Giving Impressions
People take similarity of group markers to imply similarity of group members
Pinar Aldan & Yarrow Dunham
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Group markers, such as the group's name, banner, or other symbols that are associated with a group oftentimes arbitrarily relate to group characteristics, and hence, they do not provide much information about the attributes of the group or its members. However, here we show that when reasoning about novel social groups people sometimes use such markers as cues to the characteristics of the groups that they are associated with, even in cases in which they know these markers were chosen arbitrarily. Across three studies (collected online; total N = 485) we show that: 1) people are more likely to think two novel social groups which have similar group markers (i.e., group names [Study 1] and identifying group colors [Study 2]) are more similar to each other than two groups which have more distinct markers, and 2) people not only take such markers as cues to group similarity, but they also expect others to intentionally pick group markers in ways that signal group distinctiveness (Study 3). Overall, these studies suggest that even though the effects of group markers are often dismissed in the intergroup cognition literature, they can affect how people perceive different groups in subtle ways.
How White Americans Experience Racial Gaze: Public Interactions and White Parents of Black Adopted Children
Samuel Perry
Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, forthcoming
Abstract:
Within America’s racialized social system, White people can generally navigate life as “unmarked,” oblivious to race. But for White parents of Black adopted children, everyday public interactions provide occasion to directly and vicariously experience a form of “racial gaze,” specifically via scrutiny directed toward them as parents and the bodies of their Black children. Drawing on 46 in-depth interviews with White adoptive parents of Black children, and incorporating insights from whiteness theory and research, I analyze how White parents perceive and respond to racial scrutiny. Parents describe how their ability to raise Black children feels challenged through unsolicited advice about haircare, negative comments, and perceived disapproving looks from Black strangers. These interactions provoke parents’ insecurity and anxiety such that they become more aware of their own whiteness and thus less “colorblind” than they might have been otherwise, while also resenting Black strangers for implicitly challenging their parenting abilities or the appropriateness of their parenting Black children. Findings provide novel insight into ways White Americans respond to the subjective experience of racial gaze. Given expectations of universal white innocence, competence, and colorblindness, they react with increased anxiety, hyper-vigilance, and greater guardedness around Black Americans in public to the point of resentment.
The Politicization of COVID-19 and Anti-Asian Racism in the United States: An Experimental Approach
D.G. Kim
Journal of Experimental Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
The deadly outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has accompanied a worldwide surge in anti-Asian hate crimes and racial violence. In this paper, I experimentally assess the downstream effects of the health crisis on the racial attitudes of the American public. Survey respondents were randomly assigned to different messages about COVID-19 and its association with China and answered a battery of racial attitude questions, including a new measure of anti-Asian racial resentment. Across all outcome measures, I find null effects for both treatment messages, which suggests that racialized views toward Asians may be stable individual-level dispositions that have shaped American responses to the pandemic. Findings from this study have important implications for research on the far-reaching societal and political consequences of the pandemic in the United States and beyond.
Masculinity Threats Sequentially Arouse Public Discomfort, Anger, and Positive Attitudes Toward Sexual Violence
Theresa Vescio et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Three experiments (N = 943) tested whether men (but not women) responded to gender threats with increased concern about how one looks in the eyes of others (i.e., public discomfort) and subsequent anger that, in turn, predicted attitudes about sexual violence. Consistent with predictions, for men, learning that one is like a woman was associated with threat-related emotions (public discomfort and anger) that, in turn, predicted the increased likelihood to express intent to engage in quid-pro-quo sexual harassment (Study 1), recall sexually objectifying others (Study 2), endorse sexual narcissism (Study 2), and accept rape myths (Study 3). These findings support the notion that failures to uphold normative and socially valued embodiments of masculinity are associated with behavioral intentions and attitudes associated with sexual violence. The implications of these findings for the endurance of sexual violence are discussed.
