Stereotype
Proprioception and Person Perception: Politicians and Professors
Michael Slepian, Nicholas Rule & Nalini Ambady
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Social-categorical knowledge is partially grounded in proprioception. In Study 1, participants describing "hard" and "soft" politicians, and "hard" and "soft" scientists used different "hard" and "soft" traits for the two groups, suggesting that the meaning of these traits is context specific. Studies 2 to 4 showed that both meanings were supported by hard and soft proprioception. Consistent with political stereotypes, perceivers viewing faces while handling a hard ball were more likely to categorize them as Republicans rather than as Democrats, compared to perceivers viewing the same faces while handling a soft ball (Study 2). Similarly, consistent with stereotypes of "hard" and "soft" academic disciplines, perceivers were more likely to categorize photographs of professors as physicists than historians when handling a hard versus soft ball (Study 3). Finally, thinking about Republicans and Democrats led participants to perceive a ball as harder or softer, respectively, suggesting that simulating proprioception might aid social-categorical thinking (Study 4).
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Racial Identity Denied: Are Wealthy Black Victims of Racism Rejected by Their Own Group?
James Johnson & Cheryl Kaiser
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
This experiment examined the intersection of socioeconomic status and racial identification in understanding Blacks' reactions toward Black victims of racial discrimination. When a Black victim of racism was presented as wealthy, rather than non-wealthy, other Blacks viewed this individual as weakly racially identified and expressed little empathy for the victim. This occurred even when this Black individual faced blatant and undeniable discrimination, suggesting that for minorities, the possession of wealth can come at the cost of being perceived as disconnected from one's racial group and unworthy of the group's support. The effect of the wealth manipulation on empathy was mediated by the belief that wealthy Blacks are weakly racially identified. The present investigation represents one of the first experimental investigations into the intersection of socioeconomic status and perceived racial identification among Blacks and also provides insight into intragroup dynamics within minority groups.
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Multicultural Experiences Reduce Intergroup Bias Through Epistemic Unfreezing
Carmit Tadmor et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
In 6 studies, we systematically explored for the 1st time the ameliorative effects of multicultural experience on intergroup bias and investigated the role of epistemic unfreezing as the motivational mechanism underlying these effects. We found that multicultural exposure led to a reduction in stereotype endorsement (Studies 1, 4, and 6), symbolic racism (Study 5), and discriminatory hiring decisions (Study 2). We further demonstrated that experimental exposure to multicultural experience caused a reduction in need for cognitive closure (NFCC; Studies 3 and 6) and that the ameliorative effects of multiculturalism experience on intergroup bias were fully mediated by lower levels of NFCC (Studies 4, 5, and 6). The beneficial effects of multiculturalism were found regardless of the targeted stereotype group (African Americans, Ethiopians, homosexuals, and native Israelis), regardless of whether multicultural experience was measured or manipulated, and regardless of the population sampled (Caucasian Americans or native Israelis), demonstrating the robustness of this phenomenon. Overall, these results demonstrate that multicultural experience plays a critical role in increasing social tolerance through its relationship to motivated cognitive processes.
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Andrew Todd & Adam Galinsky
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, November 2012, Pages 1394-1398
Abstract:
Five experiments tested the hypothesis that there is a bi-directional link between ideological (multiculturalism and color-blindness) and self-regulatory (perspective-taking and stereotype-suppression) approaches to managing diversity. A first set of experiments found that exposure to multiculturalism facilitated perceptual and conceptual forms of perspective-taking. Specifically, a multicultural ideology prime strengthened motivations to engage in perspective-taking (Experiment 1) and led participants to adopt spontaneously an outgroup target's visual perspective (Experiment 2) and to recognize that an outgroup target did not possess their privileged knowledge (Experiment 3), as compared with a color-blind ideology prime or baseline condition. A second set of experiments documented the reciprocal relationship: Actively considering an outgroup member's perspective strengthened both deliberate (Experiment 4) and automatic (Experiment 5) positivity toward multiculturalism relative to color-blindness. These findings suggest that ideological and self-regulatory approaches to diversity management are intimately connected and can reinforce each other.
