Judging by its cover
Shannon Callahan & Alison Ledgerwood
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, April 2016, Pages 528-550
Abstract:
Group identity symbols such as flags and logos have been widely used across time and cultures, yet researchers know very little about the psychological functions that such symbols can serve. The present research tested the hypotheses that (a) simply having a symbol leads collections of individuals to seem more like real, unified groups, (b) this increased psychological realness leads groups to seem more threatening and effective to others, and (c) group members therefore strategically emphasize symbols when they want their group to appear unified and intimidating. In Studies 1a–1c, participants perceived various task groups as more entitative when they happened to have a symbol. In Study 2, symbols not only helped groups make up for lacking a physical characteristic associated with entitativity (physical similarity), but also led groups to seem more threatening. Study 3 examined the processes underlying this effect and found that group symbols increase entitativity by increasing perceived cohesiveness. Study 4 extended our results to show that symbols not only shape the impressions people form of novel groups, but also change people’s existing impressions of more familiar and real-world social groups, making them seem more entitative and competent but also less warm. Finally, Studies 5a and 5b further expand our understanding of the psychological function of symbols by showing that group members strategically display symbols when they are motivated to convey an impression of their group as unified and threatening (vs. inclusive and cooperative). We discuss implications for understanding how group members navigate their social identities.
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Threats to Racial Status Promote Tea Party Support Among White Americans
Robb Willer, Matthew Feinberg & Rachel Wetts
Stanford Working Paper, May 2016
Abstract:
Since its rapid rise in early 2009, scholars have advanced a variety of explanations for popular support for the Tea Party movement. Here we argue that various political, economic, and demographic trends and events – e.g., the election of the first nonwhite president, the rising minority population – have been perceived as threatening the relative standing of whites in the U.S., with the resulting racial resentment fueling popular support for the movement. This “decline of whiteness” explanation for white Americans’ Tea Party support differs from prior accounts in highlighting the role of symbolic group status rather than personal experience, or economic competition, with minority group members in generating perceptions of threat. We tested this explanation in five survey-based experiments. In Study 1 we sought to make salient the president’s African-American heritage by presenting participants with an artificially darkened picture of Barack Obama. White participants shown the darkened photo were more likely to report they supported the Tea Party relative to a control condition. Presenting participants with information that the white population share (Study 2) or income advantage (Study 3) is declining also led whites to report greater Tea Party support, effects that were partly explained by heightened levels of racial resentment. A fourth study replicated the effects of Study 2 in a sample of Tea Party supporters. Finally, Study 5 showed that threatened white respondents reported stronger support for the Tea Party when racialized aspects of its platform (e.g., opposition to immigration) were highlighted, than if libertarian ones (e.g., reduced government spending) were. These findings are consistent with a view of popular support for the Tea Party as resulting, in part, from threats to the status of whites in America.
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Prejudice Masquerading as Praise: The Negative Echo of Positive Stereotypes
John Oliver Siy & Sapna Cheryan
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, July 2016, Pages 941-954
Abstract:
Five studies demonstrate the powerful connection between being the target of a positive stereotype and expecting that one is also being ascribed negative stereotypes. In Study 1, women who heard a man state a positive stereotype were more likely to believe that he held negative stereotypes of them than women who heard no stereotype. Beliefs about being negatively stereotyped mediated the relationship between hearing a positive stereotype and believing that the stereotyper was prejudiced. Studies 2 to 4 extended these results to Asian Americans and accounted for alternative explanations (e.g., categorization threat). In Study 5, the same positive stereotype (e.g., good at math) was directed to Asian American men’s racial or gender identity. Their perceptions about whether negative racial or gender stereotypes were being applied to them depended on the identity referenced by the positive stereotype. Positive stereotypes signal a latent negativity about one’s group, thereby explaining why they can feel like prejudice.
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Sarah Gervais et al.
Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
Sexual objectification is a significant problem that permeates all areas of women's lives including the workplace. This research examines the impact of sexual objectification on women in work settings by integrating objectification, sexual harassment, and affective forecasting theories. We used a laboratory analogue that included undergraduate women who actually experienced objectification during a work interview (i.e., experiencers) and third-party predictors (including female and male undergraduates as well as female and male community workers) who anticipated the effects of objectification (i.e., predictors). We measured actual and anticipated emotions, performance, and sexual harassment following objectification. We found that both mild and severe objectification caused weaker positive affect, stronger negative affect, worse work performance, and higher sexual harassment judgments, but these effects were primarily driven by predictors anticipating worse outcomes following objectification compared to what experiencers actually reported. We also found that experiencers’ responses to objectification were moderated by benevolent sexism with women lower in benevolent sexism responding more similarly to predictors relative to women higher in benevolent sexism. Both experiencers and predictors evaluated interviewers who engaged in objectification equally negatively. Finally, we explored differences between predictors who were female and male undergraduate students versus community workers and found that these parties anticipated different consequences, depending on worker status and gender. Implications for sexual objectification, sexual harassment, and affective forecasting theories as well as practical implications for policy and law are discussed.
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Is President Obama’s Race Chronically Accessible? Racial Priming in the 2012 Presidential Election
Matthew Luttig & Timothy Callaghan
Political Communication, forthcoming
Abstract:
A vast literature indicates that racial animosity has a pervasive influence on the public’s evaluations of U.S. President Barack Obama. Can political communications enhance and/or defuse the link between White Americans’ racial attitudes and evaluations of Barack Obama? In this article, we report the results of an experiment conducted in the midst of the 2012 presidential campaign which examines the effect of political rhetoric on the extent to which evaluations of Barack Obama are racialized. Drawing from research on attitude strength and pretreatment effects in experimental studies, we argue that the use of racial appeals in the pretreatment environment and the strength of citizens’ preexisting attitudes toward the incumbent president may produce a downward bias in average estimates of racial priming effects toward President Obama. After accounting for individual differences in the propensity to form strong attitudes with need to evaluate, we observe substantial effects of campaign rhetoric in priming racial attitudes toward President Obama, especially among individuals who are low in the need to evaluate and who tend to have more malleable political attitudes. We conclude by discussing implications for research on racial priming and the politics of racial intolerance in evaluations of Barack Obama.
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Gender-Role Portrayals in Television Advertising Across the Globe
Jörg Matthes, Michael Prieler & Karoline Adam
Sex Roles, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although there are numerous studies on gender-role portrayals in television advertising, comparative designs are clearly lacking. With content analytical data from a total of 13 Asian, American, and European countries, we study the stereotypical depiction of men and women in television advertisements. Our sample consists of 1755 ads collected in May 2014. Analyzing the gender of the primary character and voiceover, as well as the age, associated product categories, home- or work setting, and the working role of the primary character, we concluded that gender stereotypes in TV advertising can be found around the world. A multilevel model further showed that gender stereotypes were independent of a country’s gender indices, including Hofstede’s Masculinity Index, GLOBE’s Gender Egalitarianism Index, the Gender-related Development Index, the Gender Inequality Index, and the Global Gender Gap Index. These findings suggest that gender stereotyping in television advertising does not depend on the gender equality prevalent in a country. The role of a specific culture in shaping gender stereotypes in television advertising is thus smaller than commonly thought.
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Just say no! (and mean it): Meaningful negation as a tool to modify automatic racial attitudes
India Johnson, Brandon Kopp & Richard Petty
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, forthcoming
Abstract:
The present research compared the effectiveness of meaningful negation — “That’s wrong” — and simple negation — “No” — to alter automatic prejudice. Participants were trained to negate prejudice-consistent or prejudice-inconsistent information, using either simple or meaningful negation, and completed an evaluative priming measure of racial prejudice before and after training. No significant changes in automatic prejudice in the simple negation conditions emerged. In contrast, those trained to negate prejudice-consistent information in a more meaningful way showed a significant decrease in automatic prejudice, whereas those trained to negate prejudice-inconsistent information meaningfully showed a significant increase. Study 2 revealed that these effects were driven by participants high in their motivation to control prejudiced reactions (MCPR), as they demonstrated the greatest changes in automatic prejudice following training. Contrary to research suggesting negation training is an ineffective means to reduce automatic racial prejudice, the present research suggests negation can be effective when the negation is meaningful.
