Not who you think
Unlearning implicit social biases during sleep
Xiaoqing Hu et al.
Science, 29 May 2015, Pages 1013-1015
Abstract:
Although people may endorse egalitarianism and tolerance, social biases can remain operative and drive harmful actions in an unconscious manner. Here, we investigated training to reduce implicit racial and gender bias. Forty participants processed counterstereotype information paired with one sound for each type of bias. Biases were reduced immediately after training. During subsequent slow-wave sleep, one sound was unobtrusively presented to each participant, repeatedly, to reactivate one type of training. Corresponding bias reductions were fortified in comparison with the social bias not externally reactivated during sleep. This advantage remained 1 week later, the magnitude of which was associated with time in slow-wave and rapid-eye-movement sleep after training. We conclude that memory reactivation during sleep enhances counterstereotype training and that maintaining a bias reduction is sleep-dependent.
---------------------
Benevolent racism? The impact of target race on ambivalent sexism
Jean McMahon & Kimberly Barsamian Kahn
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, forthcoming
Abstract:
Two studies investigated whether benevolent sexism is differentially applied based on a woman’s race. Study 1 demonstrated that participants expressed more benevolent sexism to White females than Black females when given no other information besides race. Study 2 introduced positive (chaste) and negative (promiscuous) sexually subtyped behaviors in addition to female race. Under these conditions, participants directed more benevolent sexism at chaste Black women rather than chaste White women, consistent with shifting standards theory. Despite receiving more benevolent sexism, chaste Black women did not receive more positive evaluations overall. Across both studies, expressions of hostile sexism did not differ by race. Results suggest that race may function as a subtype to elicit benevolent sexism contingent on behavior. Black women who follow traditional gender norms may be overcompensated for their conformity with benevolent sexism, but not receive more positive benefits.
---------------------
Arab American Housing Discrimination, Ethnic Competition, and the Contact Hypothesis
Michael Gaddis & Raj Ghoshal
ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, July 2015, Pages 282-299
Abstract:
This study uses a field experiment to study bias against living with Arab American women, a group whose position in the U.S. race system remains uncertain. We developed fictitious female white and Arab American identities and used the audit method to respond to 560 roommate-wanted advertisements in four metro areas: Los Angeles, New York, Detroit, and Houston. To focus on social — rather than purely economic — biases, all responses identified the sender as college-educated and employed and were written in grammatically correct English. We compare the number of replies received, finding that Arab-origin names receive about 40 percent fewer replies. We then model variation in discrimination rates by proximity to mosques, geographic concentration of mosques, and the percentage of Arabs living in a census tract so as to test ethnic competition theory and the contact hypothesis. In Los Angeles and New York, greater discrimination occurred in neighborhoods with the highest concentration of mosques.
---------------------
Finding a Roommate on Craigslist: Racial Discrimination and Residential Segregation
Raj Ghoshal & Michael Gaddis
University of Michigan Working Paper, May 2015
Abstract:
This study uses experimental methods to investigate covert racial discrimination in “roommate wanted” ads on Craigslist. Roommate relationships include significant social dimensions, and are an important site through which segregation may be reproduced or broken down, but have received very little attention by researchers. We develop fictitious racially-coded female names and identities for white, black, Hispanic, Chinese, and Indian room-seekers, along with Hispanic, Chinese, and Indian room-seekers with “Americanized” first names. We implement a field experiment and respond to over 1,500 “roommate wanted” advertisements on Craigslist across three metropolitan areas. Our emails express interest in the roommate-wanted ad, and mention that the sender is college-educated and employed full-time. We monitor response rates in the aggregate and within Census tracts of varying racial and economic characteristics. We find severe discrimination against African Americans, Hispanics, and Chinese-origin individuals. Asians with Americanized first names are treated equally to whites, while traditional Indian names and Americanized Latina names face moderate levels of discrimination. Patterns of discrimination by neighborhood race and class characteristics yield better access to upward mobility for Asian Americans than for underrepresented minority group members. Our findings reveal an important social mechanism that constricts integration and opportunity, shed new light on Asians’ and Latinas’ place in the US race system, reveal important interactions of race and presumed nativity, and show the ongoing relevance of race.
---------------------
Adem Aydogan & Karen Gonsalkorale
European Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although intergroup contact is an effective way of reducing prejudice, negative expectancies about interacting with out-group members often create a barrier to intergroup contact. The current study investigated cognitive appraisals by which negative expectancies may arise. Specifically, we examined whether increasing Anglo Australians' appraisals of their knowledge about Muslims would reduce their negative expectancies about an (ostensible) upcoming interaction with a Muslim Australian. Participants (89 Anglo Australians) completed a test that provided positive feedback either on their knowledge about Muslims or on their general knowledge (control). As predicted, Anglo Australians who received positive feedback on their knowledge about Muslims had a lower threat appraisal and expected to feel less anxious during the intergroup interaction compared with those who were in the control condition. This provides support for the precursory role out-group knowledge may have as a resource that is appraised upon the prospect of an intergroup interaction.
