Testing Stereotypes
No Evidence of Effects of Testosterone on Economic Preferences: Results From a Large (N=1,000) Double-Blind Randomized Controlled Study
Anna Dreber et al.
University of Pennsylvania Working Paper, April 2025
Abstract:
There is conflicting evidence on whether testosterone affects economic preferences such as risk taking, fairness and altruism, with the evidence suggesting significant effects coming from correlational studies or small underpowered testosterone administration studies. To credibly test this hypothesis, we conducted a large pre-registered double-blind randomized controlled trial with N = 1,000 male participants; 10–20 times larger than most previous randomized controlled studies. Participants were randomly allocated to receive a single dose of either placebo or intranasal testosterone. They thereafter carried out a series of economic tasks capturing social preferences, competitiveness and risk preferences. We fail to find any evidence of a treatment effect for any of our nine primary outcome measures, thereby failing to conceptually replicate several previous studies reporting positive findings that used smaller sample sizes. In line with these results, we furthermore find no evidence of an association between basal testosterone and economic preferences, failing to also conceptually replicate previous correlational studies.
The Ethnic and Political Divide in the Preference for Strong Leaders
Krishnan Nair, Marlon Mooijman & Maryam Kouchaki
Psychological Science, May 2025, Pages 384-403
Abstract:
The prevailing view among scholars has been that the preference for strong leaders is an idiosyncratic feature of right-wing individuals. However, it is unclear whether this inference is accurate given that prior research has largely overlooked the role of ethnicity. We analyzed data from the United States and Western Europe (N = 34,443) and found that ethnic minorities (and right-wing individuals) preferred strong leaders to a greater extent than Whites (and left-wing individuals). Notably, ethnic minorities across diverse ethnic and political backgrounds were closer to right-wing Whites on strong-leader preference than to left-wing Whites. Our work also provides some evidence, using both measurement-of-mediation (Studies 1–4) and experimental mediation (preregistered Studies 5 and 6), that generalized trust helps explain group differences in strong-leader preference. In sum, our research illustrates the unique nature of left-wing Whites’ leadership preferences, and highlights the importance of testing social science theories using diverse participant samples.
Who Benefits? How Gender Shapes the Perceived Deservingness of Welfare Claimants
Sarah Sawler
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study examines how Americans allocate public benefits to men and women. While extant work shows that women’s work is undervalued relative to men’s, scholarly intuition is unclear if these patterns persist when men and women are in competition for scarce public aid resources. I find that, on average, male applicants receive less than female applicants with identical needs. Further, I find the amount awarded to women, but not men, varies conditional on their work history. Women with excellent work histories are awarded significantly more than comparable men. The totality of these results suggest an important caveat to the established finding that women’s hard work is valued less than men’s -- when competing for help, women’s work is rewarded more than their male counterparts.
Heightened left-wing authoritarianism is associated with greater aversion to physical strength in male status allocation
Mitch Brown & Donald Sacco
Personality and Individual Differences, October 2025
Abstract:
Men's physical formidability is putatively diagnostic of their interest in facilitating social rules that favor competition from which perceivers infer their conservatism. The presence of this heuristic may be viewed opportunistically by some perceivers who view strong men as interested in enacting social rules favoring competition. Nonetheless, some perceivers, namely more left-wing authoritarian (LWA) individuals, may view such men as threatening to their own pursuit over resources. Because LWA refers to antipathy toward political systems favoring traditional hierarchies and related norms, higher LWA may be associated with an aversion to strong men in leadership. Participants evaluated physically strong and weak men as leaders and reported their individual differences in left-wing authoritarianism and conservatism. Left-wing authoritarianism fostered an aversion to leaders with greater upper body strength. Conceptually replicating previous research, conservative perceivers preferred physically strong leaders, especially among conservative men. Findings highlight how ideological differences influence coalitional preferences, integrating evolutionary theory with modern political discourse.
Cross-cultural perceptions of racial ambiguity: Testing the universality of the ingroup overexclusion effect
Mohammad Wiswall et al.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, July 2025
Abstract:
Two theoretical frameworks are often used to explain how racially ambiguous faces are categorized. The hypodescent framework (also commonly known as the “one-drop rule”) which is dominantly used in the U.S., argues racially ambiguous Biracial faces are more likely to be categorized as their racially subordinate group (e.g., a Biracial Asian/White person will be seen as Asian). In contrast, the ingroup overexclusion framework (IOE), which has been predominantly used in European contexts argues that racially ambiguous faces are categorized into the most prevalent outgroup relative to the perceiver, regardless of group status (e.g., a Biracial Asian/White person will be seen as White by an Asian perceiver, or as Asian for a White perceiver). Thus, without cross-cultural comparisons that decouple racial status from racial group membership, we cannot test both frameworks simultaneously and determine which is a better framework for racially ambiguous categorization outcomes. Here, Chinese Nationals (N = 330) and Asian Americans (N = 196) categorized racially ambiguous faces across a 2 (Categorization Task Type; Two-Choice or Three-Choice) x 2 (Stimulus Set: Asian/White or Asian/Black Biracial faces) between-subjects design. Generally, results show that across both cultural groups, Biracial Asian faces were seen most often as one's furthest outgroup member (i.e., “not Asian”, “White” and “Black” for both stimuli). Thus, these results are more consistent with IOE, and not hypodescent, as the underlying process for racially ambiguous categorization.
