First Impressions
Reducing Facial Stereotype Bias in Consequential Social Judgments: Intervention Success With White Male Faces
Youngki Hong, Kao-Wei Chua & Jonathan Freeman
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Initial impressions of others based on facial appearances are often inaccurate yet can lead to dire outcomes. Across four studies, adult participants underwent a counterstereotype training to reduce their reliance on facial appearance in consequential social judgments of White male faces. In Studies 1 and 2, trustworthiness and sentencing judgments among control participants predicted whether real-world inmates were sentenced to death versus life in prison, but these relationships were diminished among trained participants. In Study 3, a sequential priming paradigm demonstrated that the training was able to abolish the relationship between even automatically and implicitly perceived trustworthiness and the inmates’ life-or-death sentences. Study 4 extended these results to realistic decision-making, showing that training reduced the impact of facial trustworthiness on sentencing decisions even in the presence of decision-relevant information. Overall, our findings suggest that a counterstereotype intervention can mitigate the potentially harmful effects of relying on facial appearance in consequential social judgments.
Individualism and racial tolerance
Claudia Williamson Kramer
Public Choice, December 2023, Pages 347-370
Abstract:
This paper explores how cultural values associated with individualism versus collectivism affect attitudes toward racial tolerance. Individualism refers to social norms and cultural values that support individual rights and self-determination. Therefore, individualism is inherently egalitarian and should transcend racial identities, fostering attitudes of racial tolerance. To empirically examine the correlation between values associated with individualism and attitudes favoring racial tolerance, individual-level data from the Integrated Values Surveys is collected across multiple countries and over a span of time (1981–2021). The results indicate a positive association between individualism and racially tolerant attitudes. Furthermore, this conclusion remains robust after controlling for demographic and socio-economic variables such as income, education, religious affiliation and attendance, social trust, as well as country and time fixed effects. The within-country analysis enables the isolation of the impact of individualism from other potential confounding factors.
Finding your roots: Do DNA ancestry tests increase racial (in)tolerance?
Sasha Kimel et al.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, forthcoming
Abstract:
While it is often assumed that Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) ancestry results illuminate one’s true racial or ethnic lineage, the consequence of this inference remains largely unknown. This leaves two conflictual hypotheses largely untested: Do DNA ancestry tests increase racial tolerance or, alternatively, racial intolerance? Two multiwave experiments aimed to test these hypotheses using either real or bogus DNA ancestry results in combination with random assignment and a tightly controlled repeated-measurements experimental design. Bayesian and inferential analyses on both general and student populations of majority-group members in the United States (i.e., White/European Americans) indicated no support for either hypothesis on measures including multiculturalism, essentialism, and outgroup bias, even when moderating factors such as the degree of unexpected ancestry and genetic knowledge were considered. Despite wide societal optimism as well as concern, receiving DNA ancestry results appears not to impact feelings and attitudes about other racial and ethnic groups. Implications for prospective test-takers and education are discussed.
Genetic Options and Constraints: A Randomized Controlled Trial on How Genetic Ancestry Tests Affect Ethnic and Racial Identities
Wendy Deborah Roth & Şule Yaylacı
American Journal of Sociology, forthcoming
Abstract:
An estimated 21% of U.S. adults have taken genetic ancestry tests (GATs). Recent studies have found that many test-takers change their ethnic and racial identities based on GAT results, viewing them through social lenses rather than always deferring to genetic information. Yet these studies have several limitations; most fail to consider the counterfactual or account for ancestry percentages reported in admixture tests. In this first randomized controlled trial of GATs, we analyze their causal impact on identity change among non-Hispanic White Americans (N=802). We address how much identity change can be attributed to GATs and evaluate the independent and interactional effects of identity aspirations and test-reported ancestry percentages. We find very low rates of racial identity change, and significant but small amounts of ethnic identity change beyond that experienced by non-test-takers. We find support for identity aspirations and GAT-reported ancestry percentages as change mechanisms. We also find that GATs do not support our test-takers’ claims to Native American ancestry; they are more than twice as likely as non-GAT-takers to drop Native American identities after testing.
