Not a pretty picture
Courtney Bonam, Hilary Bergsieker & Jennifer Eberhardt
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
Abstract:
Social psychologists have long demonstrated that people are stereotyped on the basis of race. Researchers have conducted extensive experimental studies on the negative stereotypes associated with Black Americans in particular. Across 4 studies, we demonstrate that the physical spaces associated with Black Americans are also subject to negative racial stereotypes. Such spaces, for example, are perceived as impoverished, crime-ridden, and dirty (Study 1). Moreover, these space-focused stereotypes can powerfully influence how connected people feel to a space (Studies 2a, 2b, and 3), how they evaluate that space (Studies 2a and 2b), and how they protect that space from harm (Study 3). Indeed, processes related to space-focused stereotypes may contribute to social problems across a range of domains — from racial disparities in wealth to the overexposure of Blacks to environmental pollution. Together, the present studies broaden the scope of traditional stereotyping research and highlight promising new directions.
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Eric Rasmussen & Rebecca Densley
Sex Roles, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although content analyses have examined the portrayal of women in objectifying and demeaning ways in many forms of media, including several genres of music, little research has explored the portrayal of women in country music. The current study content analyzed the lyrics of 750 country songs popular in the United States across almost three decades (1990–2014) for their portrayal of female gender roles and objectification of women. Findings revealed that country songs from 2010 to 2014 were less likely to portray women in traditional roles, non-traditional roles, family roles, and as empowered than songs that were popular in the first half of one or both prior decades. Songs from 2010 to 2014 were also more likely to refer to a woman’s appearance, to women in tight or revealing clothing, to women as objects, and to women via slang than songs in one or both prior decades. Furthermore, results indicate that the changes in the portrayal of women appear to be driven by changes in lyrics in songs sung by male artists, but not by those in songs sung by female artists. The present research helps to lay a foundation for future work exploring the relations between exposure to country music, female gender role stereotypes, and attitudes and behaviors related to objectification of women.
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Robin Bergh et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, September 2016, Pages 367-395
Abstract:
Many scholars have proposed that people who reject one outgroup tend to reject other outgroups. Studies examining a latent factor behind different prejudices (e.g., toward ethnic and sexual minorities) have referred to this as generalized prejudice. Such research has also documented robust relations between latent prejudice factors and basic personality traits. However, targets of generalized prejudice tend to be lower in power and status and thus it remains an open question as to whether generalized prejudice, as traditionally studied, is about devaluing outgroups or devaluing marginalized groups. We present 7 studies, including experiments and national probability samples (N = 9,907 and 4,037) assessing the importance of outgroup devaluation, versus status- or power based devaluations, for understanding the nature of generalized prejudice, and its links to personality. Results show that (a) personality variables do not predict ingroup/outgroup biases in settings where power and status differences are absent, (b) women and overweight people who score high on generalized prejudice devalue their own groups, and (c) personality variables are far more predictive of prejudice toward low-compared with high-status targets. Together, these findings suggest that the personality explanation of prejudice including the generalized prejudice concept is not about ingroups versus outgroups per se, but rather about devaluing marginalized groups.
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Racial stereotypes impair flexibility of emotional learning
Joseph Dunsmoor et al.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, September 2016, Pages 1363-1373
Abstract:
Flexibility of associative learning can be revealed by establishing and then reversing cue-outcome discriminations. Here, we used functional MRI to examine whether neurobehavioral correlates of reversal-learning are impaired in White and Asian volunteers when initial learning involves fear-conditioning to a racial out-group. For one group, the picture of a Black male was initially paired with shock (threat) and a White male was unpaired (safe). For another group, the White male was a threat and the Black male was safe. These associations reversed midway through the task. Both groups initially discriminated threat from safety, as expressed through skin conductance responses (SCR) and activity in the insula, thalamus, midbrain and striatum. After reversal, the group initially conditioned to a Black male exhibited impaired reversal of SCRs to the new threat stimulus (White male), and impaired reversals in the striatum, anterior cingulate cortex, midbrain and thalamus. In contrast, the group initially conditioned to a White male showed successful reversal of SCRs and successful reversal in these brain regions toward the new threat. These findings provide new evidence that an aversive experience with a racial out-group member impairs the ability to flexibly and appropriately adjust fear expression towards a new threat in the environment.