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Can White Children Grow Up to Be Black? Children’s Reasoning About the Stability of Emotion and Race
Steven Roberts & Susan Gelman
Developmental Psychology, June 2016, Pages 887-893
Abstract:
Recent research questions whether children conceptualize race as stable. We examined participants’ beliefs about the relative stability of race and emotion, a temporary feature. Participants were White adults and children ages 5–6 and 9–10 (Study 1) and racial minority children ages 5–6 (Study 2). Participants were presented with target children who were happy or angry and Black or White and were asked to indicate which of 2 adults (a race but not emotion match or an emotion but not race match) each child would grow up to be. White adults, White 9- to 10-year-olds, and racial minority 5- to 6-year-olds selected race matches, whereas White 5- to 6-year-olds selected race and emotion matches equally. These data suggest that beliefs about racial stability vary by age and social group.
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Danielle Young, Diana Sanchez & Leigh Wilton
Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, forthcoming
Objectives: This study investigates how racial identity and phenotypicality (i.e., racial ambiguity) shape the perception of biracial individuals in both White and Black perceivers. We investigated complex racial categorization and its downstream consequences, such as perceptions of discrimination.
Method: We manipulated racial phenotypicality (Black or racially ambiguous) and racial identity (Black or biracial) to test these cues’ influence on Black and White race categorizations in a sample of both White (n = 145) and Black (n = 152) identified individuals.
Results: Though racial identity and phenotypicality information influenced deliberate racial categorization, White and Black participants used the cues in different ways. For White perceivers, racial identity and phenotypicality additively influenced Black categorization. For Black perceivers, however, racial identity was only used in Black categorization when racial ambiguity was high. Perceived discrimination was related to White (but not Black) perceivers’ distribution of minority resources to targets, however Black categorization related to perceived discrimination for Black perceivers only.
Conclusion: By demonstrating how Black and White individuals use identity and phenotype information in race perceptions, we provide a more complete view of the complexities of racial categorization and its downstream consequences.
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The base rate principle and the fairness principle in social judgment
Jack Cao & Mahzarin Banaji
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Meet Jonathan and Elizabeth. One person is a doctor and the other is a nurse. Who is the doctor? When nothing else is known, the base rate principle favors Jonathan to be the doctor and the fairness principle favors both individuals equally. However, when individuating facts reveal who is actually the doctor, base rates and fairness become irrelevant, as the facts make the correct answer clear. In three experiments, explicit and implicit beliefs were measured before and after individuating facts were learned. These facts were either stereotypic (e.g., Jonathan is the doctor, Elizabeth is the nurse) or counterstereotypic (e.g., Elizabeth is the doctor, Jonathan is the nurse). Results showed that before individuating facts were learned, explicit beliefs followed the fairness principle, whereas implicit beliefs followed the base rate principle. After individuating facts were learned, explicit beliefs correctly aligned with stereotypic and counterstereotypic facts. Implicit beliefs, however, were immune to counterstereotypic facts and continued to follow the base rate principle. Having established the robustness and generality of these results, a fourth experiment verified that gender stereotypes played a causal role: when both individuals were male, explicit and implicit beliefs alike correctly converged with individuating facts. Taken together, these experiments demonstrate that explicit beliefs uphold fairness and incorporate obvious and relevant facts, but implicit beliefs uphold base rates and appear relatively impervious to counterstereotypic facts.
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Neural pattern similarity reveals the inherent intersection of social categories
Ryan Stolier & Jonathan Freeman
Nature Neuroscience, June 2016, Pages 795–797
Abstract:
We provide evidence that neural representations of ostensibly unrelated social categories become bound together by their overlapping stereotype associations. While viewing faces, multi-voxel representations of gender, race, and emotion categories in the fusiform and orbitofrontal cortices were stereotypically biased and correlated with subjective perceptions. The findings suggest that social-conceptual knowledge can systematically alter the representational structure of social categories at multiple levels of cortical processing, reflecting bias in visual perceptions.
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Jessica Cameron et al.
Self and Identity, September/October 2016, pages 561-578
Abstract:
People use impressions of an evaluative target’s self-esteem to infer their possession of socially desirable traits. But will people still use this self-esteem proxy when trait-relevant diagnostic information is available? We test this possibility in two experiments: participants learn that a target person has low or high self-esteem, and then receive diagnostic information about the target’s academic success or failure and positive or negative affectivity (Study 1), or watch a video of the target’s extraverted or introverted behavior (Study 2). In both experiments, participants’ impressions of the target’s traits accurately tracked diagnostic information, but impressions also revealed an independent self-esteem proxy effect. Evidently, the self-esteem proxy is robust and influences person perception even in the presence of vivid individuating information.
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Rony Berger et al.
