First impression
A Below-Average Effect with Respect to American Political Stereotypes on Warmth and Competence
Kimmo Eriksson & Alexander Funcke
Political Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The “above-average effect” is the phenomenon that people tend to judge themselves above average on desirable traits. Based on social identity theory, we propose that a “below-average effect” may arise when individuals rate themselves and the average ingroup member on traits stereotypically associated with the ingroup. In two studies, Republican and Democrat participants rated themselves and the average political ingroup member on possession of desirable traits related to warmth and competence. Current political stereotypes in America associate the former dimension with Democrats and the latter with Republicans. Consistent with our hypothesis, the above-average effect was moderated by political group and dimension in interaction. In particular, Democrats rated themselves below the average Democrat on warmth and Republicans rated themselves below the average Republican on competence.
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Thomas Ford et al.
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, forthcoming
Abstract:
Three experiments tested hypotheses about why humor that disparages some groups fosters discrimination whereas humor that disparages others does not. Experiment 1 showed that disparagement humor fosters discrimination against groups for whom society’s attitudes are ambivalent. Participants higher in anti-Muslim prejudice tolerated discrimination against a Muslim person more after reading anti-Muslim jokes than after reading anti-Muslim statements or neutral jokes. Experiments 2 and 3 tested the hypothesis that disparagement humor promotes discrimination against groups for whom society’s attitudes are ambivalent but not groups for whom prejudice is justified. In Experiment 2 participants higher in anti-Muslim prejudice discriminated against Muslims more after reading anti-Muslim jokes than neutral jokes, while antiterrorist jokes did not promote discrimination against terrorists. In Experiment 3 participants higher in antigay prejudice discriminated against a gay student organization more after reading antigay jokes than after reading neutral or antiracist jokes; antiracist jokes did not promote discrimination against a racist student organization.
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Cynthia Wang et al.
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Numerous studies have found that perspective-taking reduces stereotyping and prejudice, but they have only involved negative stereotypes. Because target negativity has been empirically confounded with reduced stereotyping, the general effects of perspective-taking on stereotyping and prejudice are unclear. By including both positively and negatively stereotyped targets, this research offers the first empirical test of two competing hypotheses: The positivity hypothesis predicts that perspective-taking produces a positivity bias, with less stereotyping of negative targets but more stereotyping of positive targets. In contrast, the stereotype-reduction hypothesis predicts that perspective-taking reduces stereotyping, regardless of target valence. Three studies support the stereotype-reduction hypothesis. Perspective-taking also produced less positive attitudes toward positive targets, with reduced stereotyping mediating this effect. A final study demonstrated that perspective-taking reduced all stereotyping because it increased self–other overlap. These findings help answer fundamental questions about perspective-taking’s effects and processes, and provide evidence that perspective-taking does not improve attitudes invariantly.
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The Visible Hand: Race and Online Market Outcomes
Jennifer Doleac & Luke Stein
Economic Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine the effect of race on market outcomes by selling iPods through local online classified advertisements throughout the United States. Each ad features a photograph including a dark- or light-skinned hand, or one with a wrist tattoo. Black sellers receive fewer and lower offers than white sellers, and the correspondence with black sellers indicates lower levels of trust. Black sellers’ outcomes are particularly poor in thin markets (suggesting that discrimination may not ‘survive’ competition among buyers) and those with the most racial isolation and property crime (consistent with channels through which statistical discrimination might operate).
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Perceived control qualifies the effects of threat on prejudice
Katharine Greenaway et al.
British Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
People sometimes show a tendency to lash out in a prejudiced manner when they feel threatened. This research shows that the relationship between threat and prejudice is moderated by people's levels of perceived control: Threat leads to prejudice only when people feel concurrently low in control. In two studies, terrorist threat was associated with heightened prejudice among people who were low in perceived control over the threat (Study 1; N = 87) or over their lives in general (Study 2; N = 2,394), but was not associated with prejudice among people who were high in perceived control. Study 3 (N = 139) replicated this finding experimentally in the context of the Global Financial Crisis. The research identifies control as an important ingredient in threatening contexts that, if bolstered, can reduce general tendencies to lash out under threat.
