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Kevin Lewis

January 05, 2023

Distinctive negative reactions to intermediate social groups
Sara Burke et al.
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, forthcoming 

Abstract:

Although considerable research has examined how members of advantaged groups think and feel about disadvantaged groups, fewer studies have examined responses to “intermediate” social groups -- groups that are perceived to fall between more commonly acknowledged groups on the same dimension of social identity. We measured judgments of intermediate groups, including novel groups designed to manipulate social group intermediacy (Studies 1–5), Black/White biracial people (Study 6), and bisexual people (Study 7). In each study, participants provided separate evaluations of an intermediate group and two comparison groups (e.g., Black/White biracial people, Black people, White people). Intermediate groups were consistently rated as less conceptually legitimate (e.g., less distinctive, not a “real” group) than other groups. The view that intermediate groups are not “real” groups helped explain negative evaluations of them, and participants who strongly identified with an advantaged ingroup were especially prone to this pattern of judgments. These results are consistent with the idea that an intermediate group can threaten the distinctiveness of a valued ingroup, leading people to dismiss and denigrate the intermediate group. Studying perceptions of intermediate groups facilitates a nuanced account of an increasingly heterogeneous social world.


Beliefs That White People Are Poor, Above and Beyond Beliefs That Black People Are Poor, Predict White (But Not Black) Americans’ Attitudes Toward Welfare Recipients and Policy
Erin Cooley et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming 

Abstract:

In past work, White Americans’ beliefs about Black poverty have predicted lower perceived work ethic of the poor, and, thus, less welfare support. In this article, we examine whether beliefs about White poverty predict more positive attributions about the poor among three representative samples of White Americans. Study 1 reveals that White (but not Black) Americans’ White-poor beliefs predict increased perceptions that welfare recipients are hardworking, which predict more welfare support. Study 2 demonstrates that the link between White Americans’ White-poor beliefs and the humanization of welfare recipients is stronger among White Americans who feel intergroup status threat (i.e., those who hold racial zero-sum beliefs). Study 3 replicates and extends Study 2 by using an experimental approach. Together, these data suggest that White Americans’ White-poor beliefs function to humanize welfare recipients as a means to justify policies that could help the ingroup, preserving the racial status quo.


Are androgynous people more creative than gender conforming people?
Tingshu Liu & Rodica Ioana Damian
Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, forthcoming 

Abstract:

Psychological androgyny refers to possessing both masculine and feminine characteristics. Sandra Bem (1974) proposed that androgynous people are more creative, because they are less limited by gender boundaries. This so-called androgyny-creativity effect contributes to the gender equality movement by ameliorating stereotypes about people who stepped out of gender boundaries. However, the evidentiary value of the available research testing this hypothesis has been limited by suboptimal (by current standards) methodology, such as small samples, antiquated statistical analysis, and inconsistent measurement. The current study attempted to replicate the androgyny-creativity effect in a large sample (N = 672), with both self-report and behavioral measures of creativity, and following both original and optimized statistical analyses. We found that androgynous group reported themselves to be more creative than the gender conforming group, but they did not score higher than the latter on behavioral creativity. This suggests that the androgyny-creativity effect (a) could be just a popular lay theory, (b) might only hold for certain types of creativity, and (c) might be a true effect but no longer exist due to societal changes in gender roles.


What explains neighborhood sorting by income and race?
Dionissi Aliprantis, Daniel Carroll & Eric Young
Journal of Urban Economics, forthcoming 

Abstract:

Why do Black households live in neighborhoods with much lower socioeconomic status (SES) than the neighborhoods of white households with similar incomes? The explanation is not wealth. High-income, high-wealth Black households live in neighborhoods with similar SES as low-income, low-wealth white households. Instead, we provide evidence that many Black households prefer low-SES neighborhoods with Black residents to high-SES neighborhoods without Black residents. The variety of neighborhood SES available in a metro’s Black neighborhoods, which is typically low, drives the neighborhood SES of Black households.


