Unexpected
Racial stereotyping of gay men: Can a minority sexual orientation erase race?
Christopher Petsko & Galen Bodenhausen
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, July 2019, Pages 37-54
Abstract:
Decades of research indicate that the traits we ascribe to people often depend on their race. Yet, the bulk of this research has not considered how racial stereotypes might also depend on other aspects of targets' identities. To address this, researchers have begun to ask intersectional questions about racial stereotypes, such as whether they are applied in similar ways to men and women, or to children and adults. In the present studies, we examine whether men who are described as gay (vs. not) become de-racialized in the minds of perceivers. That is, we test whether gay (vs. non-gay) men are perceived as less stereotypic of their own racial or ethnic groups. Results consistently support the de-racialization hypothesis, regardless of whether targets are Black, White, Asian, or Hispanic. Moreover, when Black and Hispanic men are described as gay (vs. not), they become stereotypically “Whitened” in addition to seeming less stereotypic of their own racial groups. This “Whitening” effect is explained by Black and Hispanic men's seeming more affluent when described as gay (vs. when not), an effect that holds even when controlling for changes in these men's stereotypic femininity. Collectively, these findings underscore the point that race and sexual orientation are not orthogonal in the minds of perceivers. A minority sexual orientation can alter the racial characteristics ascribed to men, reducing the perceived presence of race-typical traits and, for low-SES men, increasing their perceived “Whiteness.”
America’s “Whiz Kids”? Ambivalence and the Model Minority Stereotype
Daisy Ball
Sociological Spectrum, May 2019, Pages 116-130
Abstract:
Asian Americans are commonly stereotyped as the “model minority”: smart, diligent, quiet, and conformist. While at the outset the model minority stereotype appears to be positive, consensus in academia is that this stereotype has significant negative consequences for those to whom it is applied. Moreover, the literature has repeatedly documented that the model minority stereotype is largely unfounded — that is, the model minority is a myth. The present study employs in-depth interviews with Asian American college students to gauge campus climate. Respondents tell dual tales: they reject the assumption that Asian Americans are the model minority while lending significant support for it via their narratives. Elements of the model minority stereotype are repeatedly invoked as respondents paint highly positive portraits of themselves. While the negative implications of the model minority stereotype are acknowledged, the possibility that this stereotype serves largely positive functions — for some Asian Americans — is considered, thereby adding much-needed nuance to the debate surrounding the model minority stereotype.
Negative emotion and perceived social class
Thora Bjornsdottir & Nicholas Rule
Emotion, forthcoming
Abstract:
People use stereotypes about the benefits of wealth and success to infer that rich people look happier than poor people. For instance, perceivers categorize smiling faces as rich more often than they categorize neutral faces as rich. Moreover, richer people’s neutral faces in fact display more positive affect than poorer people’s neutral faces. Applying these emotion stereotypes thus enables perceivers to accurately classify targets’ social class from their neutral faces. Extant research has left unexplained whether perceivers use broad differences in valence or specific emotions when judging others’ social class, however. We tested this here by examining how 4 negatively valenced emotions influence perceptions of social class: sadness, anger, disgust, and fear. Whereas sadness and anger relate to both stereotypes and actual correlates of lower social class (e.g., depression and hostility, respectively), no established links suggest that poorer people should express or experience greater disgust or fear. Consistent with stereotypes of lower-class people, targets expressing sadness and anger were categorized as poor or working class more often than neutral targets were. Targets expressing disgust and fear also looked lower class than neutral targets did, however. These combined findings therefore suggest that perceivers rely on valence differences rather than specific emotions to judge social class, indicating that the broad perception of low social class as a negative state (and high social class as a positive state) may drive face-based impressions of social class.
Green Tea and Ham: Cultural Mixing Reminders Decrease Considerate Behavior
Aurelia Mok & Chi-yue Chiu
Basic and Applied Social Psychology, May 2019, Pages 147-178
Abstract:
Past research examined how encounters with cultural mixing affect people’s responses toward those cultures. We examined broader effects of cultural mixing — on general social behavior. We tested that reminders of mixing between one’s local culture and a foreign culture make people less considerate. Also, this response is more likely for people who are voluntarily psychologically distant (vs. close) to the foreign culture. In studies with Americans, reminders of American and Asian (local–foreign) cultural mixing decreased considerate behavior. Individuals who were psychologically distant from Asian culture showed this effect (Studies 1–5). The underlying process involved perceived threat (Studies 2–5). Threat was decreased by highlighting cleansing (Study 3) or priming affinity to Asian culture (Study 5). Overall, mixing between home and foreign cultures can put people in a self-protective (self-concerned) mode that decreases their consideration of others. We discuss the implications for research on cultural mixing and organizational behavior.