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Michele Tine & Rebecca Gotlieb
Social Psychology of Education, September 2013, Pages 353-376
Abstract:
This study compared the relative impact of gender-, race-, and income-based stereotype threat and examined if individuals with multiple stigmatized aspects of identity experience a larger stereotype threat effect on math performance and working memory function than people with one stigmatized aspect of identity. Seventy-one college students of the stigmatized and privileged gender, race, and income-level completed math and working memory pre-tests. Then, participants heard a moderately explicit stereotype threat-inducing prime. Next, participants took math and working memory post-tests. Stereotype threat effects were found on math performance on the basis of race and income-level, but not on the basis of gender. Stereotype threat effects were found on working memory function on the basis of gender, race, and income-level. For both measures, the income-based effects were the strongest. Results also suggest the possibility of multiple minority stereotype threat effects on math performance and working memory. More specifically, individuals with three stigmatized aspects of identity experienced significantly larger stereotype threat effects than those with zero-, one-, or two-stigmatized aspects of identity.
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Nonverbal Expressions of Status and System Legitimacy: An Interactive Influence on Race Bias
Max Weisbuch et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
A voluminous literature has examined how primates respond to nonverbal expressions of status, such as taking the high ground, expanding one’s posture, and tilting one’s head. We extend this research to human intergroup processes in general and interracial processes in particular. Perceivers may be sensitive to whether racial group status is reflected in group members’ nonverbal expressions of status. We hypothesized that people who support the current status hierarchy would prefer racial groups whose members exhibit status-appropriate nonverbal behavior over racial groups whose members do not exhibit such behavior. People who reject the status quo should exhibit the opposite pattern. These hypotheses were supported in three studies using self-report (Study 1) and reaction time (Studies 2 and 3) measures of racial bias and two different status cues (vertical position and head tilt). For perceivers who supported the status quo, high-status cues (in comparison with low-status cues) increased preferences for White people over Black people. For perceivers who rejected the status quo, the opposite pattern was observed.
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Easy on the eyes, or hard to categorize: Classification decreases the appeal of facial blends
Jamin Halberstadt & Piotr Winkielman
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Social information processing often involves categorization. When such categorization is difficult, the disfluency may elicit negative affect that could generalize to a variety of stimulus judgments. In the current studies we experimentally apply this theoretical analysis to two classic and highly socially relevant facial attractiveness phenomena: the beauty-in-averageness effect and the appeal of bi-racial faces. Studies 1 and 2 show that same-race (Caucasian-Caucasian) morphs are rated as more attractive than the individual faces composing them – a classic “beauty-in-averageness effect.” Critically, however, this effect is reduced or eliminated when participants first classify the faces in terms of their “parents,” and only if that classification is difficult. Studies 3 and 4 extend these results to show that classifying bi-racial individuals in terms of their racial identity reduces perceivers' ratings of attractiveness and reverses perceivers' tendency to smile at them, as measured by facial electromyography (EMG). Together, these four studies support the proposal that facial attractiveness is partially a function of the experience of social categorization, and that such experience depends critically on the nature of the categories into which an individual can be classified.
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Jesse Fox, Jeremy Bailenson & Liz Tricase
Computers in Human Behavior, May 2013, Pages 930–938
Abstract:
Research has indicated that many video games and virtual worlds are populated by unrealistic, hypersexualized representations of women, but the effects of embodying these representations remains understudied. The Proteus effect proposed by Yee and Bailenson (2007) suggests that embodiment may lead to shifts in self-perception both online and offline based on the avatar’s features or behaviors. A 2 × 2 experiment, the first of its kind, examined how self-perception and attitudes changed after women (N = 86) entered a fully immersive virtual environment and embodied sexualized or nonsexualized avatars which featured either the participant’s face or the face of an unknown other. Findings supported the Proteus effect. Participants who wore sexualized avatars internalized the avatar’s appearance and self-objectified, reporting more body-related thoughts than those wearing nonsexualized avatars. Participants who saw their own faces, particularly on sexualized avatars, expressed more rape myth acceptance than those in other conditions. Implications for both online and offline consequences of using sexualized avatars are discussed.
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Kathleen Hourihan, Scott Fraundorf & Aaron Benjamin
Memory & Cognition, October 2013, Pages 1021-1031
Abstract:
Recognition of own-race faces is superior to recognition of other-race faces. In the present experiments, we explored the role of top-down social information in the encoding and recognition of racially ambiguous faces. Hispanic and African American participants studied and were tested on computer-generated ambiguous-race faces (composed of 50 % Hispanic and 50 % African American features; MacLin & Malpass, Psychology, Public Policy, and Law 7:98–118, 2001). In Experiment 1, the faces were randomly assigned to two study blocks. In each block, a group label was provided that indicated that those faces belonged to African American or to Hispanic individuals. Both participant groups exhibited superior memory for faces studied in the block with their own-race label. In Experiment 2, the faces were studied in a single block with no labels, but tested in two blocks in which labels were provided. Recognition performance was not influenced by the labeled race at test. Taken together, these results confirm the claim that purely top-down information can yield the well-documented cross-race effect in recognition, and additionally they suggest that the bias takes place at encoding rather than testing.