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Brittle Smiles: Positive Biases Toward Stigmatized and Outgroup Targets
Wendy Berry Mendes & Katrina Koslov
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examined individuals' tendencies to exaggerate their positive responses toward stigmatized others (i.e., overcorrect) and explored how overcorrection, because of its fragile nature, could be disrupted. The first 2 studies demonstrate overcorrection: White participants paired with Black partners (Experiment 1A) smiled, laughed, and showed more positive behavior than those paired with same-race partners. Experiment 1B replicated the general effect with a physically stigmatized sample (i.e., facial birthmarks) and then demonstrated that overcorrection is moderated by bias; participants who exhibited more positive behavior toward their partner showed the most physiological "threat" during a stressful task with their partner. We then examined the idea that if overcorrection requires cognitive resources and is effortful, then it may be fragile when resources are taxed. In Experiments 2 and 3, we observed that overcorrection was easily disrupted when resources were compromised (e.g., with stress or cognitive load). Taken together, these studies suggest that positive biases toward stigmatized and outgroup members are fragile and can be undermined when resources are taxed.
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Reading Between the Minds: The Use of Stereotypes in Empathic Accuracy
Karyn Lewis et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
An ideal empathizer may attend to another person's behavior in order to understand that person, but it is also possible that accurately understanding other people involves top-down strategies. We hypothesized that perceivers draw on stereotypes to infer other people's thoughts and that stereotype use increases perceivers' accuracy. In this study, perceivers (N = 161) inferred the thoughts of multiple targets. Inferences consistent with stereotypes for the targets' group (new mothers) more accurately captured targets' thoughts, particularly when actual thought content was also stereotypic. We also decomposed variance in empathic accuracy into thought, target, and perceiver variance. Although past research has frequently focused on variance between perceivers or targets (which assumes individual differences in the ability to understand other people or be understood, respectively), the current study showed that the most substantial variance was found within targets because of differences among thoughts.
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Perspective taking can increase stereotyping: The role of apparent stereotype confirmation
Jeanine Skorinko & Stacey Sinclair
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous research has demonstrated that taking the perspective of an outgroup member reduces the likelihood of stereotyping that person and their group (e.g., and ). In the present research, we hypothesized and found that the effect of perspective taking on stereotyping depends on the apparent stereotypicality of the target. In Experiment 1, participants who took the perspective of an elderly person who was ambiguously stereotypic were less likely to engage in stereotyping than non-perspective takers. But, participants who took the perspective of a clearly stereotype-consistent outgroup member were more apt to engage in stereotyping than non-perspective takers. Experiment 2 suggests that increased stereotyping occurs because people use stereotypes as a basis for perspective taking when they are highly salient. Negatively-valenced but stereotype-irrelevant information does not have a similar effect on subsequent judgments (Experiment 3). Experiment 4 extended the findings to a different stigmatized group, overweight individuals.
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Fiona Kate Barlow et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Contact researchers have largely overlooked the potential for negative intergroup contact to increase prejudice. In Study 1, we tested the interaction between contact quantity and valence on prejudice toward Black Australians (n = 1,476), Muslim Australians (n = 173), and asylum seekers (n = 293). In all cases, the association between contact quantity and prejudice was moderated by its valence, with negative contact emerging as a stronger and more consistent predictor than positive contact. In Study 2, White Americans (n = 441) indicated how much positive and negative contact they had with Black Americans on separate measures. Although both quantity of positive and negative contact predicted racism and avoidance, negative contact was the stronger predictor. Furthermore, negative (but not positive) contact independently predicted suspicion about Barack Obama's birthplace. These results extend the contact hypothesis by issuing an important caveat: Negative contact may be more strongly associated with increased racism and discrimination than positive contact is with its reduction.
