Cheryan
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Theories of race relations have been shaped by the concept of a racial hierarchy along which Whites are the most advantaged and African Americans the most disadvantaged. However, the recent precipitated growth of Latinos and Asian Americans in the United States underscores the need for a framework that integrates more groups. The current work proposes that racial and ethnic minority groups are disadvantaged along 2 distinct dimensions of perceived inferiority and perceived cultural foreignness, such that the 4 largest groups in the United States are located in 4 discrete quadrants: Whites are perceived and treated as superior and American; African Americans as inferior and relatively American compared with Latinos and Asian Americans; Latinos as inferior and foreign; and Asian Americans as foreign and relatively superior compared to African Americans and Latinos. Support for this Racial Position Model is first obtained from targets' perspectives. Different groups experience distinct patterns of racial prejudice that are predicted by their 2-dimensional group positions (Studies 1 and 2). From perceivers' perspectives, these group positions are reflected in the content of racial stereotypes (Study 3), and are well-known and consensually recognized (Study 4). Implications of this new model for studying contemporary race relations (e.g., prejudice, threat, and interminority dynamics) are discussed.
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Why Do Some Terrorist Attacks Receive More Media Attention Than Others?
Erin Kearns, Allison Betus & Anthony Lemieux
Georgia State University Working Paper, March 2017
Abstract:
Terrorist attacks often dominate news coverage as reporters seek to provide the public with information about the event, its perpetrators, and the victims. Yet, not all incidents receive equal attention. Why do some terrorist attacks receive more media coverage than others? We argue that social identity is the largest predictor of news coverage, while target type, being arrested, and fatalities will also impact coverage. We examined news coverage from LexisNexis Academic and CNN.com for all terrorist attacks in the United States between 2011 and 2015. Controlling for target type, fatalities, and being arrested, attacks by Muslim perpetrators received, on average, 449% more coverage than other attacks. Given the disproportionate quantity of news coverage for these attacks, it is no wonder that people are afraid of the Muslim terrorist. More representative media coverage could help to bring public perception of terrorism in line with reality.
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Jacquie Vorauer & Matthew Quesnel
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
What situational forces might enhance ethnic minority group members' voice and ability to exert social influence during exchanges with dominant group members? Two experiments involving face-to-face dyadic intergroup interaction examined whether making multiculturalism salient to minority group members would increase the extent to which they persuaded a dominant interaction partner of their own point of view on a series of controversial social issues. Results were consistent with this hypothesis and further indicated that minority group members expressed their own point of view more clearly and directly when multicultural ideology was made salient to them as compared to when it was not, which contributed (marginally) to their heightened persuasiveness. Salient multiculturalism did not have comparable effects on dominant group members' persuasiveness or clarity of expression. These results raise the possibility that making multicultural ideology salient might set the stage for minority group members to have a stronger voice in intergroup exchanges.
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Whites demonstrate anti-Black associations but do not reinforce them
Jordan Axt & Sophie Trawalter
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, May 2017, Pages 8-18
Abstract:
White people often associate Black people with negative information and outcomes. At the same time, many White people value not being or appearing prejudiced. In an inter-race context, these two forces may conflict. Whites may be better able to acquire anti-Black associations that align with their existing explicit or implicit attitudes, but may be unmotivated to strengthen these associations because they oppose their egalitarian values. Across five studies (N > 1100) including two pre-registered designs, Whites given a learning task were better able to initially acquire anti-Black racial associations but were unable or unwilling to then reinforce these associations. Conversely, Whites were less able to initially acquire pro-Black racial associations but then acquired and strengthened these associations. Finally, Whites were still unwilling or unable to reinforce anti-Black associations even when given a non-racial justification to do so. These results highlight the distinct but related influences of attitudes and prejudice concerns on race-related behavior.
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Anastasia Makhanova, James McNulty & Jon Maner
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
People's physical position relative to others may shape how those others perceive them. The research described here suggests that people use relative physical position to manage impressions by strategically positioning themselves either higher or lower relative to ostensible observers. Five studies supported the prediction that women take and display photographs portraying themselves in a low relative physical position to highlight their youthful features and appear attractive, whereas men take and display photographs portraying themselves in a high relative physical position to highlight their size and appear dominant. The effectiveness of these strategies was confirmed in two studies that measured social perceptions of male and female targets who varied in their relative position. In sum, as do members of other social species, people use relative physical position to manage social impressions, and although these impression-management strategies may have deep ancestral roots, they appear to manifest themselves through a contemporary human modality - photographs.
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Young children perceive less humanness in outgroup faces
Niamh McLoughlin, Steven Tipper & Harriet Over
Developmental Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
We investigated when young children first dehumanize outgroups. Across two studies, 5- and 6-year-olds were asked to rate how human they thought a set of ambiguous doll-human face morphs were. We manipulated whether these faces belonged to their gender in- or gender outgroup (Study 1) and to a geographically based in- or outgroup (Study 2). In both studies, the tendency to perceive outgroup faces as less human relative to ingroup faces increased with age. Explicit ingroup preference, in contrast, was present even in the youngest children and remained stable across age. These results demonstrate that children dehumanize outgroup members from relatively early in development and suggest that the tendency to do so may be partially distinguishable from intergroup preference. This research has important implications for our understanding of children's perception of humanness and the origins of intergroup bias.
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Genius begins at home: Shared social identity enhances the recognition of creative performance
Niklas Steffens et al.