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Monitoring and Control of Learning Own-Race and Other-Race Faces
Matthew Rhodes, Danielle Sitzman & Christopher Rowland
Applied Cognitive Psychology, September/October 2013, pages 553–563
Abstract:
The own-race bias refers to the finding that individuals are better able to recognize faces of the same race or ethnicity compared with faces of another race or ethnicity. The current study examined whether the own-race bias was also evident in participants' predictions of memory performance and their self-regulation of learning. In three experiments, participants studied own-race and other-race faces and predicted the likelihood of recognizing each face on a future test. Experiment 1 showed that participants provided similar predictions for own-race and other-race faces, despite superior recognition of own-race faces. Experiments 2 and 3 permitted participants to control their study of faces and revealed better self-regulation of learning for own-race relative to other-race faces. Collectively, these experiments suggest that the own-race bias may partially reflect a metacognitive deficiency, as participants are less able to effectively self-regulate learning for other-race faces. The implications of these findings are discussed.
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The Effects of TV and Film Exposure on Knowledge about and Attitudes toward Mental Disorders
Joachim Kimmerle & Ulrike Cress
Journal of Community Psychology, November 2013, Pages 931–943
Abstract:
Two empirical studies examined whether the portrayal of mental disorders on television and in films has an effect on people's knowledge about and attitudes toward the mentally ill. Study 1 found that the more often people watched television, the poorer their knowledge was about schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder. This finding did not apply to major depression. Study 2 demonstrated that people who watched a documentary film acquired more knowledge about schizophrenia than people who watched a fictional film, despite identical information in both films. Moreover, people who watched a fictional film had more negative emotional reactions (rejecting and unpleasant feelings) toward schizophrenia patients.
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Does "spicy girl" have a peppery temper? The metaphorical link between spicy tastes and anger
Ting-Ting Ji et al.
Social Behavior and Personality, September 2013, Pages 1379-1385
Abstract:
Drawing upon the theories of conceptual metaphors and embodiment, in the present study we systematically examined the metaphorical link between spicy tastes and anger. In terms of personality, the results showed that participants presumed strangers who liked spicy foods (e.g., chili peppers) were more easily angered (Experiment 1). In addition, we found that people who are higher in trait anger are more likely to have a spicy food preference (Experiment 2). The findings support a metaphorical mapping between taste and personality processes.
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Real men don’t eat (vegetable) quiche: Masculinity and the justification of meat consumption
Hank Rothgerber
Psychology of Men & Masculinity, October 2013, Pages 363-375
Abstract:
As arguments become more pronounced that meat consumption harms the environment, public health, and animals, meat eaters should experience increased pressure to justify their behavior. Results of a first study showed that male undergraduates used direct strategies to justify eating meat, including endorsing pro-meat attitudes, denying animal suffering, believing that animals are lower in a hierarchy than humans and that it is human fate to eat animals, and providing religious and health justifications for eating animals. Female undergraduates used the more indirect strategies of dissociating animals from food and avoiding thinking about the treatment of animals. A second study found that the use of these male strategies was related to masculinity. In the two studies, male justification strategies were correlated with greater meat consumption, whereas endorsement of female justification strategies was correlated with less meat and more vegetarian consumption. These findings are among the first to empirically verify Adams’s (1990) theory on the sexual politics of meat linking feminism and vegetarianism. They suggest that to simply make an informational appeal about the benefits of a vegetarian diet may ignore a primary reason why men eat meat: It makes them feel like real men.
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Aging 5 Years in 5 Minutes: The Effect of Taking a Memory Test on Older Adults’ Subjective Age
Matthew Hughes, Lisa Geraci & Ross De Forrest
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
How old one feels — one’s subjective age — has been shown to predict important psychological and health outcomes. The current studies examined the effect of taking a standard memory test on older adults’ subjective age. Study 1 showed that older adults felt older after taking a standard neuropsychological screening test and participating in a free-recall experiment than they felt at baseline. Study 2 showed that the effect was selective to older adults: Younger adults’ subjective age was not affected by participating in the memory experiment. Study 3 showed that the subjective-aging effect was specific to memory, as taking a vocabulary test for a similar amount of time did not affect older adults’ subjective age. Finally, Study 4 showed that simply expecting to take a memory test subjectively aged older adults. The results indicate that being in a memory-testing context affects older adults’ self-perception by making them feel older.
