Identification
Who Polices Which Boundaries? How Racial Self-Identification Affects External Classification
Maria Abascal et al.
American Journal of Sociology, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study explores whether Americans agree on the ethnoracial categories that are worth policing. It evaluates how receptive White, Black, Latino, and Asian Americans are to how others self-identify by race/ethnicity. Insights from Bourdieu on classification struggles combined with status characteristics theory and gender research suggest that all Americans will police the higher-status White category more than other ethnoracial categories. Other possibilities include White exceptionalism -- only White Americans police the White category most -- and ingroup overexclusion -- everyone polices their own category most. In a conjoint experiment with two samples we find White, Black, Latino and Asian Americans all police the White category most diligently, i.e., they are less responsive when someone identifies as White than when they identify as Latino, Asian, Middle Eastern or North African, or, in most cases, Black. Our results reveal a consensus across Americans on a racial classification schema that reinscribes the contemporary racial hierarchy.
Greater Bias Toward Transgender People Compared to Gay Men and Lesbian Women Is WEIRD
Jaime Napier
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
The greater acceptance of gay, compared with transgender, people in Western countries may be a result of a specific trajectory — where queer rights was centered by and around White, middle class, gender-conforming gay men — and may not generalize to other places. Two surveys of respondents in 23 countries (Ns∼ = 500 or 1,000 per country) showed that bias toward gay and transgender people is lower in Western (vs. non-Western) countries, but that the relative bias changes as a function of region: there is greater acceptance of gay (vs. transgender) people in most Western countries, whereas the reverse is true in most non-Western countries. Analyses of legal frameworks (N = 193) show that recognition of same-gender unions is prevalent in Western countries but virtually nonexistent elsewhere, whereas recognition of gender marker changes is prevalent throughout the world. Overall, in the most intolerant places, transgender people are relatively more accepted than gay people.
Americanness Hierarchies: Partisanship and Perceptions of Racial Group Positions Purchased
Victoria Asbury-Kimmel
Public Opinion Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study offers novel empirical insight and theoretical interventions regarding how Whites, Blacks, Latinos, and Asians are perceived in terms of “Americanness” among a nationally representative sample of White adults in the United States. The findings reveal that perceptions of racial groups’ Americanness differ significantly by political identification. Republicans and Independents typically regard Whites as the most American, but their opinions vary on other racial groups. Contrary to prior research, Republicans perceive Asians as more American than Latinos and Blacks, treating the latter two groups as essentially equal in terms of Americanness. In contrast, Democrats consider Blacks the most American, clearly differentiating them from other racial minorities. This research illuminates the subjective and politicized dimensions of status within the American national community and challenges existing theories on the hierarchical positioning of racial groups.
Comparing Brief Antiracism Messages: Empathy-Focused Communication Is More Effective Than Social Norms, Calls to Action, and Self-Awareness
Lisa Legault et al.
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Brief messages have the flexibility to reach the public quickly and the potential to ignite social change. We use recent advances in antiracist messaging to create and compare four messages that differ in their focus of intervention. Two experiments randomly exposed participants to messages emphasizing either (a) awareness of personal race bias; (b) empathy for targets of racism; (c) the need for racial justice, or (d) social norms about the unacceptability of racism. Participants exposed to the empathy for targets message reported significantly more allophilia, egalitarianism, and awareness of racism (Study 1; N = 658), as well as more antiracism (Study 2; N = 813) than those exposed to the other messages. Moderation tests showed that the effectiveness of empathy-focused messaging did not depend on trait empathy or trait motivation. This work underscores the effectiveness of encouraging empathy for targets when promoting antiracism.
Gender Essentialism Leads to Biased Learning Opportunities That Shape Women’s Career Interests
Audrey Aday, Holly Engstrom & Toni Schmader
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Gender differences in occupational interests are often assumed to reflect sex differences in empathizing or systemizing preferences. Do such essentialized explanations lead people to provide gender-biased learning affordances that constrain women’s career interests? In Study 1 (N = 292), North American STEM professionals endorsing a biologically essentialized (vs. sociocultural) explanation for gender differences in occupational interests provided women (men) with more empathizing (systemizing) learning affordances in a mock management task. Study 2 replicated these gendered affordances by experimentally manipulating essentialized explanations (N = 379; participants were North American men with management experience in male-dominated fields). In Study 3, North American undergraduate women (N = 300) who received gendered learning affordances reported greater interest in, and possible alignment with, empathizing work assignments, whereas those who received countergendered affordances reported greater interest in, and possible alignment with, systemizing assignments. These results reveal that gender-essentialist beliefs can foster self-fulfilling gender gaps in occupational interests.
Tabula rasa agents display emergent in-group behavior
Raphael Köster et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 24 June 2025
Abstract:
Theories on group-bias often posit an internal preparedness to bias one’s cognition to favor the in-group (often envisioned as a product of evolution). In contrast, other theories suggest that group-biases can emerge from nonspecialized cognitive processes. These perspectives have historically been difficult to disambiguate given that observed behavior can often be attributed to innate processes, even when groups are experimentally assigned. Here, we use modern techniques from the field of AI that allow us to ask what group biases can be expected from a learning agent that is a pure blank slate without any intrinsic social biases, and whose lifetime of experiences can be tightly controlled. This is possible because deep reinforcement-learning agents learn to convert raw sensory input (i.e. pixels) to reward-driven action, a unique feature among cognitive models. We find that blank slate agents do develop group biases based on arbitrary group differences (i.e. color). We show that the bias develops as a result of familiarity of experience and depends on the visual patterns becoming associated with reward through interaction. The bias artificial agents display is not a static reflection of the bias in their stream of experiences. In this minimal environment, the bias can be overcome given enough positive experiences, although unlearning the bias takes longer than acquiring it. Further, we show how this style of tabula rasa group behavior model can be used to test fine-grained predictions of psychological theories.
The Comparative Status Hypothesis: Inferences About Discrimination Vary Based on Identity Salience
Elizabeth Quinn-Jensen et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Past research examining when people label an outcome as discrimination has largely ignored contextual factors beyond the victim–perpetrator dyad. We contend that the person who benefits from the outcome -- referred to here as competitor -- also influences how likely someone is to be labeled a victim of discrimination. Specifically, we argue that because people hold multiple social identities, which vary in their perceived status, the identity of a target’s competitor can change how likely the same target is to be seen as a victim. In three studies, we show that White U.S. adults were more likely to infer that a target had faced discrimination when the target’s competitor highlighted a lower status aspect of the target’s identity. This pattern was seen for targets from multiple backgrounds, including Asian men, White women, and Asian women. These results highlight the importance of moving beyond the victim-perpetrator dyad when considering whether an outcome is seen as discrimination.
Favouritism, social pressure, and gender
Finn Spilker et al.
Oxford Economic Papers, July 2025, Pages 754-770
Abstract:
We analyse gender differences in response to social pressure. Our setting provides information on decision-making by both female and male referees towards rewarding extra time in football. The exact score at the time of the decision allows us to evaluate how much it favours the home team and, hence, pleases the audience. Controlling for in-game information that affects the length of extra time per game rules, we find that (especially young) female referees are more susceptible to social pressure and reward less extra time when the home team needs the game to end to secure a win. To confirm that social pressure from the audience drives our findings, we demonstrate that female referees tend to favour home teams more in games with high attendance.