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The effects of category and physical features on stereotyping and evaluation
Abstract
Stereotyping and prejudice researchers have provided numerous demonstrations that the greater a target's prototypicality, the more similar attitudes and inferences will be to the attitudes and stereotypes perceivers have about the group. However, research to date has yet to also test for a possible quadratic association relating target prototypicality to judgment. The current research offers an extension of existing research by testing for both linear and quadratic relationships between target prototypicality and stereotyping using an implicit measure of stereotyping. In Study 1, we tested for linear and quadratic associations between racial prototypicality and stereotyping of Black and White males, while also manipulating the valence of the stereotypes. Study 2 offered a conceptual replication of Study 1 and tested for linear and quadratic associations between gender prototypicality and stereotyping of White males and White females, while again manipulating the valence of these gender stereotypes. Across both studies we replicated previous research showing a positive, linear effect of prototypicality on stereotyping, such that targets greater in prototypicality elicited greater stereotyping. We also found evidence of a quadratic effect of prototypicality, such that average prototypic targets elicited the most stereotyping. Finally, we observed that negative, rather than positive, stereotypes drove both the linear and quadratic effects we report.
... Psychological research has extensively examined how prototypicality -the degree to which an individual's features are representative of the stereotypical characteristics of their group -affects stereotyping. Studies have consistently demonstrated that individuals who are rated as more prototypical of their group identity are subject to increased stereotyping (e.g., Ma et al., 2018;Livingston and Brewer, 2002;Blair et al., 2002;Maddox and Gray, 2002;Anderson and Cromwell, 1977). For example, Maddox and Gray (2002) found that when participants were asked to list traits to describe darker-skinned and lighter-skinned Black individuals, they were more likely to list Black-stereotypic traits in response to darker-skinned individuals, suggesting that more prototypical faces evoke stronger category judgments, which in turn lead to stronger trait associations and less perceived variability. ...
... Using the vision modality of VLMs, we analyzed the impact perceived prototypicality and femininity have on VLM stereotyping. In Study 1, texts associated with racially prototypical faces exhibited more homogeneity, consistent with findings in the stereotyping literature (e.g., Ma et al., 2018). In Study 2, texts associated with feminine faces exhibited more homogeneity. ...
Vision Language Models (VLMs), exemplified by GPT-4V, adeptly integrate text and vision modalities. This integration enhances Large Language Models' ability to mimic human perception, allowing them to process image inputs. Despite VLMs' advanced capabilities, however, there is a concern that VLMs inherit biases of both modalities in ways that make biases more pervasive and difficult to mitigate. Our study explores how VLMs perpetuate homogeneity bias and trait associations with regards to race and gender. When prompted to write stories based on images of human faces, GPT-4V describes subordinate racial and gender groups with greater homogeneity than dominant groups and relies on distinct, yet generally positive, stereotypes. Importantly, VLM stereotyping is driven by visual cues rather than group membership alone such that faces that are rated as more prototypically Black and feminine are subject to greater stereotyping. These findings suggest that VLMs may associate subtle visual cues related to racial and gender groups with stereotypes in ways that could be challenging to mitigate. We explore the underlying reasons behind this behavior and discuss its implications and emphasize the importance of addressing these biases as VLMs come to mirror human perception.
... Research has identified a host of factors that affect the degree to which categorical knowledge is utilized. For instance, the utilization of categorical knowledge is increased when (i) it is acquired through empirical observation rather than explicit instruction (Kim and Lee, 2017), (ii) the target member fits well the social category (Maddox, 2004;Ma et al., 2018), (iii) the category in itself is cohesive (Patalano and Ross, 2007;Kim and Lee, 2017), (iv) the category knowledge is relevant (Zukier and Pepitone, 1984), (v) there is uncertainty at the individual level (Locksley et al., 1982;Wichman, 2012), (vi) (visual) attention is directed to the social category (Macrae et al., 1999a), (vii) there are strong prejudices toward the category (Locke et al., 1994;Lepore and Brown, 1997) but see: (Akrami et al., 2006) and (viii) when the social category represents an outgroup (for a review see Rubin and Badea, 2012). In contrast, limited research has focused on investigating simultaneously how categorical and individualspecific information acquired from individual-level observations inform our predictions about people's choice behavior. ...
... Interestingly, we did not find that participants generalize their group knowledge to a different degree depending on whether the newly introduced and unknown agent belongs to the Logo or the No Logo condition. This contrasts with earlier findings that generalization of categorical group knowledge does take place, particularly when the group member is prototypical for the group (e.g., Maddox, 2004;Ma et al., 2018). Although we can only speculate about the lack of an effect here, it might be that participants' representations of the group-level preference in the Logo condition were not distinct enough to see clear generalization effects. ...