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Matching choices to avoid offending stigmatized group members
Peggy Liu et al.
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, forthcoming
Abstract:
People (selectors) sometimes make choices both for themselves and for others (recipients). We propose that selectors worry about offending recipients with their choices when recipients are stigmatized group members and options in a choice set differ along a stigma-relevant dimension. Accordingly, selectors are more likely to make the same choices for themselves and stigmatized group member recipients than non-stigmatized group member recipients. We conducted eight studies to study this hypothesis in different choice contexts (food, music, games, books) and with recipients from different stigmatized groups (the obese, Black-Americans, the elderly, students at lower-status schools). We use three different approaches to show that this effect is driven by people’s desire to avoid offending stigmatized group members with their choices. Thus, although prior research shows that people often want to avoid being associated with dissociative groups, such as stigmatized groups, we demonstrate that people make the same choices for self and stigmatized other to minimize offense.
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Why the Bride Wears White: Grounding Gender with Brightness
Gün Semin & Tomás Palma
Journal of Consumer Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Two studies examine the grounding of gender by the alignment of the female–male with the bipolar dimension of light–dark (most likely due to sexual dimorphism in skin pigmentation). We hypothesized and showed that in a speeded classification task males names are processed faster when they are presented in a black typeface (Exp. 1) or a dark color (Exp. 2) than when they are presented in white or a light color, with the opposite pattern for female names. The applied relevance of these findings is investigated in study 3 where lightness and darkness of consumables are revealed to drive gender specific preferences for foods and drinks, with the lighter consumables being female and darker ones male preferences. Study 4 shows that gender preferences for consumer goods is uniformly driven by whether the good is in black or white, the former being male and the latter female preference. The implications of these findings are discussed for theory formation in relation to the grounding of abstract concepts and in terms of how to design targeted marketing of products.
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Karyn Riddle & J.J. De Simone
Psychology of Popular Media Culture, October 2013, Pages 237-250
Abstract:
Taking a cultivation approach, this study uses content analyses, entertainment journalists, and critical theorists to make the case that patterns of content appear in “surveillance” reality TV programs. Survey data collected from 145 young adults reveal that beliefs about the real world often match these content patterns. Heavy viewers of surveillance programs were more likely to think females in the real world engage in inappropriate behaviors (e.g., arguing, gossip) more than males. Exposure to surveillance programs also positively predicted beliefs about the prevalence of relationship discord in the real world. Implications for cultivation research, reality TV, and accessibility are discussed.
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Line-up Misidentifications: When Being ‘Prototypically Black’ is Perceived as Criminal
Leslie Knuycky, Heather Kleider & Sarah Cavrak
Applied Cognitive Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Eyewitness misidentifications are the leading factor contributing to wrongful convictions. Black men, more than any other racial group, are disproportionately affected by this, thus elevating the importance of identifying factors that contribute to the false recollection of unseen faces. In the current studies, we tested whether misplaced familiarity and subsequent misidentification of Black faces was underpinned by the degree to which target faces were considered ‘prototypical’ (i.e., representative) of the Black race category. First, results revealed that Black faces with stereotypical facial features were accurately categorized as ‘Black’ quicker than faces with nonstereotypical features (Experiment 1). Moreover, identification errors were higher for both face recognition (Experiment 2) and line-up identification (Experiment3) for stereotypical-featured than nonstereotypical-featured faces. Overall, results suggest that stereotypical Black faces are representative of the category ‘Black’ and facilitated feelings of familiarity and the endorsement of memory errors that may underpin eyewitness misidentifications.
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Getting inked: Tattoo and risky behavioral involvement among university students
Keith King & Rebecca Vidourek
Social Science Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
The purpose of the study is to assess university students’ involvement in tattooing and examine associations between tattooing and risky behaviors. University students enrolled in physical education and health classes at one Midwestern University are study participants, and a survey is used to examine 998 university students’ involvement in tattooing. The results indicate that 29.6% of respondents have a tattoo. The most common locations for tattoos are the chest (37.6%), foot (26.8%), arm (15.8%), and back (14.4%). Females are more likely than males to have a tattoo. Tattooed students are significantly more likely than non-tattooed students to engage in alcohol and marijuana use and risky sexual behaviors. Suicidal behaviors and suicidal ideation are not related to tattoo status among university students. Therefore, college health professionals should be aware of associations between tattooing and risky behavioral involvement. Educational programs are needed to increase student awareness of body modification and associated risk behaviors.