---------------------
The role of appearance stigma in implicit racial ingroup bias
Laurie Rudman & Meghan McLean
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, forthcoming
Abstract:
Minority groups who show implicit outgroup preference (African Americans, the elderly, and the overweight) are also likely to suffer from appearance stigma (for deviating from cultural aesthetic norms; Goffman, 1963). Three studies showed that people who automatically preferred Whites using the attitude Implicit Association Test (IAT) also associated Whites more than Blacks with attractiveness using the aesthetic IAT. In Study 1, the aesthetic IAT covaried with Black American’s preference for Black women with chemically treated versus natural hair, and rating products that purchase “racial capital” (e.g., skin whiteners) as important and useful. In Study 2, Black American’s pro-White bias was only eliminated when the attitude IAT represented their group as more attractive than Whites (i.e., when appearance stigma was reversed). Further, the aesthetic IAT predicted the attitude IAT more uniquely than outgroup contact. In concert, the findings suggest that appearance stigma is an overlooked factor influencing racial asymmetries in automatic ingroup esteem.
---------------------
Cheryl Cooky, Michael Messner & Michela Musto
Communication & Sport, forthcoming
Abstract:
The last quarter century has seen a dramatic movement of girls and women into sport, but this social change is reflected unevenly in sports media. This study, a 5-year update to a 25-year longitudinal study, indicates that the quantity of coverage of women’s sports in televised sports news and highlights shows remains dismally low. Even more so than in past iterations of this study, the lion’s share of coverage is given to the “big three” of men’s pro and college football, basketball, and baseball. The study reveals some qualitative changes over time, including a decline in the once-common tendency to present women as sexualized objects of humor replaced by a tendency to view women athletes in their roles as mothers. The analysis highlights a stark contrast between the exciting, amplified delivery of stories about men’s sports, and the often dull, matter-of-fact delivery of women’s sports stories. The article ends with suggestions for three policy changes that would move TV sports news and highlights shows toward greater gender equity and fairness.
---------------------
Kimberly Barsamian Kahn et al.
British Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines how perceived pervasiveness of prejudice differentially affects high and low status group members’ support for a low status group member who confronts. In Experiment 1 (N = 228), men and women read a text describing sexism as rare or as pervasive and subsequently indicated their support for a woman who confronted or did not confront a sexist remark. Experiment 2 (N = 324) specified the underlying process using a self-affirmation manipulation. Results show that men were more supportive of confrontation when sexism was perceived to be rare than when it was pervasive. By contrast, women tended to prefer confrontation when sexism was pervasive relative to when it was rare. Personal self-affirmation decreased men's and increased women's support for confrontation when prejudice was rare, suggesting that men's and women's support for confrontation when prejudice is rare is driven by personal impression management considerations. Implications for understanding how members of low and high status groups respond to prejudice are discussed.
---------------------
Jason McIntyre, Merryn Constable & Fiona Kate Barlow
European Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Property evaluations rarely occur in the absence of social context. However, no research has investigated how intergroup processes related to prejudice extend to concepts of property. In the present research, we propose that factors such as group status, prejudice and pressure to mask prejudiced attitudes affect how people value the property of racial ingroup and outgroup members. In Study 1, White American and Asian American participants were asked to appraise a hand-painted mug that was ostensibly created by either a White or an Asian person. Asian participants demonstrated an ingroup bias. White participants showed an outgroup bias, but this effect was qualified. Specifically, among White participants, higher racism towards Asian Americans predicted higher valuations of mugs created by Asian people. Study 2 revealed that White Americans' prejudice towards Asian Americans predicted higher valuations of the mug created by an Asian person only when participants were highly concerned about conveying a non-prejudiced personal image. Our results suggest that, ironically, prejudiced majority group members evaluate the property of minority group members whom they dislike more favourably. The current findings provide a foundation for melding intergroup relations research with research on property and ownership.
---------------------
Expectations and speech intelligibility
Molly Babel & Jamie Russell
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, April 2015
Abstract:
Socio-indexical cues and paralinguistic information are often beneficial to speech processing as this information assists listeners in parsing the speech stream. Associations that particular populations speak in a certain speech style can, however, make it such that socio-indexical cues have a cost. In this study, native speakers of Canadian English who identify as Chinese Canadian and White Canadian read sentences that were presented to listeners in noise. Half of the sentences were presented with a visual-prime in the form of a photo of the speaker and half were presented in control trials with fixation crosses. Sentences produced by Chinese Canadians showed an intelligibility cost in the face-prime condition, whereas sentences produced by White Canadians did not. In an accentedness rating task, listeners rated White Canadians as less accented in the face-prime trials, but Chinese Canadians showed no such change in perceived accentedness. These results suggest a misalignment between an expected and an observed speech signal for the face-prime trials, which indicates that social information about a speaker can trigger linguistic associations that come with processing benefits and costs.