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Rich man, poor man: Developmental differences in attributions and perceptions
Carol Sigelman
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
In an examination guided by cognitive developmental and attribution theory of how explanations of wealth and poverty and perceptions of rich and poor people change with age and are interrelated, 6-, 10-, and 14-year-olds (N = 88) were asked for their causal attributions and trait judgments concerning a rich man and a poor man. First graders, like older children, perceived the rich man as more competent than the poor man. However, they had difficulty in explaining wealth and poverty, especially poverty, and their trait perceptions were associated primarily with their attributions of wealth to job status, education, and luck. Fifth and ninth graders more clearly attributed wealth and poverty to the equity factors of ability and effort and based their trait perceptions on these attributions. Although the use of structured attribution questions revealed more understanding among young children than previous studies have suggested, the findings suggest a shift with age in the underlying bases for differential evaluation of rich and poor people from a focus on good outcomes associated with wealth (a good education and job) to a focus on personal qualities responsible for wealth (ability and effort).
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Cultural transmission of social essentialism
Marjorie Rhodes, Sarah-Jane Leslie & Christina Tworek
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 21 August 2012, Pages 13526-13531
Abstract:
Social essentialism entails the belief that certain social categories (e.g., gender, race) mark fundamentally distinct kinds of people. Essentialist beliefs have pernicious consequences, supporting social stereotyping and contributing to prejudice. How does social essentialism develop? In the studies reported here, we tested the hypothesis that generic language facilitates the cultural transmission of social essentialism. Two studies found that hearing generic language about a novel social category diverse for race, ethnicity, age, and sex led 4-y-olds and adults to develop essentialist beliefs about that social category. A third study documented that experimentally inducing parents to hold essentialist beliefs about a novel social category led them to produce more generic language when discussing the category with their children. Thus, generic language facilitates the transmission of essentialist beliefs about social categories from parents to children.
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Racial-Ethnic Biases, Time Pressure, and Medical Decisions
Irena Stepanikova
Journal of Health and Social Behavior, September 2012, Pages 329-343
Abstract:
This study examined two types of potential sources of racial-ethnic disparities in medical care: implicit biases and time pressure. Eighty-one family physicians and general internists responded to a case vignette describing a patient with chest pain. Time pressure was manipulated experimentally. Under high time pressure, but not under low time pressure, implicit biases regarding blacks and Hispanics led to a less serious diagnosis. In addition, implicit biases regarding blacks led to a lower likelihood of a referral to specialist when physicians were under high time pressure. The results suggest that when physicians face stress, their implicit biases may shape medical decisions in ways that disadvantage minority patients.
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Lihi Segal-Caspi, Sonia Roccas & Lilach Sagiv
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Research has documented a robust stereotype regarding personality attributes related to physical attractiveness (the "what is beautiful is good" stereotype). But do physically attractive women indeed possess particularly attractive inner attributes? Studying traits and values, we investigated two complementary questions: how perceived attractiveness relates to perceived personality, and how it relates to actual personality. First, 118 women reported their traits and values and were videotaped reading the weather forecast. Then, 118 judges rated the traits, values, and attractiveness of the women. As hypothesized, attractiveness correlated with attribution of desirable traits, but not with attribution of values. By contrast, attractiveness correlated with actual values, but not actual traits: Attractiveness correlated with tradition and conformity values (which were contrasted with self-direction values) and with self-enhancement values (which were contrasted with universalism values). Thus, despite the widely accepted "what is beautiful is good" stereotype, our findings suggest that the beautiful strive for conformity rather than independence and for self-promotion rather than tolerance.
