One of a kind
Ethnic diversity deflates price bubbles
Sheen Levine et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Markets are central to modern society, so their failures can be devastating. Here, we examine a prominent failure: price bubbles. Bubbles emerge when traders err collectively in pricing, causing misfit between market prices and the true values of assets. The causes of such collective errors remain elusive. We propose that bubbles are affected by ethnic homogeneity in the market and can be thwarted by diversity. In homogenous markets, traders place undue confidence in the decisions of others. Less likely to scrutinize others’ decisions, traders are more likely to accept prices that deviate from true values. To test this, we constructed experimental markets in Southeast Asia and North America, where participants traded stocks to earn money. We randomly assigned participants to ethnically homogeneous or diverse markets. We find a marked difference: Across markets and locations, market prices fit true values 58% better in diverse markets. The effect is similar across sites, despite sizeable differences in culture and ethnic composition. Specifically, in homogenous markets, overpricing is higher as traders are more likely to accept speculative prices. Their pricing errors are more correlated than in diverse markets. In addition, when bubbles burst, homogenous markets crash more severely. The findings suggest that price bubbles arise not only from individual errors or financial conditions, but also from the social context of decision making. The evidence may inform public discussion on ethnic diversity: it may be beneficial not only for providing variety in perspectives and skills, but also because diversity facilitates friction that enhances deliberation and upends conformity.
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Condoning Stereotyping?: How Awareness of Stereotyping Prevalence Impacts Expression of Stereotypes
Michelle Duguid & Melissa Thomas-Hunt
Journal of Applied Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The deleterious effects of stereotyping on individual and group outcomes have prompted a search for solutions. One approach has been to increase awareness of the prevalence of stereotyping in the hope of motivating individuals to resist natural inclinations. However, it could be that this strategy creates a norm for stereotyping, which paradoxically undermines desired effects. The present research demonstrates that individuals who received a high prevalence of stereotyping message expressed more stereotypes than those who received a low prevalence of stereotyping message (Studies 1a, 1b, 1c, and 2) or no message (Study 2). Furthermore, working professionals who received a high prevalence of stereotyping message were less willing to work with an individual who violated stereotypical norms than those who received no message, a low prevalence of stereotyping message, or a high prevalence of counter-stereotyping effort message (Study 3). Also, in a competitive task, individuals who received a high prevalence of stereotyping message treated their opponents in more stereotype-consistent ways than those who received a low prevalence of stereotyping message or those who received a high prevalence of counter-stereotyping effort message (Study 4).
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Looking Black or looking back? Using phenotype and ancestry to make racial categorizations
Allison Skinner & Gandalf Nicolas
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, March 2015, Pages 55–63
Abstract:
When it comes to the racial categorization of biracial individuals, do people look at phenotypicality (i.e., a race consistent appearance) for clues, or do they look back at racial ancestry? We manipulated racial ancestry and racial phenotypicality (using morphed photos) to investigate their influence on race categorizations. Results indicated that while ancestry and phenotypicality information both influenced deliberate racial categorization, phenotypicality had a substantially larger effect. We also investigated how these factors influenced perceptions of warmth and competence, and racial discrimination. We found that Black–White biracials with low Black phenotypicality were perceived as warmer and more competent than biracial targets with moderate and high Black phenotypicality. Moreover, given identical instances of racially discriminatory treatment, low Black racial phenotypicality targets were significantly less likely to be perceived as victims of racial discrimination. Our findings shed light on how ancestry and phenotype influence perceptions of race and real world social judgments such as perceptions of discrimination. Previous studies have shown that low minority ancestry biracials are presumed to have experienced less discrimination; our findings indicate that racial cues impact perceptions of discrimination even in incidences of known racial discrimination.
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Jennifer Howell, Sarah Gaither & Kate Ratliff
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study used archival data to examine how White, Black, and biracial Black/White people respond to implicit attitude feedback suggesting that they harbor racial bias that does not align with their self-reported attitudes. The results suggested that people are generally defensive in response to feedback indicating that their implicit attitudes differ from their explicit attitudes. Among monoracial White and Black individuals, this effect was particularly strong when they learned that they were implicitly more pro-White than they indicated explicitly. By contrast, biracial Black/White individuals were defensive about large discrepancies in either direction (more pro-Black or more pro-White implicit attitudes). These results pinpoint one distinct difference between monoracial and biracial populations and pave the way for future research to further explore how monoracial majority, minority, and biracial populations compare in other types of attitudes and responses to personal feedback.
