Just my type
Economic scarcity alters the perception of race
Amy Krosch & David Amodio
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 24 June 2014, Pages 9079–9084
Abstract:
When the economy declines, racial minorities are hit the hardest. Although existing explanations for this effect focus on institutional causes, recent psychological findings suggest that scarcity may also alter perceptions of race in ways that exacerbate discrimination. We tested the hypothesis that economic resource scarcity causes decision makers to perceive African Americans as “Blacker” and that this visual distortion elicits disparities in the allocation of resources. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that scarcity altered perceptions of race, lowering subjects’ psychophysical threshold for seeing a mixed-race face as “Black” as opposed to “White.” In studies 3 and 4, scarcity led subjects to visualize African American faces as darker and more “stereotypically Black,” compared with a control condition. When presented to naïve subjects, face representations produced under scarcity elicited smaller allocations than control-condition representations. Together, these findings introduce a novel perceptual account for the proliferation of racial disparities under economic scarcity.
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Female hurricanes are deadlier than male hurricanes
Kiju Jung et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 17 June 2014, Pages 8782–8787
Abstract:
Do people judge hurricane risks in the context of gender-based expectations? We use more than six decades of death rates from US hurricanes to show that feminine-named hurricanes cause significantly more deaths than do masculine-named hurricanes. Laboratory experiments indicate that this is because hurricane names lead to gender-based expectations about severity and this, in turn, guides respondents’ preparedness to take protective action. This finding indicates an unfortunate and unintended consequence of the gendered naming of hurricanes, with important implications for policymakers, media practitioners, and the general public concerning hurricane communication and preparedness.
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Polyculturalism and Sexist Attitudes: Believing Cultures are Dynamic Relates to Lower Sexism
Lisa Rosenthal, Sheri Levy & Maria Militano
Psychology of Women Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
In cultural contexts in which sexist beliefs are considered traditional, shifts toward gender equality represent an example of cultural change. Polyculturalism is defined as the belief that cultures change constantly through different racial and ethnic groups’ interactions, influences, and exchanges with each other and, therefore, are dynamic and socially constructed rather than static. Thus, polyculturalism may involve openness to cultural change and, thereby, would be expected to be associated with lower sexist attitudes. Four studies (both cross-sectional and longitudinal) with undergraduate and community samples in the Northeastern United States tested whether endorsement of polyculturalism is inversely associated with sexism, above and beyond potentially confounding belief systems. Across studies, for both women and men, endorsement of polyculturalism was associated with lower sexist attitudes for two classes of sexism measures: (a) attitudes toward the rights and roles of women and (b) ambivalent sexist attitudes toward women. Associations remained significant while controlling for potentially confounding variables (colorblindness, conservatism, egalitarianism, gender and ethnic identity, gender and race essentialism, multiculturalism, right-wing authoritarianism, and social dominance orientation). Greater openness to criticizing one’s culture mediated polyculturalism’s association with attitudes toward the rights and roles of women but not with ambivalent sexist attitudes toward women. Studying polyculturalism may provide unique insights into sexism, and more work is needed to understand the mechanisms involved.
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An eye for the I: Preferential attention to the eyes of ingroup members
Kerry Kawakami et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, July 2014, Pages 1-20
Abstract:
Human faces, and more specifically the eyes, play a crucial role in social and nonverbal communication because they signal valuable information about others. It is therefore surprising that few studies have investigated the impact of intergroup contexts and motivations on attention to the eyes of ingroup and outgroup members. Four experiments investigated differences in eye gaze to racial and novel ingroups using eye tracker technology. Whereas Studies 1 and 3 demonstrated that White participants attended more to the eyes of White compared to Black targets, Study 2 showed a similar pattern of attention to the eyes of novel ingroup and outgroup faces. Studies 3 and 4 also provided new evidence that eye gaze is flexible and can be meaningfully influenced by current motivations. Specifically, instructions to individuate specific social categories increased attention to the eyes of target group members. Furthermore, the latter experiments demonstrated that preferential attention to the eyes of ingroup members predicted important intergroup biases such as recognition of ingroup over outgroup faces (i.e., the own-race bias; Study 3) and willingness to interact with outgroup members (Study 4). The implication of these findings for general theorizing on face perception, individuation processes, and intergroup relations are discussed.