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Mark White & Ludwin Molina
Social Psychology, July/August 2016, Pages 187-200
Abstract:
Five studies demonstrate that athletic praise can ironically lead to infrahumanization. College athletes were seen as less agentic than college debaters (Studies 1 and 2). College athletes praised for their bodies were also seen as less agentic than college athletes praised for their minds (Study 3), and this effect was driven by bodily admiration (Study 4). These effects occurred equally for White and Black athletes (Study 1) and did not depend on dualistic beliefs about the mind and body (Study 2), failing to provide support for assumptions in the literature. Participants perceived mind and body descriptions of both athletes and debaters as equally high in praise (Study 5), demonstrating that infrahumanization may be induced even if descriptions of targets are positively valenced. Additionally, decreased perceptions of agency led to decreased support for college athletes’ rights (Study 3).
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Overcorrection for Social-Categorization Information Moderates Impact Bias in Affective Forecasting
Tatiana Lau, Carey Morewedge & Mina Cikara
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Plural societies require individuals to forecast how others — both in-group and out-group members — will respond to gains and setbacks. Typically, correcting affective forecasts to include more relevant information improves their accuracy by reducing their extremity. In contrast, we found that providing affective forecasters with social-category information about their targets made their forecasts more extreme and therefore less accurate. In both political and sports contexts, forecasters across five experiments exhibited greater impact bias for both in-group and out-group members (e.g., a Democrat or Republican) than for unspecified targets when predicting experiencers’ responses to positive and negative events. Inducing time pressure reduced the extremity of forecasts for group-labeled but not unspecified targets, which suggests that the increased impact bias was due to overcorrection for social-category information, not different intuitive predictions for identified targets. Finally, overcorrection was better accounted for by stereotypes than by spontaneous retrieval of extreme group exemplars.
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Avoidant attachment style predicts less positive evaluations of warm (but not cold) social groups
Nicholas Santascoy, Sara Burke & John Dovidio
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, forthcoming
Abstract:
Two studies investigated the hypothesis that because individuals who are high on attachment avoidance tend to be disinterested in warmth in interpersonal relationships, they may respond less favorably to groups perceived as warm, attenuating the generally positive association between perceived warmth and favorable evaluation of a group. In Study 1, participants responded to groups representing the four quadrants based on warmth and competence identified by the stereotype content model (e.g., White people, homeless people). On average, people evaluated groups higher in stereotypical warmth more positively. However, as predicted, this effect was significantly weaker among participants higher in attachment avoidance. No effect was found for attachment anxiety. Study 2, in which the perceived warmth of a fictitious group was experimentally manipulated, conceptually replicated the effect for attachment avoidance. Understanding how attachment avoidance may attenuate favorable attitudes toward socially warm groups can help illuminate broader processes of intergroup relations.
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Beneath the beard: Do facial morphometrics influence the strength of judgments of men's beardedness?
Barnaby Dixson et al.
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Converging evidence suggests men's beards, like many androgen-dependent masculine secondary sexual traits, communicate masculinity and dominance intra-sexually while effects of men's beardedness on attractiveness ratings are more equivocal. Beards may enhance perceived masculinity and dominance via amplifying aspects of underlying craniofacial masculinity, particularly the size of the lower face and jaw. Here we tested these predictions across two studies. In Study 1, we tested how three facial metrics - objectively measured craniofacial masculinity, facial-width-to-height ratio (fWHR), and jaw size - calculated while clean-shaven impacted on ratings of attractiveness, masculinity and dominance of 37 men photographed when clean-shaven and with full beards. Results showed that beards exerted significant and positive effects on masculinity, dominance and to a lesser extent attractiveness. However, fWHR did not significantly interact with beardedness to influence the directions of any of the ratings, and while some linear and nonlinear interactions were significant between objective craniofacial masculinity and beardedness as well as between jaw size and beardedness, they tended to be subtle and dwarfed by the large main effect of beardedness on perceptual ratings. In Study 2, we measured ratings of attractiveness, masculinity and dominance for composite clean-shaven and bearded stimuli experimentally manipulated in facial shape to represent ±50% the shape of a beard, essentially manipulating the size of the lower face and jaw of the stimuli. We found a strong main effect whereby bearded stimuli enhanced dominance and masculinity ratings over clean-shaven stimuli. Increasing the size of the lower face and jaw augmented ratings of masculinity and dominance in clean-shaven stimuli but did not exert strong effects within bearded stimuli. Attractiveness ratings were highest for bearded faces with smaller jaws followed by bearded and clean-shaven faces with larger jaws and lowest for clean-shaven faces with small jaws. Taken together, our findings suggest that beards exert main effects on masculinity and dominance possibly by amplifying male typical facial shape. Attractiveness ratings of facial hair may reflect a compromise between overly dominant looking faces with larger jaws and the additive effects beardedness has on these ratings.
