That's Them
Investigating the Interplay Between Race, Work Ethic Stereotypes, and Attitudes Toward Welfare Recipients and Policies
Jazmin Brown-Iannuzzi et al.
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
The current research investigates the role of racialized work ethic stereotypes on attitudes toward welfare. We hypothesized that work ethic stereotypes shape both people’s attitudes toward welfare and their perceptions of who benefits from these policies. Consistent with hypotheses, when the demographic composition of welfare recipients was majority Black (vs. White), participants thought recipients were lazier and were less positive to welfare programs and policies (Study 1). Describing welfare recipients as hardworking (vs. no information control) mitigated this effect, even when the demographic composition of welfare recipients was majority Black (Study 2). Finally, we investigated whether work ethic stereotypes shape both attitudes toward welfare and spontaneous mental images of recipients. Images generated when participants were asked to envision hardworking (vs. lazy) recipients were rated by a separate sample as more representative of White Americans and garnered more support for providing welfare benefits (Study 3).
“Just as good”: Learning gender stereotypes from attempts to counteract them
Eleanor Chestnut, Marianna Zhang & Ellen Markman
Developmental Psychology, January 2021, Pages 114-125
Abstract:
How do children learn gender stereotypes? Although people commonly use statements like “Girls are as good as boys at math” to express gender equality, such subject-complement statements subtly perpetuate the stereotype that boys are naturally more skilled. The syntax of such statements frames the item in the complement position (here, boys) as the standard for comparison or reference point. Thus, when the statement concerns ability, listeners infer that this item is naturally more skilled than the item in the subject position (here, girls). In 2 experiments, we ask whether subject-complement statements could not only reinforce preexisting gender stereotypes, but also teach them. The participants were 288 adults (51% women, 49% men) and 337 children ages 7 to 11 (50% girls, 50% boys; of the 62% who reported race, 44% self-declared as White; from primarily middle-class to upper middle-class families). Participants were provided with subject-complement statements about either novel abilities (e.g., “Girls are as good as boys at trewting”) or nonstereotyped activities (e.g., “Boys are as good as girls at snapping”). Both adults and children inferred that the gender in the complement position was naturally more skilled than the gender in the subject position. Using subject-complement statements to express gender equality (e.g., “Girls are as good as boys at math”) could thus backfire and teach children that boys have more natural ability.
Racial Projections in Perspective: Public Reactions to Narratives about Rising Diversity
Morris Levy & Dowell Myers
Perspectives on Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Threatened reactions to news about the approach of a racial majority-minority society have profoundly influenced Americans’ political attitudes and electoral choices. Existing research casts these reactions as responses to changing demographic context. We argue instead that they are driven in large part by the dominant majority-minority narrative framing of most public discussion about rising racial diversity. This narrative assumes the long-run persistence of a white-nonwhite binary in which the growing number of Americans with both white and non-white parents are classified exclusively as non-white, irrespective of how they identify themselves. Alternative narratives that take stock of trends toward mixed-race marriage and multiracial identification also reflect demographic fundamentals projected by the Census Bureau and more realistically depict the country’s twenty-first century racial landscape. Using three survey experiments, we examine public reactions to alternative narratives about rising diversity. The standard majority-minority narrative evokes far more threat among whites than any other narrative. Alternative accounts that highlight multiracialism elicit decidedly positive reactions regardless of whether they foretell the persistence of a more diverse white majority. Non-white groups respond favorably to all narratives about rising diversity, irrespective of whether they include the conventional majority-minority framing.
Disavowing White Identity: How Social Disgust can Change Social Identities
Ashley Jardina, Nathan Kalmoe & Kimberly Gross
Political Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent work finds that the sense of solidarity some whites feel with their racial group is strongly associated with their political attitudes, particularly since the election of Barack Obama. Prior work has also noted that levels of this identity have been stable across time and data sources. We, however, document a notable decline in levels of white identity in both panel and cross‐sectional national survey data immediately after the 2016 presidential election. Using a two‐wave panel design, we examine the factors associated with this decline. We examine whether particular emotional reactions, especially disgust toward Donald Trump, pushed some whites away from their racial identity. We also consider the possibility that some whites may have felt that Trump's election reduced perceptions of racial or political threat, therefore lowering levels of white identity. We find the strongest support for the former hypothesis; the decline in white identity was driven mostly by whites expressing disgust toward Trump. Our results highlight the effect that the political environment can have on group identities and point in particular to the significant role that disgust may play in attenuating the strength of group solidarity.