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On the Flexibility of Attention to Race
Joshua Correll, Steffanie Guillermo & Julia Vogt
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, November 2014, Pages 74–79
Abstract:
Research on the flexibility of race-based processing offers divergent results. Some studies find that race affects processing in an obligatory fashion. Other studies suggest dramatic flexibility. The current study attempts to clarify this divergence by examining a process that may mediate flexibility in race-based processing: the engagement of visual attention. In this study, White participants completed an exogenous cuing task designed to measure attention to White and Black faces. Participants in the control condition showed a pronounced bias to attend to Black faces. Critically, participants in a goal condition were asked to process a feature of the stimulus that was unrelated to race. The induction of this goal eliminated differential attention to Black faces, suggesting that attentional engagement responds flexibly to top-down goals, rather than obligatorily to bottom-up racial cues.
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“Not One of Us”: Predictors and Consequences of Denying Ingroup Characteristics to Ambiguous Targets
Nour Kteily et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
We investigated individual difference predictors of ascribing ingroup characteristics to negative and positive ambiguous targets. Studies 1 and 2 investigated events involving negative targets whose status as racial (Tsarnaev brothers) or national (Woolwich attackers) ingroup members remained ambiguous. Immediately following the attacks, we presented White Americans and British individuals with the suspects’ images. Those higher in social dominance orientation (SDO) and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) — concerned with enforcing status boundaries and adherence to ingroup norms, respectively — perceived these low status and low conformity suspects as looking less White and less British, thus denying them ingroup characteristics. Perceiving suspects in more exclusionary terms increased support for treating them harshly, and for militaristic counter-terrorism policies prioritizing ingroup safety over outgroup harm. Studies 3 and 4 experimentally manipulated a racially ambiguous target’s status and conformity. Results suggested that target status and conformity critically influence SDO’s (status) and RWA’s (conformity) effects on inclusionary versus exclusionary perceptions.
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The role of stereotypical beliefs in gender-based activation of the Proteus effect
Brett Sherrick, Jennifer Hoewe & Franklin Waddell
Computers in Human Behavior, September 2014, Pages 17–24
Abstract:
Informed by the Proteus effect, the current study examined the moderating effect of belief in stereotypes on the relationship between avatar appearance and user behavior, via an interactive fiction. The results of a one-factor (avatar gender: male vs. female), between-subjects experiment revealed that female avatars elicited more frequent masculine behaviors (particularly among individuals high in feminine gender stereotypes) and that male avatars elicited more frequent feminine behaviors. Conversely, self-reported gender led to stereotypic behaviors as expected. A moderating effect of awareness of the avatar’s influence on stereotypically gender-based decisions on frequency of gender-typed behavior was not found, suggesting individuals are not aware of the influence of avatars on their subsequent decisions.
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Do Intergroup Conflicts Necessarily Result from Outgroup Hate?
Michael Mäs & Jacob Dijkstra
PLoS ONE, June 2014
Abstract:
We developed a new experimental design to test whether or not individuals engage in conflict between social groups because they seek to harm outgroup members. Challenging prominent social psychological theories, we did not find support for such negative social preferences. Nevertheless, subjects heavily engaged in group conflict. Results support the argument that processes that act within social groups motivate engagement in conflict between groups even in the absence of negative social preferences. In particular, we found that “cheap talk” communication between group members fuels conflict. Analyses did not support the notion that the effect of communication results from guilt-aversion processes.
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Heart Rate and Affective Reactions to State Self-Objectification as a Function of Gender
Melinda Green et al.
Basic and Applied Social Psychology, May/June 2014, Pages 259-271
Abstract:
The purpose of the present study was to examine heart rate (HR) and affective reactions to state self-objectification as a function of gender. We examined negative affect, positive affect, guilt, and HR at 6-second and 5-minute intervals across baseline, control, high objectification, low objectification, and cologne conditions in men (n = 53) and women (n = 57). Mixed factorial MANOVA results indicated a statistically significant Gender × Condition interaction. Both men and women showed a cardiac orienting response to high versus low objectification. Cardiac stress reactions to objectification were higher among women. Negative affective reactions to objectification were more pervasive across conditions among women.