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The Illusion of Fame: How the Nonfamous Become Famous
Joshua Landau & Stacey Leed
American Journal of Psychology, Fall 2012, Pages 351-360
Abstract:
This article reports 2 experiments in which nonfamous faces were paired with famous (e.g., Oprah Winfrey) or semifamous (e.g., Annika Sorenstam) faces during an initial orienting task. In Experiment 1, the orienting task directed participants to consider the relationship between the paired faces. In Experiment 2, participants considered distinctive qualities of the paired faces. Participants then judged the fame level of old and new nonfamous faces, semifamous faces, and famous faces. Pairing a nonfamous face with a famous face resulted in a higher fame rating than pairing a nonfamous face with a semifamous face. The fame attached to the famous people was misattributed to their nonfamous partners. We discuss this pattern of results in the context of current theoretical explanations of familiarity misattributions.
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Robin Kramer, Alex Jones & Robert Ward
PLoS ONE, August 2012
Abstract:
Facial width-to-height ratio has received a great deal of attention in recent research. Evidence from human skulls suggests that males have a larger relative facial width than females, and that this sexual dimorphism is an honest signal of masculinity, aggression, and related traits. However, evidence that this measure is sexually dimorphic in faces, rather than skulls, is surprisingly weak. We therefore investigated facial width-to-height ratio in three White European samples using three different methods of measurement: 2D photographs, 3D scans, and anthropometry. By measuring the same individuals with multiple methods, we demonstrated high agreement across all measures. However, we found no evidence of sexual dimorphism in the face. In our third study, we also found a link between facial width-to-height ratio and body mass index for both males and females, although this relationship did not account for the lack of dimorphism in our sample. While we showed sufficient power to detect differences between male and female width-to-height ratio, our results failed to support the general hypothesis of sexual dimorphism in the face.
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"Life Stage-Specific" Variations in Performance in Response to Age Stereotypes
Jessica Hehman & Daphne Blunt Bugental
Developmental Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
In a test of life stage-specific responses to age-based stigma, older (n = 54, ages 62-92) and younger (n = 81, ages 17-22) adults were told that a task (Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale-III block design) required either (a) speed/contemporary knowledge (YA; "youth advantage") or (b) life experience/wisdom (OA; "age advantage"). In order to investigate the role of individuals' own perceptual biases in response to age-based stigma, participants also completed a measure of perceived personal control of their life outcomes. Older adults showed lower performance on the task as a result of the additive effects of (a) exposure to a negative age-relevant stereotype and (b) being under the perceived control of others. Younger adults, however, showed higher performance on the task as a result of exposure to a negative age-relevant stereotype (a stereotype challenge effect, disconfirming the stereotype) - but only if they saw themselves under the control of powerful others. The opposed responses of the 2 age groups are interpreted as reflecting (a) differences in the permanence of their group membership and (b) uniqueness of age-based stigma. To our knowledge, this is the first test of the effects of age-relevant stereotypes on younger adults.
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Effects of Emotional Body Language on Rapid Out-group Judgments
Lindsay Hinzman & Spencer Kelly
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The aim of this study was to examine the influence of emotional body language (EBL) on in- and out-group face processing. In Experiment 1, White participants viewed pictures of in-group (White) and out-group (Black) faces positioned on bodies conveying either happy or angry emotions. Experiment 2 employed the same paradigm, presenting Asian faces as the out-group condition. In both experiments the task was to identify the race of the face as quickly as possible. For both experiments, there was a significant interaction between race of face and EBL, such that out-group faces were processed faster with angry vs. happy EBL. When considered together, the effect appears to be due to an out-group, not a stereotyping, phenomenon. The results of both experiments provide support for the hypothesis that emotional body language may influence quick, unconscious, and automatic processing of faces of different races.
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Michael Thornton, Robert Joseph Taylor & Linda Chatters
Journal of Black Studies, October 2012, Pages 749-772
Abstract:
This study examines African Americans', Black Caribbeans', and non-Hispanic Whites' perceptions of closeness to other racial and ethnic groups. The study uses data from a national probability sample, the National Survey of American Life (N = 6,082), and provides the first investigation of this topic among Black Caribbeans. Study findings reveal both similarities and significant differences between African Americans and Black Caribbeans in their levels of closeness to other groups. African Americans and Black Caribbeans were similar in their levels of closeness to Whites, American Indians, and Asian Americans. African Americans felt significantly closer to Black people in the United States than did Black Caribbeans. Conversely, Black Caribbeans felt significantly closer than African Americans to Black people from the Caribbean, Spanish-speaking people, and Black people in Africa. Non-Hispanic Whites felt significantly closer to Asian Americans than did either African Americans or Black Caribbeans. These and other findings are discussed in detail and reaffirm the continued importance of race in American life and intergroup relations.