Increases in Self-identifying as Transgender Among US Adults, 2014–2022
Jean Twenge et al.
Sexuality Research and Social Policy, June 2025, Pages 755-773
Methods: Analyses examined self-identification as transgender between 2014 and 2022 in the nationally representative Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey (n = 1.9 million), which collects cross-sectional data yearly.
Results: An increasing number of US young adults self-identified as transgender between 2014 and 2022. Self-identifying as transgender nearly quintupled among 18- to 24-year-olds and quadrupled among 25- to 34-year-olds, but either declined or did not change significantly among those older than 35. By 2022, 2.78% of 18- to 24-year-old adults self-identified as transgender, up from 0.59% in 2014. The increase was driven by those identifying as transgender men or gender non-conforming; identification as a transgender woman did not change significantly among young adults and declined significantly among all adults. The increase in self-identifying as transgender was larger among White individuals than among Black or Hispanic individuals. Up to 2021, the increase was similar in states whose electoral college voted Democrat (“blue”) or Republican (“red”) in 2016, suggesting a nationwide shift.
U.S. Adults Believe That “Children” Are Color-Evasive and “Black Children” Process Race Early
Leigh Wilton, Jess Sullivan & Evan Apfelbaum
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Across five pre-registered studies (three main text, two supplement, one single-paper meta-analysis; Ntotal = 5,051), we test how adults’ beliefs about children’s engagement with race are shaped by children’s specified race. We argue that specifying a child’s race activates race-specific considerations that disrupt adults’ default assumption that “children” (in generic terms) do not notice race or racial differences. As a result, adults perceive both Black children and White children as significantly more likely to notice race than “children.” We also argue that the particular racial group specified shapes adults’ perceptions of when race-related capacities develop. This causes adults to perceive Black children as developing race-related capacities earlier than both White children and “children.” We connect these effects to differences in the timing and content of adult-child conversations about race and racism, showing that how adults construe children can change when and how they talk with them about race.
Expectations, Gender Bias, and Federal Reserve Talk: Do Americans Trust Women as Central Bankers?
Cristina Bodea & Andrew Kerner
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Political economy models of monetary policy typically ignore gender as a determinant of public expectations about the economy. This is understandable, given the historical rarity of female central bankers globally and the unclear designation of the economic domain as gendered. To be effective, central bankers must project expertise and a commitment to fighting inflation. However, those attributes are often male-coded, which may undermine women central bankers. We use a novel experiment to assess gender bias when the US Federal Reserve engages the broad public. The findings suggest significant bias, particularly among men. Messaging associated with women central bankers was less able to influence men’s optimism about the economic future or their trust in the Federal Reserve. Male respondents also displayed a disproportionate inability to recognize female central bankers’ gender. Contrary to expectation, signaling female central bankers’ competence did not affect men’s bias, though it increased their appeal to other women.
Experience shapes the granularity of social perception: Computational insights into individual and group-based representations
Suraiya Allidina, Michael Mack & William Cunningham
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
Abstract:
People are regularly conceptualized at varying levels of resolution, sometimes characterized by their idiosyncratic features while at other times seen as mere tokens of their social groups. Decades of research have sought to understand when perceivers will draw upon each of these types of representations, detailing the perceiver- and target-related features that may decrease reliance on stereotypes in favor of individuated knowledge. However, little work has examined how these representations might be formed in the first place: In order for individuated representations of others to be used, they must first be built through experience. Here, we offer a novel approach to characterizing the formation of social representations through the use of computational models of category learning. Across three experiments, participants learned about members of novel social groups who behaved positively or negatively toward them. Computational modeling of participants’ task behavior revealed a critical interaction of perceiver motivations and learning context on representations. Participants who received selective feedback about targets only upon approaching them formed more categorical representations than those who received full feedback. Further, we found tentative evidence that this difference was most pronounced in those who held more racist attitudes, measured in an entirely separate context. Thus, more informative learning contexts could potentially act as a “protective factor” that shields perceivers’ representations from their negative attitudes. The results shed light on the psychological underpinnings of prejudice, using a novel approach to reveal how social categorization is selectively employed in a manner that maintains negative stereotypes.