Going It Alone: Competition Increases the Attractiveness of Minority Status
Erika Kirgios, Edward Chang & Katherine Milkman
University of Pennsylvania Working Paper, February 2019
Abstract:
Past research demonstrates that people prefer to affiliate with others who resemble them demographically and ideologically. However, we posit that this tendency toward homophily may be overridden by a desire to stand out when competing for scarce opportunities. Across six experiments, we find that anticipated competition weakens people’s desire to join groups that include similar others. When expecting to compete against fellow group members, women prefer to join all-male groups, Black participants prefer to join all-White groups, and partisans prefer to join groups composed of members of the opposite political party at a significantly higher rate than they do in the absence of competition. Two follow-up studies show that participants’ desire to stand out from other group members mediates this effect. Our findings highlight an important boundary condition to past research on homophily, shedding light on when and why minorities prefer to join groups in which they will be underrepresented.
Size Matters After All: Experimental Evidence that SEM Consumption Influences Genital and Body Esteem in Men
Kaylee Skoda & Cory Pedersen
SAGE Open, June 2019
Abstract:
Previous research has found that images depicted in the mainstream media have a negative influence on self-esteem, particularly among women. With the ease of accessibility and distribution of sexually explicit material (SEM) in recent years, due largely to the rise of the Internet, it has been postulated that consumers of SEM may experience reduced self-esteem in an effect similar to that found in research on exposure to mainstream media imagery. This experimental investigation explored whether exposure to SEM influenced self-esteem in consumers and whether this effect was comparable with that of exposure to mainstream media. Male and female participants were randomly assigned to no imagery, mainstream media imagery, or SEM imagery conditions and asked to report levels of overall global self-esteem, as well as levels of body-specific and genital-specific self-esteem. Mean scores were significantly lower for female participants relative to males overall, but exposure to SEM imagery revealed a significant negative effect on body-specific and genital-specific self-esteem among men only. Implications and limitations of these findings are discussed.
Sudden shifts in social identity swiftly shape implicit evaluation
Yi Jenny Xiao & Jay Van Bavel
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, July 2019, Pages 55-69
Abstract:
In this research, we examine how sudden shifts in social identity can swiftly shape implicit evaluations. According to dual system models of attitudes, implicit attitude change is often slow and insensitive to explicit cues or goals. However, the social identity approach suggests that the intergroup context can shape nearly every aspect of social cognition from explicit preferences to implicit evaluations. In three experiments, we test whether explicit cues about social identity and the intergroup context can swiftly shape implicit evaluations. We find that people quickly develop an implicit preference favoring their in-group relative to the out-group — even when the group assignments are arbitrary. Importantly, this pattern of implicit intergroup bias quickly shifts following subtle changes in the intergroup context. When we frame the two groups as cooperative (vs. competitive), implicit intergroup bias is eliminated. Finally, being switched from one minimal group to the other reverses implicit intergroup bias, leading people to favor their new in-group (and former out-group). Individual differences in the degree to which people readily switch their implicit intergroup preference are correlated with their need to belong. In sum, these studies provide evidence that social identity cues and goals rapidly tune implicit evaluation. This research not only speaks to the influence of social identity on implicit cognition, but also has implications for models of attitude development and change.
“You Look Like a Dude, Dude”: Masculine Females Undoing Gender in the Workplace
Raine Dozier
Journal of Homosexuality, June 2019, Pages 1219-1237
Abstract:
Interviews with 49 masculine females from diverse identities and occupations suggest that their workplace interactions undo gender, that is, breach rather than revise gender parameters. In this study, participants reveal that, although they were acknowledged as women in the workplace, their treatment was often more similar to men. Their classification as “like men” sometimes accrued advantage such as male camaraderie, access to information and opportunities, and greater assumed competence relative to gender-conforming women. Participants’ interactions with coworkers, supervisors, and customers suggest that, rather than a pariah femininity, masculine females may more accurately be described as a subordinate masculinity. Interactions that classify masculine females as predominantly masculine or “like men” denaturalize gender. By visibly countering gender’s anatomical basis and the notion of coherent gendered selves, masculine females might, in one small way, undo gender.
Is Martin Luther King or Malcom X the more acceptable face of protest? High-status groups’ reactions to low-status groups’ collective action
Cátia Teixeira, Russell Spears & Vincent Yzerbyt
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Work on collective action focuses mainly on the perspective of disadvantaged groups. However, the dynamics of social change cannot be fully understood without taking into account the reactions of the members of advantaged groups to collective action by low-status groups. In 10 experiments conducted in 4 different intergroup contexts (N = 1349), we examine advantaged groups support for normative versus non-normative collective action by disadvantaged groups. Experiments 1a to 1e show that normative collective action is perceived as more likely to improve the disadvantaged group’s position and that non-normative collective action is perceived as more damaging to the advantaged group’s social image. Also, these differences are due to differences in perceptions of actions violating norms of protest and perceptions of protesters as blaming the advantaged group for the inequality. Experiments 2a to 3 show that high compared with low identified members of advantaged groups distinguish more between types of collective action, showing a greater preference for the normative type. Both a mediational design and an experimental-causal-chain design (Experiments 3 and 4) show that support among high identifiers depends more on whether collective action damages the high-status group’s social image than on whether it actually reduces inequality. Findings suggest that high-status groups’ support for collective action is not only shaped by the perceived likelihood of change but also by its potential damage to the image of the high-status ingroup.