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Social identity, attribution, and emotion: Comparisons of Americans, Korean Americans, and Koreans
Hee Sun Park et al.
International Journal of Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The social identity of another person, in addition to the social identity of self, can be an important factor affecting the types of attribution judgments and emotions that individuals indicate for the other person. In April 2007, the perpetrator of the shooting incident on the Virginia Tech University campus was identified as a person who emigrated to the USA from Korea at a young age. The current study compared non-Korean Americans, Korean Americans, Koreans in the USA, and Koreans in Korea in terms of their attributions and emotions concerning the perpetrator and the shooting incident. Participants were asked to indicate (1) the extent to which they attributed the cause of the incident to either American society or the perpetrator, (2) their emotions (e.g., upset), and (3) the extent to which they categorized the perpetrator as an American, a Korean American, or a Korean. The results indicated that non-Korean Americans were most likely to attribute the cause of the incident to the perpetrator as opposed to American society. Non-Korean Americans, Korean Americans, and Koreans in the United States had more negative emotions (e.g., unhappy, sad, and upset) about the incident than Koreans in Korea did. The results also indicated that individuals differed in their attributions and emotions depending on how they categorized the perpetrator. For example, categorizing the perpetrator as being a Korean was positively related to Americans' tendency to hold the perpetrator responsible, while categorizing the perpetrator as being an American was negatively related to the tendency to hold the perpetrator responsible among Koreans in Korea. The findings may imply that social identity theory, intergroup emotion theory, and cultural orientations (e.g., individualism and collectivism) can provide insights into people's reactions to a tragic incident.
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Origins of "Us" versus "Them": Prelinguistic infants prefer similar others
Neha Mahajan & Karen Wynn
Cognition, August 2012, Pages 227-233
Abstract:
A central feature of human psychology is our pervasive tendency to divide the social world into "us" and "them". We prefer to associate with those who are similar to us over those who are different, preferentially allocate resources to similar others, and hold more positive beliefs about similar others. Here we investigate the developmental origins of these biases, asking if preference for similar others occurs prior to language and extensive exposure to cultural norms. We demonstrate that, like adults, prelinguistic infants prefer those who share even trivial similarities with themselves, and these preferences appear to reflect a cognitive comparison process ("like me"/"not like me"). However, unlike adults, infants do not appear to prefer others with an utterly arbitrary similarity to themselves. Together, these findings suggest that the phenomena of ingroup bias, and enhanced interpersonal attraction toward those who resemble ourselves, may be rooted in an inherent preference for similarity to self, which itself may be enhanced during development by the influence of cultural values.
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Guilty by Mere Similarity: Assimilative Effects of Facial Resemblance on Automatic Evaluation
Bertram Gawronski & Kimberly Quinn
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Drawing on previous evidence for affective generalization in face perception, the current research investigated the effects of facial similarity on automatic evaluations of unknown individuals who resemble a known person of positive or negative valence. Using 50% morphs that combined a known face of positive or negative valence with an unknown face of neutral valence, the morphed faces elicited the same automatic evaluations as the known faces they resembled. Automatic evaluations of known faces were indistinguishable from responses to perceptually similar unknown faces, suggesting that resemblance effects on automatic evaluations involve an assimilation of unknown faces to existing representations of known faces. Moreover, valence-congruent resemblance effects emerged for both positive and negative targets, suggesting that similarity-based activation of evaluative knowledge can override the affective positivity resulting from the higher fluency of processing familiar faces. Implications for research on face perception, transference, and processing fluency are discussed.