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Tessa West et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, July 2014, Pages 81-100
Abstract:
Integrating theory on close relationships and intergroup relations, we construct a manipulation of similarity that we demonstrate can improve interracial interactions across different settings. We find that manipulating perceptions of similarity on self-revealing attributes that are peripheral to the interaction improves interactions in cross-race dyads and racially diverse task groups. In a getting-acquainted context, we demonstrate that the belief that one’s different-race partner is similar to oneself on self-revealing, peripheral attributes leads to less anticipatory anxiety than the belief that one’s partner is similar on peripheral, nonself-revealing attributes. In another dyadic context, we explore the range of benefits that perceptions of peripheral, self-revealing similarity can bring to different-race interaction partners and find (a) less anxiety during interaction, (b) greater interest in sustained contact with one’s partner, and (c) stronger accuracy in perceptions of one’s partners’ relationship intentions. By contrast, participants in same-race interactions were largely unaffected by these manipulations of perceived similarity. Our final experiment shows that among small task groups composed of racially diverse individuals, those whose members perceive peripheral, self-revealing similarity perform superior to those who perceive dissimilarity. Implications for using this approach to improve interracial interactions across different goal-driven contexts are discussed.
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Status processes in human-computer interactions: Does gender matter?
Marek Posard
Computers in Human Behavior, August 2014, Pages 189–195
Abstract:
This paper examines the conditions that cause status processes to emerge in groups of humans and computers. It presents the results from an experiment where participants worked on a gender-neutral task with a computerized partner described as being a man or woman. These participants evaluated the performance of their partner on a collective task and estimated the cost to purchase this machine. The gender descriptors of these machines did not affect the performance ratings by participants. These participants did estimate that male computers would cost significantly more money than female machines. The findings show how status characteristics shape user perceptions of their computers, which lack the human features that define these characteristics.
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The Impact of Race and Inclusionary Status on Memory for Ingroup and Outgroup Faces
Michael Bernstein et al.
Basic and Applied Social Psychology, May/June 2014, Pages 191-198
Abstract:
We explore how rejection by racial ingroup or outgroup members influences the Other Race Effect (ORE; the tendency to have better memory for same-race [SR] relative to other-race [OR] faces). White and Black participants were rejected or accepted by two racial ingroup or outgroup members during an online game. Participants then completed a face recognition task assessing SR and OR targets. Those playing with ingroup members showed the classic ORE. However, inclusion by outgroup members led to the ORE, while exclusion by outgroup members eliminated this effect by increasing outgroup face memory. We discuss future work on exclusion and the ORE.
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Kasey Lynn Morris, Jamie Goldenberg & Nathan Heflick
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, July 2014, Pages 181-198
Abstract:
Research and theorizing suggest that objectification entails perceiving a person not as a human being but, quite literally, as an object. However, the motive to regard the self as an object is not well understood. The current research tested the hypothesis that literal self-objectification can serve a terror management function. From this perspective, the female body poses a unique existential threat on account of its role in reproduction, and regarding the self as an object is posited to shield women from this threat because objects, in contrast to humans, are not mortal. Across 5 studies, 3 operationalizations of literal self-objectification were employed (a denial of essentially human traits to the self, overlap in the explicit assignment of traits to the self and objects, and implicit associations between self and objects using an implicit association test) in response to 3 aspects of women’s bodies involved in reproduction (pregnancy, menstruation, and breastfeeding). In each study, priming mortality led women (but not men, included in Studies 1, 3, 4, and 5) to literally self-objectify in conditions where women’s reproductive features were salient. In addition, literal self-objectification was found to mediate subsequent responsiveness to death-related stimuli (Study 4). Together, these findings are the first to demonstrate a direct link between mortality salience, women’s role in reproduction, and their self-objectification, supporting an existential function of self-objectification in women.