Implicit black‐weapon associations weakened over time in increasingly multiethnic metropolitan areas
Angela Somo, Melody Sadler & Thierry Devos
Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
A repeated cross‐sectional design was used to examine whether temporal changes in implicit Black‐weapon associations were dependent on the changing ethnic diversity of metropolitan areas over the course of a decade (2009-2018). Data on implicit Black‐weapon associations were obtained from Project Implicit. Three indicators of ethnic diversity were calculated using American Community Survey data. Minority representation referred to the proportion of African American residents. Variety was operationalized as the degree to which six ethnic groups each accounted for an equal proportion of the population. Integration assessed the degree to which ethnic groups were evenly distributed across census tracts making up the metropolitan area. Multilevel model analyses (N = 345,647 participants, nested within 185 metropolitan areas) revealed that implicit Black‐weapon associations weakened over time, and to a larger degree in metropolitan areas characterized by steeper increases in variety. This longitudinal relationship is consistent with the notion that, as metropolitan areas become more multiethnic, implicit associations between crime, danger, or violence and Black Americans decline.
No Justice! Black Protests? No Peace: The Racial Nature of Threat Evaluations of Nonviolent #BlackLivesMatter Protests
Periloux Peay & Tyler Camarillo
Social Science Quarterly, January 2021, Pages 198-208
Methods: To examine the impact of racial identity on protest evaluations, we conduct a survey experiment on a total of 921 respondents. We simulate a media report concerning a Black Lives Matter protest to determine how subtle changes in the racial composition of the demonstration elicit varying perceptions of a potential for violence.
Results: We find that protests that comprise all‐Black participants are perceived to have a higher probability to end in violence than more diverse demonstrations. These findings come despite an assurance that the protest in question was peaceful. Consistent with minority threat theory, these perceptions are largely driven by the sentiments of white respondents.
How Perpetrator Identity (Sometimes) Influences Media Framing Attacks as “Terrorism” or “Mental Illness”
Allison Betus, Erin Kearns & Anthony Lemieux
Communication Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Do media frame attacks with Muslim perpetrators as “terrorism” and attacks with White perpetrators as the result of “mental illness”? Despite public speculation and limited academic work with relatively small subsets of cases, there have been no systematic analyses of potential biases in how media frame terrorism. We addressed this gap by examining the text of print news coverage of all terrorist attacks in the United States between 2006 and 2015. Controlling for fatalities, affiliation with a group, and existing mental illness, the odds that an article references terrorism are approximately five times greater for a Muslim versus a non-Muslim perpetrator. In contrast, the odds that an article references mental illness do not significantly differ between White and non-White perpetrators. Results partially confirm public speculation and are robust against numerous alternative explanations. Differences in media framing can influence public (mis)perceptions of violence and threats, and ultimately harm counterterrorism policy.
Gender Stereotypes in Natural Language: Word Embeddings Show Robust Consistency Across Child and Adult Language Corpora of More Than 65 Million Words
Tessa Charlesworth et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Stereotypes are associations between social groups and semantic attributes that are widely shared within societies. The spoken and written language of a society affords a unique way to measure the magnitude and prevalence of these widely shared collective representations. Here, we used word embeddings to systematically quantify gender stereotypes in language corpora that are unprecedented in size (65+ million words) and scope (child and adult conversations, books, movies, TV). Across corpora, gender stereotypes emerged consistently and robustly for both theoretically selected stereotypes (e.g., work-home) and comprehensive lists of more than 600 personality traits and more than 300 occupations. Despite underlying differences across language corpora (e.g., time periods, formats, age groups), results revealed the pervasiveness of gender stereotypes in every corpus. Using gender stereotypes as the focal issue, we unite 19th-century theories of collective representations and 21st-century evidence on implicit social cognition to understand the subtle yet persistent presence of collective representations in language.