Personal Relative Deprivation Increases Men's (but Not Women's) Hostile Sexism: The Mediating Role of Sense of Control
Fei Teng et al.
Psychology of Women Quarterly, forthcoming 

Abstract:

Hostile sexism is a blatant and explicit form of sexism consisting of antagonistic attitudes toward women. We hypothesized that men's personal relative deprivation, a subjectively perceived disadvantage, would predict their hostile sexism toward women. In addition, we expected that, if this effect occurs, a sense of control would act as a mediator. Five studies (N = 1352) confirmed these hypotheses. Study 1 showed that personal relative deprivation predicted hostile sexism only for men, but not for women among Chinese college students. In addition, we observed the effect of personal relative deprivation only on hostile sexism, but not on benevolent sexism. Study 2, which employed participants from the United States, directly replicated the findings of Study 1. Studies 3 and 4 further showed that a sense of control acted as a mediator in this process. As such, increased hostile sexism attitude (Study 3) and hostile sexism behavior (Study 4) predicted by personal relative deprivation could result from a reduced sense of control. Study 5 further provided causal evidence that a temporarily induced state of personal relative deprivation resulted in a higher level of hostile sexism via a reduced sense of control. We discuss theoretical and practical implications for relative deprivation, gender inequality, and interventions.


The face of wrongdoing? An expectancy violations perspective on CEO facial characteristics and media coverage of misconducting firms
Mariano Heyden et al.
Leadership Quarterly, forthcoming 

Abstract:

We examine the extent to which CEO facial characteristics matter in media coverage of firms implicated in corporate wrongdoing. We build on literature discussing that leaders’ faces may convey subjective behavioral expectations and that outsiders often over-rely on facial cues when making social judgments. We situate these insights in the context of corporate wrongdoing, where information incompleteness may be particularly high, potentially prompting outsiders to draw on CEO facial characteristics in forming their social judgments. Drawing on Expectancy Violations Theory, we hypothesize that firms led by CEOs expected to be more trustworthy, as inferred from their lower facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR), will draw greater attention and more negative opinions from the media in the wake of corporate wrongdoing. Results of an experiment (Study 1) where CEO fWHR was digitally manipulated support this counterintuitive logic, while findings based on an archival study of corporate wrongdoing of US firms from 2003 to 2016 (Study 2) partly generalize the rationale in the field setting. Our findings suggest that subjective expectations inferred from CEO faces may serve as part of a complex and underexamined source of variation in media coverage of misconducting firms. We discuss implications for theory and practice.


Perceiving a Danger Within: Black Americans Associate Black Men With Physical Threat
David March
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming 

Abstract:

Recent work suggests that good/bad out-group favoritism of Blacks for Whites may reflect positive associations with White rather than negative associations with Black. The Dual Implicit Process Model suggests that Blacks may come to associate their own group with threat, even absent a concurrent Black-negative association. This work tests this idea among Black Americans. Three studies tested this possibility using mouse-tracking (Study 1) and evaluative priming tasks (Studies 2 and 3) to assess how quickly participants make judgments involving Black versus White male faces and names. All studies found that that Black Americans hold automatic Black-threat associations absent automatic Black-negative associations. This supports the Dual Implicit Process Model’s threat versus negativity distinction within the realm of anti-Black bias and supplements recent work by showing that the presence of out-group favoritism on one dimension (i.e., threat) can occur even in the absence of out-group favoritism on a seemingly related dimension (i.e., negativity).


Fortune and identity
Gary Charness & Xin Jiang
Economics Letters, January 2023

Abstract:

While group identity can generate in-group bias, the topic of how activities generate group affiliation is largely unexplored. We experimentally study the effect of shared experience on group affiliation, varying shared experiences by paying subjects differently for the same task. The results show that shared fortune leads to in-group bias, while shared misfortune does not.


She's got legs: Longer legs in female comic book characters correspond to global preferences
Rebecca Burch & David Widman
Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, forthcoming 

Abstract:

Previous studies have shown that comic book bodies are supernormal stimuli, exaggerated in dimensions that are attractive to primarily male comic book consumers. Following the same methodologies as previous experiments, this study examined height and leg length measurements of comic book characters in both Marvel and DC comics. In accordance with the literature on leg length and attractiveness, we predicted that comic book women would have longer legs than comic book men and would have longer than average legs, matching preferences shown in cross-cultural studies. We also hypothesized that comic book women would be depicted as wearing heels or walking on tiptoe more often, as this further elongates the legs. Results showed that female comic character leg length matched the most common preferred leg length in cross-cultural studies and 86%–88% of female characters were drawn as either wearing high heels or walking or standing on tiptoe.


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