British Journal of Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The present research examines the extent to which the recognition of creative performance is structured by social group membership. It does this by analysing the award of merit prizes for Best Actor and Actress in a Leading Role for the international award of US-based Oscars and British-based BAFTAs since BAFTA's inception of this category in 1968. For both awards, the exclusive assessment criterion is the quality of artists' performance in the international arena. Results show that US artists won a greater proportion of Oscars than BAFTAs (odds ratio: 2.10), whereas British artists won a greater proportion of BAFTAs than Oscars (OR: 2.26). Furthermore, results support the hypothesis that these patterns are more pronounced as the diagnostic value of a quality indicator increases - that is, in the conferring of actual awards rather than nominations. Specifically, US artists won a greater proportion of Oscar awards than nominations (OR: 1.77), while British artists won a greater proportion of BAFTA awards than nominations (OR: 1.62). Additional analyses show that the performances of in-group actors in movies portraying in-group culture (US culture in the case of Oscars, British culture in the case of BAFTAs) are more likely to be recognized than the performances of in-group actors in movies portraying the culture of other (out-)groups. These are the first data to provide clear evidence from the field that the recognition of exceptional creative performance is enhanced by shared social identity between perceivers and performers.
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Hema Preya Selvanathan et al.
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, forthcoming
Abstract:
Advantaged group members have an important role to play in creating social change, and intergroup contact has tremendous implications in shaping intergroup relations. However, little research has examined how intergroup contact predicts advantaged group members' inclinations toward collective action to support the interests of disadvantaged groups. The present research investigates how contact with Black Americans shapes White Americans' willingness to engage in collective action for racial justice and support for the Black Lives Matter movement. Three studies of White Americans (total N = 821) consistently reveal that positive contact with Black Americans predicts greater support for collective action through a sequential process of fostering greater feelings of empathy for Black Americans and anger over injustice. These findings hold even when taking into account other relevant psychological factors (i.e., White guilt and identification, negative contact, group efficacy, and moral convictions). The present research contributes to our understanding of how advantaged group members come to engage in social change efforts.
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Naiqi Xiao et al.
Developmental Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
We used a novel intermodal association task to examine whether infants associate own- and other-race faces with music of different emotional valences. Three- to 9-month-olds saw a series of neutral own- or other-race faces paired with happy or sad musical excerpts. Three- to 6-month-olds did not show any specific association between face race and music. At 9 months, however, infants looked longer at own-race faces paired with happy music than at own-race faces paired with sad music. Nine-month-olds also looked longer at other-race faces paired with sad music than at other-race faces paired with happy music. These results indicate that infants with nearly exclusive own-race face experience develop associations between face race and music emotional valence in the first year of life. The potential implications of such associations for developing racial biases in early childhood are discussed.
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Is What You Feel What They See? Prominent and Subtle Identity Signaling in Intergroup Interactions
Ted Matherly & Anastasiya Pocheptsova Ghosh
Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, forthcoming
Abstract:
Individuals often signal group affiliations to others, and the display of such identity signals is frequently rather subtle. While prior work has focused on understanding an individual's choices of subtle versus prominent signals, in this work, we look at the downstream consequences of such choices. Specifically, we explore how the prominence of identity signals may affect one's behavior in intergroup interactions. Drawing from literature on processing fluency, we propose that the use of difficult to process (subtle) identity signals in intergroup interactions leads signalers to experience identity threat, lowering confidence in their identity and leading them to engage in behaviors to recover from this experience. Across three different identity domains (college affiliation, political affiliation, and brand loyalty), we show that when individuals use difficult to process identity signals, they derogate out-group members in communication and behave less cooperatively in intergroup interactions. We find that these effects depend upon the observability of the signals by out-group members and only occur for individuals who are highly identified with the in-group. We also find that the effects are attenuated when behavior towards members of the out-group is made public.
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Trusting outgroup, but not ingroup members, requires control: Neural and behavioral evidence
Brent Hughes, Nalini Ambady & Jamil Zaki
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, March 2017, Pages 372-381
Abstract:
Trust and cooperation often break down across group boundaries, contributing to pernicious consequences, from polarized political structures to intractable conflict. As such, addressing such conflicts require first understanding why trust is reduced in intergroup settings. Here, we clarify the structure of intergroup trust using neuroscientific and behavioral methods. We found that trusting ingroup members produced activity in brain areas associated with reward, whereas trusting outgroup members produced activity in areas associated with top-down control. Behaviorally, time pressure - which reduces people's ability to exert control - reduced individuals' trust in outgroup, but not ingroup members. These data suggest that the exertion of control can help recover trust in intergroup settings, offering potential avenues for reducing intergroup failures in trust and the consequences of these failures.
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The influence of voice pitch on perceptions of trustworthiness across social contexts
Jillian O'Connor & Pat Barclay
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Perceptions of trustworthiness are an important predictor of social outcomes, such as monetary exchanges, criminal sentencing, and the attainment of leadership roles. Higher testosterone levels predict both lower voice pitch and untrustworthy behavior, across economic and mating contexts. Here, we tested the influence of voice pitch on perceptions of trustworthiness across general, economic, and mating-related (mate poaching, infidelity) contexts. We found that the context of trust and the sex of the speaker both changed how voice pitch affected perceived trustworthiness. Listeners were more trusting of higher-pitched female voices in economic and mate poaching contexts, but trusted lower-pitched female voices more in general. Listeners were more trusting of higher-pitched male voices in economic and mating-related contexts, and also tended to perceive higher-pitched male voices as more trustworthy in general. Listeners' attributions of trustworthiness were generally unrelated to perceptions of attractiveness from similarly-pitched voices, indicating that trust-related attributions were independent of preferences for higher- or lower-pitched voices. Furthermore, perceptions of general trustworthiness were associated with perceptions of economic trust, but were not consistently associated with perceptions of mating-related trust. These findings provide evidence that voice pitch alone is sufficient to influence trust-related perceptions, and demonstrates that listeners use voice pitch as a cue to trustworthy behavior.