Collective existential threat mediates White population decline’s effect on defensive reactions
Hui Bai & Christopher Federico
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, forthcoming
Abstract:
We present evidence from two studies probing into whether perceived numerical decline in the White population translate into collective existential threat to Whites, leading in turn to defensive reactions. In Study 1, we used correlational data to show whether collective existential threat mediates the relationship between perceptions of White population decline and defensive political reactions (i.e., racial biases and conservatism) among Whites. In Study 2, we replicate the results of Study 1 experimentally manipulating perceptions of White population decline and growth. Our results suggest that Whites’ perceptions of the ingroup’s numerical decline have a unique effect on their racial and political attitudes via heightened feelings of collective existential threat.
Interracial Contact at Work: Can Workplace Diversity Reduce Bias?
Sean Darling-Hammond, Randy Lee & Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton
University of California Working Paper, April 2019
Abstract:
Research suggests that anti-Black bias among White Americans is persistent, pervasive, and has powerful negative effects on the lives of both Black and White Americans. Research also suggests that intergroup contact in workplaces can reduce bias. We seek to address two limitations in prior research. First, the workplaces reviewed in prior studies may not be typical. In study 1, we thus used the geocoded General Social Survey to examine contact effects in thousands of workplaces. After including a suite of controls, we found that working with Black individuals was generally associated with lower bias among White Americans. Second, the relationship between workplace contact and bias found in prior studies may stem from a selection bias — namely, that White individuals who work with Black individuals are systematically different from those who do not, and those systematic differences explain lower bias levels. In study 2, we used Propensity Score Matching to compare individuals who worked with Black individuals with their “virtual twins” — individuals who had the same propensity of working with Black individuals but did not. Using this approach, we estimated that working with Black individuals causes a statistically significant reduction in bias.
Why Us?! How Members of Minority Groups React to Public Health Advertisements Featuring Their Own Group
Mohammed El Hazzouri & Leah Hamilton
Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, July 2019, Pages 372-390
Abstract:
This research investigates how members of minority groups respond to public health advertising that features models who belong to their own group. Results of three experiments show that ethnic minority individuals report lower intentions to take the advice solicited by widely distributed public health advertisements when the advertisements feature models who belong to their own ethnic group (as opposed to white models). This effect is driven by the fact that, for ethnic minorities, featuring one’s own ethnic group in public health advertising creates perceptions of being negatively stereotyped by the advertisers. This outcome is pronounced for those with average and high stigma consciousness. These effects were generalized in a fourth experiment in which participants with obesity reacted negatively to public health advertising featuring obese models. Public health advertising featuring minorities does not generate this backlash effect when the advertising appears in community-based publications mostly read by the featured group.
Emergent Meanings: Reconciling Dispositional and Situational Accounts of Meaning-Making from Cultural Objects
Craig Rawlings & Clayton Childress
American Journal of Sociology, May 2019, Pages 1763-1809
Abstract:
Across a wide variety of topics and methodological approaches, researchers find that meaning is segregated along sociodemographic lines. Using real-world data, this article evaluates and helps reconcile the often-theorized but rarely tested mechanisms that segregate meaning. Shared meaning is defined as both greater agreement on a cultural object’s interpretive dimensions and a similar schema organizing how these interpretive dimensions interrelate. The setting is 21 book groups across the United States, all discussing the same previously unknown novel. The authors find that, through their interactions with similar others, the meanings individuals make out of cultural objects rapidly become demographically situated as individuals resonate with one another and the work itself. Results indicate that sociodemographically segregated meanings for even nonideological cultural objects may be the routine outcome of social structure and interaction. Researchers, by focusing largely on snapshots of segregated meanings on specific issues rather than on meaning-making processes, may contribute to an overly ingrained view of a divided culture.
A Case of Evolutionary Mismatch? Why Facial Width-to-Height Ratio May Not Predict Behavioral Tendencies
Dawei Wang et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study contributes to the growing literature linking physical characteristics and behavioral tendencies by advancing the current debate on whether a person’s facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) predicts a variety of antisocial tendencies. Specifically, our large-scale study avoided the social-desirability bias found in self-reports of behavioral tendencies by capturing survey data not only from more than 1,000 business executives but also from evaluators who reported knowing the focal individuals well. With this improved research design, and after conducting a variety of analyses, we found very little evidence of fWHR predicting antisocial tendencies. In light of prior research linking fWHR to social perceptions of evaluators, our results are suggestive of an evolutionary mismatch, whereby a physical characteristic once tied to antisocial tendencies in ancestral environments is — in modern environments — not predictive of such behaviors but instead predictive of biased perceptions.