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The role of attachment style in women’s recognition of sexism
Tara Van Bommel, Amy Sheehy & Janet Ruscher
Personality and Individual Differences, February 2015, Pages 235–240
Abstract:
The present research examined how differences in attachment style might impact women’s awareness of sexism. Identity threat models of stigma emphasize the role of individual differences in responding to social identity threats, however little is known about what factors lead to avoidance versus vigilance for such threats. Furthermore, research shows that insecure attachment is related to avoidant responses to blatantly threatening cues, but vigilance when such cues are ambiguous. Thus, insecurely attached women should acknowledge less sexism toward women when faced with instances of blatant sexism, whereas their awareness should be heightened by instances of ambiguous sexism. Conversely, securely attached women should acknowledge sexism when encountering blatant rather than ambiguous instances of sexism. In a test of these hypotheses, 155 women were exposed to either a male verbally rejecting a women’s opinion for blatantly sexist or ambiguously sexist reasons. The data confirm predictions. The findings suggest interventions to improve outcomes for stigmatized groups should consider impacts of attachment style, and further, that attachment style might partially explain women’s divergent responses to sexism.
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Anthony Schmidt & Kevin Coe
Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, Fall 2014, Pages 655-670
Abstract:
Applying Social Identity Theory and Linguistic Intergroup Bias to the analysis of mediated sports commentary, this study examines racial bias surrounding the National Football League draft. A content analysis of 41 mock drafts — amounting to more than 1,300 descriptions of individual athletes — revealed significant differences in how commentators discussed White and non-White athletes. In particular, commentators more often described White athletes and in-group athletes in terms of mental traits, but described non-White athletes and out-group athletes in terms of physical traits. Additionally, in-group athletes were talked about in more abstract terms, consistent with Linguistic Intergroup Bias.
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Old Glass Ceilings are Hard to Break: Gender Usage Trends in Annual Reports
Tim Loughran & Bill McDonald
University of Notre Dame Working Paper, November 2014
Abstract:
We examine gender usage in a sample of 89,195 annual reports filed with the SEC during 1996-2013. We find that, after adjusting for other effects, annual reports by younger firms use proportionally more female-linked words than documents created by older, more mature companies. This finding likely reflects gender-related cultural differences between young and old firms. We also report that gender usage differs dramatically across both industry and market values of equity. Historically male dominated industries and industries that do not sell directly to retail customers have lower ratios of female/male word usage while industries characterized as business-to-consumer have substantially higher relative female counts. Larger companies have higher public accountability and thus, as expected, have annual report language that more frequently uses female titles and personal pronouns.
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Memory of an outgroup: (Mis)identification of Middle Eastern-looking men in news stories about crime
Jennifer Hoewe
Journal of Media Psychology, Fall 2014, Pages 161-175
Abstract:
This study examined White individuals’ ability to recall non-White criminal perpetrators, specifically Middle Eastern-looking men, as portrayed in news stories. Considering social identity theory and the Arab/Muslim/Middle Eastern terrorist stereotype, White participants were expected to correctly identify White European-looking men and misidentify Middle Eastern-looking men as the perpetrators in news stories. A 2 (race/ethnicity of the perpetrator: White European- or Middle Eastern-looking) × 2 (story type: violent or nonviolent) experiment revealed that correct recall of the perpetrator for Middle Eastern-looking men was lower than that of White European-looking men. However, White individuals were not significantly more likely to incorrectly recall Middle Eastern-looking men than White European-looking men as perpetrators. Regardless of condition, more negative attitudes toward Arabs and Muslims predicted the incorrect recall of both Middle Eastern- and White European-looking men as perpetrators. These results are explained in light of their contradiction of existing theory. Also, a new measure of attitudes toward Arabs and Muslims is recommended.
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Reducing Prejudice Across Cultures via Social Tuning
Jeanine Skorinko et al.
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
This research examines whether culture influences the extent to which people’s attitudes tune toward others’ egalitarian beliefs. Hong Kong Chinese, but not American, participants were less prejudiced, explicitly and implicitly, toward homosexuals when they interacted with a person who appeared to hold egalitarian views as opposed to neutral views (Experiment 1). In Experiments 2 and 3, cultural concepts were manipulated. Americans and Hong Kong Chinese who were primed with a collectivist mind-set showed less explicit and implicit prejudice when the experimenter was thought to endorse egalitarian views than when no views were conveyed. Such differences were not found when both cultural groups were primed with an individualist mind-set. These findings suggest that cultural value orientations can help mitigate prejudice.
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Thijs Bouman, Martijn van Zomeren & Sabine Otten
British Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
In times of economic downturn, perceived realistic intergroup threats (e.g., labour competition) often dominate political and media discourse. Although local outgroups (e.g., local immigrants) can be experienced as sources of realistic threats, we propose that such threats can also be perceived to be caused by distant outgroups (e.g., European Union members perceiving Greece to threaten their economies) and that such distant threats can carry over into local intolerance (e.g., increasing intolerance towards local immigrant groups). We predicted and found in two studies that perceived distant realistic threats carried over into local intolerance via two different pathways. First, direct reactions towards the distant outgroup can generalize to culturally similar local outgroups (the group-based association pathway). Secondly, Study 2 indicated that when the distant threat was attributed to stereotypical outgroup traits (e.g., being lazy), distant realistic threats activated local realistic threats, which subsequently influenced local intolerance (the threat-based association pathway). Taken together, our studies indicate that perceived realistic threats foreign can turn domestic, but in two different ways.