---------------------
Jacquie Vorauer & Matthew Quesnel
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, forthcoming
Abstract:
This experiment examined how being the target of one of two commonly recommended strategies for improving intergroup relations — empathy or perspective-taking — affects minority group members’ sense of their group’s power and status in society. The main hypothesis was that the distinct status hierarchies implied by each of these mindsets would be communicated across face-to-face intergroup exchanges. Specifically, because empathy targets are typically in lower power positions whereas perspective-taking targets are typically in higher power positions, minority group members who were targets of a dominant group member’s empathy were expected to come away with a reduced sense of their group’s social standing relative to those who were targets of a dominant group member’s perspective-taking. Results were consistent with this prediction and further suggested that the mindset effect was partially mediated by a tendency for dominant group members’ efforts to empathize with minority targets to foster heightened imbalance in the levels of various power-relevant behaviors exhibited by each person.
---------------------
Brian Meier, Adam Fetterman & Michael Robinson
Social Psychology, Summer 2015, Pages 174-178
Abstract:
Replication efforts involving large samples are recommended in helping to determine the reliability of an effect. This approach was taken for a study from Meier, Robinson, and Clore (2004), one of the first papers in social cognition guided by conceptual metaphor theory, which reported that evaluations were faster when word valence metaphorically matched (e.g., a word with a negative meaning in black) rather than mismatched (e.g., a word with a negative meaning in white) font color. The present investigation was a direct large-scale replication attempt involving 980 participants who completed an experiment using web-based software and were diverse in terms of race, age, and geographical location. Words with a positive meaning were evaluated faster when font color was white rather than black and words with a negative meaning were evaluated faster when font color was black rather than white, replicating the main results of Meier et al. (2004).
---------------------
Effect of Wearing Eyeglasses on Judgment of Socioprofessional Group Membership
Nicolas Guéguen
Social Behavior and Personality, Spring 2015, Pages 661-665
Abstract:
Several researchers have reported that people photographed wearing eyeglasses were perceived as being more intelligent and honest than people who were not wearing them. In this study, conducted in France, I tried to replicate this effect using a forced-choice situation. Participants viewed a photograph of a male target wearing, or not wearing, eyeglasses and were instructed to estimate his socioprofessional group using a well-known French list. Results showed that, compared with the target without eyeglasses, the target wearing eyeglasses was more frequently associated with a higher status socioprofessional group and less often with midstatus or low-status socioprofessional groups. These results confirmed that a common cue of facial appearance is sufficient to activate a stereotype of social group membership.
---------------------
The interaction between aging and death anxieties predicts ageism
Ehud Bodner et al.
Personality and Individual Differences, November 2015, Pages 15–19
Abstract:
While aging anxiety is associated with the threat of deterioration that leads to death, death anxiety is related to the threat of non-existence and to fears from an unknown afterlife, and both anxieties can lead to ageism. The current study examined the unexplored relationship between these two existential anxieties and ageism. Measures of aging and death anxieties, ageism (in the form of ageist attitudes), and various measures of physical health were collected from 1073 older adults at the age range of 50–86. When death anxiety was low, aging anxiety was positively related to ageism, but when aging anxiety was low, death anxiety was positively related to ageism. The interaction between both anxieties and ageism remained significant after controlling for a myriad of background characteristics and physical health measures. These findings, which point at the distinctive and complementary roles that both anxieties have in connecting between one another and ageist attitudes, are discussed in light of theories on ageism.
---------------------
Self-expansion motivation improves cross-group interactions and enhances self-growth
Odilia Dys-Steenbergen, Stephen Wright & Arthur Aron
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, forthcoming
Abstract:
Rather than seeing outgroup members as targets of fear, conflict, or even tolerance, the self-expansion model proposes that outgroup members might be seen as attractive opportunities for self-growth. The current study utilizes an experimental manipulation to raise (or lower) self-expansion motivation prior to a positive interaction with a stranger from a different ethnic group. The results show that priming high self-expansion motivation leads to higher quality interactions, greater interpersonal closeness, greater feelings of self-growth, and higher feelings of self-efficacy. In addition, these outcomes show patterns of mediation consistent with the predictions of self-expansion theory. These findings point to a potentially valuable tool for improving the quality of cross-group contact experiences. More broadly, they focus attention on the genuinely positive functions that relationships with outgroup members can have for the self.
---------------------
Omotayo Banjo et al.
Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Entertainment consumption is often shared with others, whether friends or strangers. Whereas most co-viewing scholarship has examined parent–child viewing, few have examined viewing among in-group and out-group members. The present study explores in-group and out-group responses to racial comedy featuring disparaging information about the in-group. Findings suggest that Blacks report a more positive attitude, greater perceived similarity, and identification when viewing racially charged comedy with Black in-group members than when viewing with White out-group members. White viewers display no differences in their responses to television comedy based on whether they were viewing with in-group members or out-group members. Implications are discussed.