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Metalheads: The Influence of Personality and Individual Differences on Preference for Heavy Metal
Viren Swami et al.
Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous studies have reported reliable associations between personality and music preferences, but have tended to rely on cross-genre preferences at the expense of preferences within a single subgenre. We sought to overcome this limitation by examining associations between individual differences and preferences for a specific subgenre of music, namely, contemporary heavy metal. A total of 414 individuals from Britain were presented with clips of 10 tracks of contemporary heavy metal and asked to rate each for liking. Participants also completed measures of the Big Five personality traits, attitudes toward authority, self-esteem, need for uniqueness, and religiosity. A multiple regression showed that stronger composite preference for the heavy metal tracks was associated with higher Openness to Experience, more negative attitudes toward authority, lower self-esteem, greater need for uniqueness, and lower religiosity. In addition, men showed a significantly stronger preference for the tracks than women (d = 0.54). These results are discussed in terms of the psychological needs that contemporary heavy metal fills for some individuals.
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Mara Cadinu, Marcella Latrofa & Andrea Carnaghi
Self and Identity, November/December 2013, Pages 582-596
Abstract:
We compared self-stereotyping, in-group-stereotyping, and out-group-stereotyping, among members of high- and low-status groups. Because gender inequality is still present in society, we operationalized status in terms of gender. We considered the male (female) gender category to possess relatively high (low) status. As predicted on the basis of an extension of Mullen's model (1991), Italian men showed significant levels of out-group-stereotyping, but no significant levels of self-stereotyping or in-group-stereotyping. In contrast, Italian women showed significant levels of self-stereotyping, in-group-stereotyping, and out-group-stereotyping. Looked at differently, men showed significantly stronger out-group-stereotyping than women, and women showed significantly stronger self-stereotyping than men. Women also showed marginally stronger in-group-stereotyping than men. The stronger self-stereotyping among women was mediated by greater female in-group identification.
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Guang Guo et al.
Demography, forthcoming
Abstract:
Self-reported race is generally considered the basis for racial classification in social surveys, including the U.S. census. Drawing on recent advances in human molecular genetics and social science perspectives of socially constructed race, our study takes into account both genetic bio-ancestry and social context in understanding racial classification. This article accomplishes two objectives. First, our research establishes geographic genetic bio-ancestry as a component of racial classification. Second, it shows how social forces trump biology in racial classification and/or how social context interacts with bio-ancestry in shaping racial classification. The findings were replicated in two racially and ethnically diverse data sets: the College Roommate Study (N = 2,065) and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 2,281).
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Aaron Lukaszewski et al.
Journal of Research in Personality, forthcoming
Abstract:
Psychometric surveys suggest that sex differences in personality are minimal. Herein, we argue that (a) the mind is likely biased toward assessing oneself relative to same-sex others, and (b) this bias may affect the measurement of sex differences in personality. In support of this, an experiment demonstrates modulation of sex differences on the HEXACO facets by manipulating the sex of the “reference class” — the group of people subjects compare themselves to when making self-assessments on survey items. Although patterns varied across traits, sex differences were relatively small in the “unspecified” and “same-sex” reference class conditions — but substantially larger in the “opposite-sex” condition. These findings point to a same-sex comparison bias that may impact the measurement of sex differences in personality.
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Florian Arendt
Journal of Communication, October 2013, Pages 830–851
Abstract:
Current research draws a distinction between stereotype activation and application. Building on this differentiation, we present an implicit social cognition model of media priming: Implicit stereotypes (i.e., automatically activated stereotypes) are the outcome of associative processes, whereas explicit stereotypes (i.e., overtly expressed judgments) represent the outcome of propositional processes. We tested some of the model's basic predictions in an experiment. We found that a Gaussian distribution function explained the explicit media priming effect (i.e., decay in effect size at very high dose levels). However, a monotonic function explained the implicit media priming effect. This indicates that stereotypic content may impact implicit stereotypes even if the mass-mediated content is perceived as invalid. We discuss this finding regarding possible media-based reduction strategies.