Meaningful social interactions rest upon our ability to accurately infer and predict other people’s preferences. Ireferen doing so, we can separate two sources of information: knowledge we have about the particular individual (individual knowledge) and knowledge we have about the social group to which that individual belongs (categorical knowledge). However, it is yet unclear how these two types of knowledge contribute to making predictions about other people’s choice behavior. To fill this gap, we had participants learn probabilistic preferences by predicting object choices of agents with and without a common logo printed on their shirt. The logo thereby served as a visual cue to increase perceptions of groupness. We quantified how similar predictions for a specific agent are relative to the objective individual-level preferences of that agent and how close these predictions are relative to the objective group-level preferences to which that agent belongs. We found that the logo influenced how close participants’ predictions were to the individual-level preferences of an agent relative to the preferences of the group the agent belongs to. We interpret this pattern of results as indicative of a differential weighting of individual and categorical group knowledge when making predictions about individuals that are perceived as forming a social group. The results are interpreted in an assimilation account of categorization and stress the importance of group knowledge during daily social interactions.
... Initial evidence most strongly supports the latter account (Ma, Correll & Wittenbrink, 2016). The activation of stereotypes and prejudice also depends on the features of the target person (Livingston & Brewer, 2002;Ma, Correll & Wittenbrink, 2018), and of the perceiver (Degner & Wentura, 2009). For example, people differ in the strength of category-stereotype associations (Fazio, Jackson, Dunton & Williams, 1995), and the associative strength determines the extent of stereotype-activation (Gawronski, Ehrenberg, Banse, Zukova & Klauer, 2003;Gawronski, Geschke & Banse, 2003). ...
Relations between social groups and their members are influenced by and influence how people perceive and judge each other. The way how people process information about others in fact represents an antecedent and consequence of intergroup relations. The present chapter illustrates how general cognitive mechanisms in processing information can lead to biases in perceiving and judging social groups and their members that in turn can influence intergroup relations. We will illustrate this by first, explaining how people process information in general and social information in specific. In specific, we will draw on social categorization and self-categorization and schema activation and application. Then, we will explain biases relevant for intergroup relations that arise at least in part from how people process social information along with attention and general learning mechanisms. We highlight category accentuation, outgroup homogeneity, ingroup favouritism complemented by out-group derogation, and stereotyping. The underlying processes of the biases in perceiving and judging others can occur in an automatic fashion. Despite the potential automaticity involved , we highlight the crucial influence of people's goals and motivation in influencing these biases. We end the chapter with a discussion how these intergroup biases complemented by confirmation biases that maintain and fortify the intergroup biases can contribute to collective conflicts.
... Due to their higher group prototypicality, men could be more readily associated with stereotypes about ethnic groups than women (Ma, Correll, and Wittenbrink 2018;Purdie-Vaughns and Eibach 2008). In line with this argument, Eagly and Kite (1987) found that the stereotypes of 25 nationalities were more closely aligned with the stereotypes of male versus female nationals, especially when respondents had negative attitudes toward the specific country. ...
We relied on a content analysis of freely generated stereotypes about Muslims and Muslim-majority immigrant groups from a representative sample of Dutch natives. Building on intersectionality theory and stereotype prototypicality, we hypothesized and found that ethnic-group stereotypes more accurately reflect stereotypes of ethnic-minority men compared with ethnic-minority women and that stereotypes of ethnic-minority women contain more unique elements that do not overlap with either stereotypes about the gender group or stereotypes about the general ethnic group. We also examined the overlap between stereotypes about Muslims and those associated with Turks, Moroccans, Somalis, and Syrians in the Nether-lands. The overlap in stereotype content was largest with Turks and Moroccans, the two largest and most long-established Muslim immigrant groups in the Netherlands. Overall, our results demonstrate the importance of an intersectional approach to stereotypes based on gender and ethnicity and of distinguishing between different ethnic groups in research about Muslims.
... Наличие установки на трансгендерность, как показывают исследования N. Wittlin и коллег, определяет восприятие лица партнера по взаимодействию как менее мужественного или менее женственного [Wittlin et al. 2018]. Изучая предубеждения, D. S. Ma, J. Correll и B. Wittenbrink пришли к выводу, что чем четче определен прототип группы по своей гендерной и / или расовой принадлежности, тем более сильные стереотипы о ней возникают [Ma et al. 2018]. Отмечаются гендерные различия в построении медиативных отношений, выборе стиля регулирования конфликта в повседневном взаимодействии [Буткевич 2022]. ...