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Paul Rozin et al.
Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, Nov 2014, Pages 412-429
Abstract:
We assessed the degree of discomfort reported by U.S. and Czech Holocaust survivors (Study 1) and Jewish American college students (Study 2) to the prospect of physical proximity to a wide range of contemporary Germans with varying linkages to Nazi Germany, and a range of objects or activities associated with Germany (e.g., riding in a Volkswagen). On both measures, there was a very wide range of aversions, from almost absent to almost complete. A substantial number of participants were uncomfortable with Germans born after World War II. The Czech survivors showed the least aversion, less than the students, probably because the Czechs had a great deal of experience with Germans and German culture prior to and following World War II. Trait forgiveness did not predict aversion. Degree of blame for Germans and Jewish identity predicted current aversion. German essentialism — the idea that “Germanness” is inherent, indelible, uniform, and transmitted across generations — may be the best predictor of total German person aversion and is the only predictor that can easily explain the fact that that many individuals are uncomfortable living near Germans who were born after World War II.
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Andrea Meltzer & James McNulty
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
One source of women’s body dissatisfaction appears to be the media’s suggestion that men desire extremely thin women. Thus, three independent experiments examined whether reversing this suggestion would improve women’s weight satisfaction. In all three studies, women viewed images of female models with bodies larger than the thin-ideal. Women who were randomly assigned to be told that men found those models attractive experienced increased weight satisfaction compared to women who were not given any information (Studies 1 and 2) and women who were told that men preferred ultra-thin women (Study 2). Study 3 (a) provided evidence for the theoretical mechanism — internalization of the thin-ideal — and (b) revealed that telling women that other women find larger models attractive does not yield similar benefits. These findings extend the tripartite influence model by demonstrating that women’s beliefs about men’s body preferences are an important moderator of the association between media influence and women’s body satisfaction.
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A.B. Siegling, Michelle Eskritt & Mary Delaney
Current Psychology, December 2014, Pages 479-500
Abstract:
We investigated the role that linguistic abstraction may play in people’s perceptions of gender in spoken language. In the first experiment, participants told stories about their best friend and romantic partner. Variations in linguistic abstraction and gender-linked adjectives for describing their close others were examined. Participants used significantly more abstract language to describe men compared to women, possibly reflecting a gender stereotype associated with the dispositionality factor of linguistic abstraction. In a second experiment, a new group of participants judged the gender of the protagonists from the stories generated in Experiment 1, after the explicit linguistic gender cues were removed. Consistent with the dispositionality factor, linguistic abstraction moderated the effects of the gender stereotypicality of the context (masculine, feminine, or neutral) on participants’ gender judgments. Discussion focuses on the implications of the results for the communication of gender stereotypes and the effects of linguistic abstraction in more naturalistic language.
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Who Owns Implicit Attitudes? Testing a Metacognitive Perspective
Erin Cooley et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, January 2015, Pages 103-115
Abstract:
Metacognitive inferences about ownership for one’s implicit attitudes have the power to turn implicit bias into explicit prejudice. In Study 1, participants were assigned to construe their implicit attitudes toward gay men as belonging to themselves (owned) or as unrelated to the self (disowned). Construing one’s implicit responses as owned led to greater implicit-explicit attitude correspondence. In Study 2, we measured ownership for implicit attitudes as well as self-esteem. We predicted that ownership inferences would dictate explicit attitudes to the degree that people had positive views of the self. Indeed, higher ownership for implicit bias was associated with greater implicit-explicit attitude correspondence, and this effect was driven by participants high in self-esteem. Finally, in Study 3, we manipulated inferences of ownership and measured self-esteem. Metacognitions of ownership affected implicit-explicit attitude correspondence but only among those with relatively high self-esteem. We conclude that subjective inferences about implicit bias affect explicit prejudice.
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Effects of News Stereotypes on the Perception of Facial Threat
Florian Arendt, Nina Steindl & Peter Vitouch
Journal of Media Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The human face is central to social interactions and therefore of primary importance in social perception. Two recent discoveries have contributed to a more thorough understanding of the role of news stereotypes in the perception of facial threat: First, social-cognition research has revealed that automatically activated stereotypes influence the perception of facial threat. Individuals holding hostile stereotypes toward dark-skinned outgroup members perceive ambiguous dark-skinned faces as more hostile than similar light-skinned faces. Second, media-stereotyping research has found that the media can influence individuals’ automatically activated stereotypes. Combining these two findings, it was hypothesized that reading tabloid articles about crimes committed by dark-skinned offenders would increase the perceived facial threat of meeting dark-skinned strangers in a subsequent situation. This hypothesis was tested in a laboratory experiment. Participants read crime articles where cues indicating (dark) skin color were mentioned or not. The results showed that reading about dark-skinned criminals increases the perceived facial threat of dark-skinned strangers compared with light-skinned strangers.