From Hashtag to Hate Crime: Twitter and Antiminority Sentiment
Karsten Müller & Carlo Schwarz
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2023, Pages 270-312
Abstract:
We study whether social media can amplify antiminority sentiment with a focus on Donald Trump's political rise. Using an instrumental variable strategy based on Twitter's early adopters at the South by Southwest festival in 2007, we find that higher Twitter use in a county is associated with a sizeable increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes after the 2016 presidential primaries. Trump's tweets about Muslims predict increases in xenophobic tweets by his followers, cable news mentions of Muslims, and hate crimes on the following days. These results suggest that social media content can affect real-life outcomes.
Trait Impressions From Voices Are Formed Rapidly Within 400 ms of Exposure
Mila Mileva & Nadine Lavan
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, June 2023, Pages 1539–1550
Abstract:
When seeing a face or hearing a voice, perceivers readily form first impressions of a person's characteristics—are they trustworthy, do they seem aggressive? One of the key claims about trait impressions from faces and voices alike is that these impressions are formed rapidly. For faces, studies have systematically mapped this rapid time course of trait impressions, finding that they are well formed and stable after approximately 100 ms of exposure. For voices, however, no systematic investigation of the time course of trait perception exists. In the current study, listeners provided trait judgments (attractiveness, dominance, trustworthiness) based on recordings of 100 voices that lasted either 50, 100, 200, 400, or 800 ms. Based on measures of intra- and interrater agreement as well as correlations of mean ratings for different exposure conditions, we find that trait perception from voices is indeed rapid. Unlike faces, however, trait impressions from voices require longer exposure to develop and stabilize although they are still formed by 400 ms. Furthermore, differences in the time course of trait perception from voices emerge across traits and voice gender: The formation of impressions of attractiveness and dominance required less exposure when based on male voices, whereas impressions of trustworthiness evolved over a more gradual time course for male and female voices alike. These findings not only provide the first estimate of the time course of the formation of voice trait impressions, but they also have implications for voice perception models where voices are regarded as “auditory faces.”
Masculinity and Femininity by Racial Identification: Racialized Differences in Responses to Self-Rated Gender Scales for Cisgender Men and Women
Christina Pao
Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, July 2023
Abstract:
Gradational gender scales, which ask respondents to rate their masculinity and femininity, have become increasingly popular on social surveys. Nonetheless, there is little descriptive work to show differences in response to gradational gender scales by other socially relevant identities, such as race and ethnicity. This data visualization uses original survey data (N = 2,483) to display the means and 95 percent confidence intervals of responses to self-rated masculinity and femininity for cisgender men and women. Across all racial groups, there are high levels of masculinity and femininity for the “sex-typical” scales (e.g., femininity for women) and lower levels for the “sex-atypical” scales (e.g., masculinity for women). Nonetheless, there are significant differences between racial groups that align with intersectional theories of gendered racialization (e.g., higher self-rated masculinity for Black women and higher self-rated femininity for Asian men than their White counterparts). The findings encourage further subgroup analysis with gradational gender scales in the future.
Variability across time in implicit weight-related bias: Random noise or meaningful fluctuations?
Amanda Ravary, Jennifer Bartz & Mark Baldwin
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Social psychologists have struggled with the vexing problem of variability over time in implicit bias. While many treat such variability as unexplainable error, we posit that some temporal variability, whether within persons or across society at large, reflects meaningful and predictable fluctuation based on shifts in the social–cultural context. We first examined fluctuations at the group-level in a Project Implicit data set of female participants who completed the Weight Implicit Association Test between 2004 and 2018 (N = 259,613). Extending our prior work showing that mass media celebrity fat-shaming increased women’s implicit antifat bias, we show that celebrity body positivity events reduced such bias (Study 1a). We then focused on a specific form of body positivity -- that is, celebrity “push-back” in response to fat-shaming. Whereas fat-shaming without antibias push-back was associated with spikes in negative weight attitudes, fat-shaming with push-back showed no change in such bias (Study 1b). Critically, however, closer analysis revealed that this apparent stability was due to the canceling out of opposing negative (fat-shaming) and subsequent positive (body positivity) influences -- an effect that was obscured when the window of observation was expanded. Finally, in Study 2, we examined parallel effects at the individual level in a daily diary study. Consistent with the group-level, between-subjects data, women’s intraindividual fluctuations in implicit attitudes were reliably predicted based on prior-day exposure to fat-shaming and/or body positivity influences. Taken together, our work highlights how both group- and individual-level variability across time can be meaningfully explained rather than treated as unexplainable or left as unexplained.