Is White-Collar Crime White? Racialization in the National Press Coverage of White-Collar Crime from 1950 to 2010
Marina Zaloznaya, Alexandria Yakes & James Wo
Law & Social Inquiry, November 2023, Pages 1117-1137
Abstract:
While much is written about racialization of street criminals in the American media, racial dimensions of the media framing of white-collar crime remain underexplored. To address this issue, we analyze the coverage of bribery, electoral fraud, tax evasion, and insider trading in five national newspapers between 1950 and 2010. Drawing on John Hagan’s (2012) work, we trace the racialization of white-collar crime in the press back to Richard Nixon’s presidency and the beginnings of the War on Drugs. We also find that race is a significant predictor of offenders’ individualization, or the length of description accorded to them by writers. We argue that by individualizing black offenders significantly more than white perpetrators, reporters connote their oddity in the context of white-collar criminality and contribute to their collective framing as an exception. Finally, we find that black perpetrators receive significantly more positive coverage than white offenders, which serves to further underscore their distinctiveness from stereotypical black criminals and their similarity to nonthreatening (white) Americans. These findings support Hagan’s (2012) argument that racialization of street crime is mirrored by the collective framing of elite economic crime as white and, by extension, a nonthreatening side effect of American capitalism.
Gender stereotypes and hiding low performance
Shuya He & Charles Noussair
Economic Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
Do men incur a psychological cost when they are outperformed by a woman competitor? We conduct a laboratory experiment that allows us to measure this cost. The experiment is conducted in both the US and China. In our Chinese sample, men are willing to pay more to hide the fact that they have performed worse than another individual than women are, while there is no gender difference in the US. In China, women are willing to pay more to hide poor performance when losing to another woman than to a man, while in the US, the opposite pattern is observed.
Shifting Standards of Sexuality: An Intersectional Account of Men’s Objectification of Black and White Women
Ariel Mosley, Natasha Bharj & Monica Biernat
Sex Roles, November 2023, Pages 567–594
Abstract:
To what extent do men objectify and dehumanize Black and White women based on shifting standards of sexuality? Across five experimental studies (2 pre-registered; N = 702), White (Studies 1-4a) and Black (Study 4b) American heterosexual men evaluated a series of images of Black and White women who were either fully- or scantily-clothed, and provided ratings of sexual objectification, animalistic dehumanization, and perceived appropriateness of the image for use in advertising. Participants responded to images of fully-clothed Black women with greater sexual objectification and animalistic dehumanization, and lower appropriateness, compared to fully-clothed White women. However, scantily-clothed White women elicited greater sexual objectification and animalistic dehumanization, and lower attributions of appropriateness compared to scantily-clothed Black women. These race interactions with clothing type support a default objectification hypothesis for Black women, and a shifting standards of sexuality hypothesis for White women. An internal meta-analysis across the five experiments further supported these two hypotheses. This research illuminates the importance of examining racialized sexual objectification in terms of distinct group-specific perceptions and attributions. Implications of this intersectional account of objectification for intergroup relations are discussed.
Biased Beliefs About White Releasees’ Sensitivity to Social Pain
Samantha Pejic & Jason Deska
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
The accurate perception of others’ pain is a prerequisite to provide needed support. However, social pain perception is prone to biases. Multiple characteristics of individuals bias both physical and social pain judgments (e.g., ethnicity and facial structure). The current work extends this research to a chronically stigmatized population: released prisoners (i.e., releasees). Recognizing the large United States releasee rates and the significant role support plays in successful re-integration, we conducted four studies testing whether people have biased judgments of White male releasees’ sensitivity to social pain. Compared with the noncriminally involved, people judged releasees as less sensitive to social pain in otherwise identical situations (Studies 1a–3), an effect that was mediated by perceived life hardship (Study 2). Finally, judging releasees’ as relatively insensitive to social pain undermined perceivers’ social support judgments (Study 3). The downstream consequences of these findings on re-integration success are discussed.