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Perpetuation of sexual objectification: The role of resource depletion
James Tyler, Rachel Calogero & Katherine Adams
British Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Women are sexually objectified when viewed and treated by others as mere objects. Abundant research has examined the negative consequences of being the target of sexual objectification; however, limited attention has focused on the person doing the objectification. Our focus is on the agent and how self-regulatory resources influence sexual objectification. Consistent with prior evidence, we reasoned that people have a well-learned automatic response to objectify sexualized women, and as such, we expected objectifying a sexualized (vs. personalized) woman would deplete fewer regulatory resources than not objectifying her. Findings across three studies confirmed our expectations, demonstrating the extent to which people objectify a sexualized woman or not is influenced by the availability of regulatory resources, a case that heretofore has been absent from the literature. These patterns are discussed in the context of the sexual objectification and self-regulation literature.
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Invisibility of Black women: Drawing attention to individuality
Amanda Sesko & Monica Biernat
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine nonprototypicality as an antecedent to invisibility (lack of individuation) of Black women. Study 1 varied numerical representation of Black women within the group “women” to be low/equal to White women, and Study 2 varied the trait overlap of Black women to be low/high relative to White women and/or Black men. Invisibility was measured by a face recognition task. Rather than invisibility being reduced under conditions of equal numerical representation and high trait overlap, low numerical representation and low trait overlap increased recognition for Black female faces. In Studies 3–4 participants primed to focus on differences showed better recognition for Black women’s faces than those primed to focus on similarities. We suggest a difference focus reduces reliance on categorical information, increasing individuation and visibility. But nonprototypicality matters: Study 5 perceivers who saw less overlap between “women” and “Black women” on gender stereotypes showed worse recognition of Black women.
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Race Essentialism and Social Contextual Differences in Children's Racial Stereotyping
Kristin Pauker et al.
Child Development, September/October 2016, Pages 1409–1422
Abstract:
The authors explored the differential emergence and correlates of racial stereotyping in 136 children ages 4–11 years across two broad social contexts: Hawai'i and Massachusetts. Children completed measures assessing race salience, race essentialism, and in-group and out-group stereotyping. Results indicated that the type of racial stereotypes emerging with age was context dependent. In both contexts in-group stereotyping increased with age. In contrast, there was only an age-related increase in out-group stereotyping in Massachusetts. Older children in Massachusetts reported more essentialist thinking (i.e., believing that race cannot change) than their counterparts in Hawai'i, which explained their higher out-group stereotyping. These results provide insight into the factors that may shape contextual differences in racial stereotyping.
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Evan Apfelbaum et al.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Colorblindness and multiculturalism offer divergent prescriptions for reducing racial tensions. Colorblindness encourages looking beyond racial differences, whereas multiculturalism encourages recognizing them. We introduce a new construct, perceived intentionality of racial discrimination (PIRD) — individuals' beliefs about how intentional discrimination is — to help explain when and why colorblindness versus multiculturalism will be preferred, and potentially more effective, for improving race relations. We first establish the distinctiveness of the PIRD construct and assess its stability over time and across intergroup contexts (Studies 1–2). We then observe that greater PIRD predicts beliefs that colorblindness versus multiculturalism will improve race relations (Studies 2–5), in part because unintentional (versus intentional) discrimination is perceived to stem from ignorance and misunderstanding versus knowingly treating racial groups unequally (Studies 4, 5b). Evidence also suggests that PIRD may shape the actual merits of colorblindness and multiculturalism for improving race relations via encouraging donations (Study 6), positive interracial interaction intentions (Study 7), and comfort with discussing race following the widely-publicized shooting of a Black teen (Study 8). Taken together, our empirical findings demonstrate the usefulness of PIRD for understanding, predicting, and influencing individuals' preferences for colorblindness versus multiculturalism.
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Perceiving and Confronting Sexism: The Causal Role of Gender Identity Salience
Katie Wang & John Dovidio
Psychology of Women Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although many researchers have explored the relations among gender identification, discriminatory attributions, and intentions to challenge discrimination, few have examined the causal impact of gender identity salience on women’s actual responses to a sexist encounter. In the current study, we addressed this question by experimentally manipulating the salience of gender identity and assessing its impact on women’s decision to confront a sexist comment in a simulated online interaction. Female participants (N = 114) were randomly assigned to complete a short measure of either personal or collective self-esteem, which was designed to increase the salience of personal versus gender identity. They were then given the opportunity to confront a male interaction partner who expressed sexist views. Compared to those who were primed to focus on their personal identity, participants who were primed to focus on their gender identity perceived the interaction partner’s remarks as more sexist and were more likely to engage in confrontation. By highlighting the powerful role of subtle contextual cues in shaping women’s perceptions of, and responses to, sexism, our findings have important implications for the understanding of gender identity salience as an antecedent of prejudice confrontation.