The invisible man: A replication study investigating whether interpersonal goals moderate White women’s inattentional blindness to African American men
Jazmin Brown-Iannuzzi et al.
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, forthcoming
Abstract:
Anti-Black racism in America renders Black people both invisible and hypervisible, at times. Here, we draw on previous research on inattentional blindness, a phenomenon whereby people fail to perceive something or someone (e.g., a person walking about) in their environment when attending to another feature of their environment (e.g., other people playing a ball game). We sought to replicate past work examining the conditions under which heterosexual White women fail to perceive a Black man walking through a complex scene. Specifically, we investigated whether selective inattention to a task-irrelevant person walking through a scene of two teams passing basketballs may depend on two factors: (a) the race of the person walking through the scene (Black vs. White), and (b) the interpersonal goal of the viewer (searching for a coworker, neighbor, friend, romantic partner, or a control condition) -- hence the reason we recruited heterosexual White women participants. Consistent with the original work, across three studies, we found a main effect of target race such that heterosexual White women participants were more likely to notice the White (vs. Black) man walking through the ball-passing scene. Inconsistent with the original work, we did not find that this effect was moderated by the interpersonal goal condition. We discuss the implications of the current findings and future directions.
Music and sports as catalysts for intergroup harmony: What is more effective, and why?
Hyeonchang Gim & Jake Harwood
Journal of Media Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Mediated intergroup contact positively influences attitudes toward social out-groups; here, we explored whether different intergroup contact activities might influence attitudes via different mechanisms. We investigated whether mediated musical or sports contact improves intergroup attitudes through theoretically derived mediators (interpersonal synchronization, empathy, and humanization). This was accomplished by exposing US respondents to videos featuring Chinese singers or table tennis players. We found support for mediated effects of intergroup musical exposure on prejudice through the mediator humanization. We also examined whether seeing in-group (vs. out-group) members enjoying the out-group performance in the video (a “reaction video”) would improve attitudes via norms-related processes. Sharing the viewing experience with an in-group character enables identification with that in-group character, which facilitates modeling of positive intergroup relations. We found that seeing an in-group member enjoying an out-group performance reduced prejudice via norms, but only when people viewed the sports performance. Results are discussed in terms of the prejudice-reducing potential of exposure to media featuring music and sports.
How Disability Stereotypes Shape Memory for Personal Attributes
Tobias Tempel & Simon Baur
Experimental Psychology, June 2023, Pages 61–67
Abstract:
Two experiments examined effects of including an information about a disability in a person description on memory about that person’s traits. In Experiment 1, this information impaired correct recognition of traits of a person that had been described in correspondence to gender stereotypes. In Experiment 2, it induced false memories in accordance with stereotypes about people with disabilities. Participants’ false alarms for traits belonging to the dimension of warmth increased, whereas false alarms for traits belonging to the dimension of competence decreased. Thus, activating stereotypes through a disability prime influenced what could be recognized correctly or falsely was assumed to be recognized about a person.
The face of getting over: Facial formidability informs expectations for the performance of male professional wrestlers
Mitch Brown
Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
The simulated nature of professional wrestling requires promoters to identify performers whose appearance implicates them as capable of winning fights. This appearance may track ancestrally relevant morphological features from which perceivers accurately infer men’s formidability. One feature diagnostic of men’s formidability is their facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR), which connotes actual fighting ability and aggression. This study considered how fWHR informs how professional wrestling fans evaluate the effectiveness of men in their performance. Participants evaluated the extent to which men appeared effective at utilizing various performance styles and how likely they would be to promote these men to the top positions in a company. High-fWHR men appeared most effective as brawlers and powerhouses but less effective in more technical performances compared to low-fWHR men. Formidability additionally tracked an interest in pushing them as top performers. These results indicate how functional formidability inferences inform modern decision-making in simulated combat based on expectations of physical prowess.