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Daryl Wout, Mary Murphy & Sabrica Barnett
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
People’s concerns about being rejected temper their interest in forming interracial friendships. For Blacks, identity threat can magnify their rejection concerns and reduce friendship interest. The present research explores the role that threat and safety cues play in Blacks’ concerns about being rejected by Whites. Prior to an interaction, participants learned information about their partner that was comprised of two safety cues or a safety cue accompanied by a threat cue. In Study 1, Blacks who received both a safety and a threat cue were more concerned about being rejected and were less interested in forming an interracial friendship than Blacks who received only safety cues. Whites were unaffected by these cues. In Study 2, Blacks’ perceptions of their interaction partner’s warmth mediated the cues’ effects on rejection concerns and friendship interest. This research suggests that a single threatening cue can undermine safety cues during interracial interactions.
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Feeling (Mis)Understood and Intergroup Friendships in Interracial Interactions
Nicole Shelton et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
The present research investigated whether having out-group friends serves as a buffer for feeling misunderstood in interracial interactions. Across three experience sampling studies, we found that among ethnic minorities who have few White friends or are not interacting with White friends, daily interracial interactions are associated with feeling less understood. By contrast, we found that among ethnic minorities who have more White friends or are interacting with White friends, the relationship between daily interracial interactions and feeling understood is not significant. We did not find similar results for Whites; that is, having ethnic minority friends did not play a role in the relationship between daily interracial interactions and feeling understood. Together, these studies demonstrate the beneficial effects of intergroup friendships for ethnic minorities.
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Kyle Ratner et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, June 2014, Pages 897-911
Abstract:
More than 40 years of research have shown that people favor members of their ingroup in their impressions, attitudes, and behaviors. Here, we propose that people also form different mental images of minimal ingroup and outgroup members, and we test the hypothesis that differences in these mental images contribute to the well-established biases that arise from minimal group categorization. In Study 1, participants were assigned to 1 of 2 groups using a classic minimal group paradigm. Next, a reverse correlation image classification procedure was used to create visual renderings of ingroup and outgroup face representations. Subsequently, a 2nd sample naive to the face generation stage rated these faces on a series of trait dimensions. The results indicated that the ingroup face was significantly more likely than the outgroup face to elicit favorable impressions (e.g., trusting, caring, intelligent, attractive). Extending this finding, Study 2 revealed that ingroup face representations elicited more favorable implicitly measured attitudes than did outgroup representations, and Study 3 showed that ingroup faces were trusted more than outgroup faces during an economic game. Finally, Study 4 demonstrated that facial physiognomy associated with trustworthiness more closely resembled the facial structure of the average ingroup than outgroup face representation. Together, these studies suggest that minimal group distinctions can elicit different mental representations, and that this visual bias is sufficient to elicit ingroup favoritism in impressions, attitudes and behaviors.
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Virtual ideals: The effect of video game play on male body image
Zeely Sylvia, Teresa King & Brendan Morse
Computers in Human Behavior, August 2014, Pages 183–188
Abstract:
The perpetuation of unrealistic body ideals by popular media has been linked to negative body image and self-esteem; however, the influence of video games has remained largely unexamined despite their growing popularity as a media form, particularly among men. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether playing video games that emphasize an unrealistic male body ideal has a negative impact on body satisfaction. Participants played a highly realistic video game for 45 min and then completed questionnaires measuring muscularity concerns and body image. Men randomized to the experimental group played the game with a character of exaggerated muscularity, whereas those randomized to the control group played with a character of average build. Men in the muscular condition reported significantly lower body satisfaction than men in the control condition. Considering the wide-spread use of video games, as well as the increasing muscularity of the ideal male body in popular culture, this finding could have important implications for the psychological well-being of men who regularly play video games. Further research should assess whether this lowered body satisfaction is maintained and to determine if negative behavioral consequences emerge.
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Jae Woong Shim & Bryant Paul
Social Behavior and Personality, Summer 2014, Pages 823-834
Abstract:
We investigated how the sexist attitudes of young adult males were affected when they were inadvertently exposed to online pornography, and the role of the sense of anonymity in subsequent selection by these individuals of sexually explicit material. Participants were 84 male university students. Results showed that participants were more likely to pursue extreme pornography when they felt anonymous, as compared with situations in which they did not feel anonymous. This tendency was especially apparent for those exposed for 10 seconds to sexual online pop-up commercials that include pornographic content. The results also showed that inadvertent exposure to such sexual online pop-up commercials, coupled with feelings of anonymity, could increase participants' sexist attitudes toward women. The implications of these findings for future research are discussed.