Journal of School Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The current investigation tested the efficacy of the Extended Class Exchange Program (ECEP) in reducing prejudicial attitudes. Three hundred and twenty-two 3rd and 4th grade students from both Israeli–Jewish and Israeli–Palestinian schools in the ethnically mixed city of Jaffa were randomly assigned to either intervention or control classes. Members of the intervention classes engaged in ECEP's activities, whereas members of the control classes engaged in a social–emotional learning program. The program's outcomes were measured a week before, immediately after, and 15 months following termination. Results showed that the ECEP decreased stereotyping and discriminatory tendencies toward the other group and increased positive feelings and readiness for social contact with the other group upon program termination. Additionally, the effects of the ECEP were generalized to an ethnic group (i.e., Ethiopians) with whom the ECEP's participants did not have any contact. Finally, the ECEP retained its significant effect 15 months after the program's termination, despite the serious clashes between Israel and the Palestinians that occurred during that time. This empirical support for the ECEP'S utility in reducing prejudice makes it potentially applicable to other areas in the world, especially those that are characterized by ethnic tension and violent conflicts.
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Beware of “reducing prejudice”: Imagined contact may backfire if applied with a prevention focus
Keon West & Katy Greenland
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Imagined intergroup contact — the mental simulation of a (positive) interaction with a member of another group — is a recently developed, low-risk, prejudice-reducing intervention. However, regulatory focus can moderate of the effects of prejudice-reducing interventions: a prevention focus (as opposed to a promotion focus) can lead to more negative outcomes. In two experiments we found that a prevention focus altered imagined contact's effects, causing the intervention to backfire. In Experiment 1, participants who reported a strong prevention-focus during imagined contact subsequently reported higher intergroup anxiety and (indirectly) less positive attitudes toward Asians. We found similar moderating effects in Experiment 2, using a different outgroup (gay men) and a subtle regulatory focus manipulation. Theoretical and practical implications for imagined contact are discussed.
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Evaluations of Michelle Obama as First Lady: The Role of Racial Resentment
Jonathan Knuckey & Myunghee Kim
Presidential Studies Quarterly, June 2016, Pages 365–386
Abstract:
The election of Barack Obama in 2008 was initially viewed as signaling a postracial era in American politics. However, since 2008, race and racial attitudes have appeared to pervade American political discourse and shape political attitudes and behavior to an even greater extent. Using data from the American National Election Studies, this article examines the extent to which white racial attitudes have shaped evaluations of perhaps the most visible African American in politics today after the president: the First Lady, Michelle Obama. Findings show that racial resentment played a large role in evaluations of Michelle Obama, even after controlling for other explanatory variables, which include partisanship, ideology, and affect toward Barack Obama.
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“Yuck, You Disgust Me!” Affective Bias Against Interracial Couples
Allison Skinner & Caitlin Hudac
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The current research expands upon the sparse existing literature on the nature of bias against interracial couples. Study 1 demonstrates that bias against interracial romance is correlated with disgust. Study 2 provides evidence that images of interracial couples evoke a neural disgust response among observers – as indicated by increased insula activation relative to images of same-race couples. Consistent with psychological theory indicating that disgust leads to dehumanization, Study 3 demonstrates that manipulating disgust leads to implicit dehumanization of interracial couples. Overall, the current findings provide evidence that interracial couples elicit disgust and are dehumanized relative to same-race couples. These findings are particularly concerning, given evidence of antisocial reactions (e.g., aggression, perpetration of violence) to dehumanized targets. Findings also highlight the role of meaningful social units (e.g., couples) in person perception, an important consideration for psychologists conducting social cognition research.
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Mingnan Liu
Asian American Journal of Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study explores how the perceived race of the interviewer in a telephone survey influences responses to race-related questions in a sample of Asian Americans, using the 2008 National Asian American Survey. Among the 14 questions examined, 5 showed significant effects of the interviewer’s perceived race in regression analysis after controlling for respondents’ demographic characteristics. When respondents perceived the interviewers as Asian American, they were more likely to show a preference for an Asian American candidate in an election and to respond that Asians shared political interests. In contrast, when respondents perceived the interviewers as non-Asian, they were more likely to admit that they had experienced discrimination. In addition, when respondents perceived the interviewers as African American, they were more likely to report that Asian Americans had things in common with African Americans. This article concludes by discussing the implications of this study and future research directions.