Serving with a Smile on Airbnb: Analyzing the Economic Returns and Behavioral Underpinnings of the Host’s Smile
Shunyuan Zhang et al.
Harvard Working Paper, September 2020
Abstract:
Non-informational cues, such as facial expressions, can significantly influence judgments and interpersonal impressions. Past research has explored how smiling affects business outcomes in offline or in-store contexts, yet relatively little is known about how smiling influences consumer choice in e-commerce settings. This paper explores the effect of smiling in the growing sharing economy context, specifically examining how a smile in an Airbnb host’s profile photo affects property demand. The study uses a facial attribute classifier to determine whether the host is smiling in their profile picture or not, and estimate the influence of a host smile in a longitudinal dataset of Airbnb bookings, controlling for a rich set of variables such as reviews, property characteristics, and the host’s age and gender. A smile in the host’s profile photo increases property demand by 1.9% on average. Further, gender moderates this effect, with smiling increasing demand for male hosts by 6.8%, compared to an insignificant increase for female hosts. An online experiment confirms this pattern, and explores the underlying mechanism. In particular, a moderated mediation analysis shows that smiling increases perceptions of the host’s warmth - to a greater extent for male than female hosts - which increases the likelihood of booking their property.
Does School Learning Shape Gender Ideology? Academic Performance and Adolescents’ Attitudes toward Gender Practices
Wei-hsin Yu & Haoshu Duan
Social Science Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Despite research linking education to values, our understanding of the effects of academic learning on gender attitudes is still limited. Using sibling data collected over time, we investigate how learning in school, measured by achievement test scores, affects adolescents’ views on gender issues both with and without direct implications for women’s economic mobility. With fixed-effects models accounting for unobserved heterogeneity between high and low achievers, we show that the relationship between academic achievement and gender ideology is not spurious, but learning does not enlighten adolescents on all gender-related beliefs, either. Rather, school learning socializes both boys and girls into more liberal views on issues clearly related to women’s economic opportunities. For views concerning dating practices or boy-girl interactions, which are irrelevant to the meritocracy-based mainstream values, academic performance has less consistent effects, with higher achievement scores sometimes associated with more conservative views among boys. Our results generally support the socialization and reproduction model of the role of school learning, although self-interest also explains high and low achievers’ different attitudes on dating and other personal-realm gender practices.
The effect of perceived interracial competition on psychological outcomes
Jonathan Gordils, Andrew Elliot & Jeremy Jamieson
PLoS ONE, January 2021
Abstract:
There remains a dearth of research on causal roles of perceived interracial competition on psychological outcomes. Towards this end, this research experimentally manipulated perceptions of group-level competition between Black and White individuals in the U.S. and tested for effects on negative psychological outcomes. In Study 1 (N = 899), participants assigned to the high interracial competition condition (HRC) reported perceiving more discrimination, behavioral avoidance, intergroup anxiety, and interracial mistrust relative to low interracial competition (LRC) participants. Study 2 - a preregistered replication and extension - specifically recruited similar numbers of only Black and White participants (N = 1,823). Consistent with Study 1, Black and White participants in the HRC condition reported more discrimination, avoidance, anxiety, and mistrust. Main effects for race also emerged: Black participants perceived more interracial competition and negative outcomes. Racial income inequality moderated effects; competition effects were stronger in areas with higher levels of inequality. Implications for theory development are discussed.
Implicit Bias Within Public Reporting: A Virtual Reality Experiment Examining “Suspicious” Activity
Jennifer Carson & Hailey Politte
Crime & Delinquency, forthcoming
Abstract:
Campaigns like that of the Department of Homeland Security’s “See Something, Say Something” are intended to increase public reporting of “terrorism-related behaviors.” Yet given prior research on whom the general public considers to be a terrorist, it is likely these types of programs are instead affected by pejorative automatic associations. With this in mind, we inquire: Does implicit bias affect public reporting within a suspicious activity scenario? Through a randomized experiment using virtual reality technology, we find evidence of such bias, as manifested in whether participants indicated they would call the police when presented with a Middle Eastern male. We conclude effective counterterrorism programming should involve an awareness campaign component detailing what terrorism truly looks like in the United States.