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Stereotype Transmission and Maintenance Through Interpersonal Communication: The Irony Bias
Christian Burgers & Camiel Beukeboom
Communication Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
In interpersonal communication, stereotypes are predominantly transmitted through language. Linguistic bias theory presupposes that speakers systematically vary their language when communicating stereotype-consistent and stereotype-inconsistent information. We investigate whether these findings can be extended to verbal irony use. The irony bias posits that irony is more appropriate to communicate stereotype-inconsistent than stereotype-consistent information. Three experiments support this hypothesis by showing that irony is found more appropriate (Experiments 1-2) and used more often (Experiment 3) in stereotype-inconsistent than in stereotype-consistent situations. Furthermore, linguistic biases have important communicative consequences, because they implicitly serve to maintain stereotypic expectancies. Experiment 4 shows that irony shares this characteristic with other linguistic biases, in that irony — compared to literal language — leads to more external attribution. Taken together, these results indicate that stereotypic expectancies are subtly revealed and confirmed by verbal irony, and that verbal irony plays an important role in stereotype communication and maintenance.
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M. Cikara et al.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Despite its early origins and adaptive functions, empathy is not inevitable; people routinely fail to empathize with others, especially members of different social or cultural groups. In five experiments, we systematically explore how social identity, functional relations between groups, competitive threat, and perceived entitativity contribute to intergroup empathy bias: the tendency not only to empathize less with out-group relative to in-group members, but also feel pleasure in response to their pain (and pain in response to their pleasure). When teams are set in direct competition, affective responses to competition-irrelevant events are characterized not only by less empathy toward out-group relative to in-group members, but also by increased counter-empathic responses: Schadenfreude and Glückschmerz (Experiment 1). Comparing responses to in-group and out-group targets against responses to unaffiliated targets in this competitive context suggests that intergroup empathy bias may be better characterized by out-group antipathy rather than extraordinary in-group empathy (Experiment 2). We find also that intergroup empathy bias is robust to changes in relative group standing — feedback indicating that the out-group has fallen behind (Experiment 3a) or is no longer a competitive threat (Experiment 3b) does not reduce the bias. However, reducing perceived in-group and out-group entitativity can significantly attenuate intergroup empathy bias (Experiment 4). This research establishes the boundary conditions of intergroup empathy bias and provides initial support for a more integrative framework of group-based empathy.
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Michael Gilead & Nira Liberman
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
The parental caregiving motivational system leads people to behave selflessly. However, given that the purpose of this motivation is the protection of close kin, it might also lead to aggression toward distant, threatening others. In the present studies, we wished to investigate the effects of behaviorally activating the caregiving motivational system on out-group bias. On the basis of previous work in behavioral ecology, we predicted that activation of the caregiving system would enhance bias against out-groups whenever their members posed a salient threat. This prediction was confirmed in three studies (total N = 866) across different populations, manipulations, and measures. We discuss the possible importance of continued research into the behavioral consequences of caregiving salience.
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Evidence of Self-Informant Agreement in Ethnic Identity
Stevie Yap et al.
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Ethnic identity is considered to be a psychologically important characteristic that is associated with adjustment outcomes. However, little is known about the degree to which ethnic identity manifests itself in characteristics that are observable to others. This study is the first to evaluate self-other agreement in ethnic identity and to use a multimethod approach for testing the associations between ethnic identity and adjustment outcomes. Results provide evidence of agreement across self and informant reports of the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure, the most widely used measure of ethnic identity in the literature. We also find evidence for shared method effects across informant reports of life satisfaction and ethnic identity. Finally, we find evidence for an association between latent ethnic identity and latent life satisfaction and self esteem scores, suggesting that the association between ethnic identity and both life satisfaction and self-esteem is more than just shared method variance.