The system of gender relations, conservative as it may seem, is currently undergoing some major changes. This research addressed the differences in social interaction in groups of people with different levels of masculinity and femininity. It relied on authentic questionnaires of gender attitudes and social interaction for different gender types. Interaction parameters included competition vs. support, hostility vs. sympathy, material vs. non-material priorities, values, control, dependence, and frequency/time of relationships. The results were subjected to ANOVA and T-test (IBM SPSS 27.0). The experiment involved 388 respondents (43% men, 57% women) aged 18–70 y.o. The gender type appeared to affect such aspects of relationships as time, sympathy, competitiveness, forced interaction, dependence on oneself and partner, control, friendly support, and mutual assistance. The largest number of statistically significant features belonged to the interaction between masculine and feminine types. They neither shared the same values nor sympathized with each other, had competitive and unequal relationships, expressed self-dependence, avoided nonmaterial resources, etc. Masculinity and femininity proved to play different roles in the organization of social interaction. The effect of masculinity was more prominent in relationships, making masculine-type people pickier in their choice of partners. The participants with prevailing femininity tended to adapt to their partner’s character profile.
... When individuals are categorizing others into groups, they not only make judgements about their group membership but often ascribe the individuals being categorized with stereotypes associated among that particular group (Blair, Judd, & Fallman, 2004;Ma et al., 2018;Ma & Correll, 2011). Thus, the more prototypical of a group one is perceived to be, the more strongly perceivers tend to associate stereotypical attributes with them. ...
The current study assessed how the extent to which a gay man resembled a prototypical gay man influenced the judgements others made about them. We hypothesized that highly prototypical gay men would be perceived to be more identified with the gay community, possess more negative stereotypes of gay men, engage in more activities within the gay community, viewed less positively by others, and receive more discrimination. Additionally, perceived group identification and negative stereotypes attributed to the gay man were expected to serially mediate the relationship between prototypicality and perceived engagement in gay activities, positive attitudes, and discrimination from others. Participants (N = 364) were randomly assigned to view stimuli depicting either a low or high prototypical gay man. High prototypical gay men were perceived to be more identified with the gay community, possess more negative stereotypes, and engage in more stereotypical immoral activities, than low prototypical gay men. Moreover, perceived group identification and negative stereotype attribution serially mediated the relationship between prototypicality and perceived engagement in gay activities, attitudes toward target, and discrimination. Implications for the Prejudice Distribution Account are discussed.
... The theoretical considerations considered so far lead to the clear expectation of a linearly increasing function: greater target prototypicality should be associated with greater bias expression. However, Ma, Correll, and Wittenbrink (2018) recently noted that most extant tests of the relation have involved just two levels of prototypicality (i.e., lower versus higher), so a linear effect was the only testable relation. In new studies comparing low, average, and high levels of the racial prototypicality of Black and White men's faces, Ma et al. found evidence for both the expected positive linear function but also for a significant quadratic relationship, with average levels of target prototypicality being associated with the strongest expressions of bias. ...
Scholars have long recognized that successful prediction of behavior on the basis of explicit attitudes depends on the correspondence between the attitude measure and the focal behavior. Fishbein and Ajzen (2010) argued that behaviors vary in terms of their action, target, context, and time, and that the prediction of specific behaviors is greatly enhanced when explicit attitude measures reflect these features of the to-be-predicted behavior. We argue that the same principle applies in the case of predicting behavior from implicit attitudes, and we review relevant evidence relating to each of Fishbein and Ajzen’s parameters. Special attention is paid to the target parameter, given increasing awareness of the intersectional nature of bias. A global race bias may not extend equally to all members of a particular racial identity, and cross-cutting factors such as gender, age, or sexuality may qualify the extent to which global measures of race bias predict discriminatory behavior toward particular individuals.
... When an evaluator perceives that an individual bears an average (Ma, Correll, & Wittenbrink, 2018) to exemplary (Blair, Judd, Sadler, & Jenkins, 2002;Maddox, 2004) phenotypic or trait-based likeness to a particular category within a demographic characteristic (e.g., "woman" within "gender"), the evaluator will select this demographic category and apply its associated stereotypes and expectations to the target individual. Then the evaluator will measure the employee's behavior against that initial expectation. ...
As our society ages, questions concerning the relations between generations gain importance. The quality of human relations depends on the quality of emotion communication, which is a significant part of our daily interactions. Emotion expressions serve not only to communicate how the expresser feels, but also to communicate intentions (whether to approach or retreat) and personality traits (such as dominance, trustworthiness, or friendliness) that influence our decisions regarding whether and how to interact with a person. Emotion Communication by the Aging Face and Body delineates how aging affects emotion communication and person perception by bringing together research across multiple disciplines. Scholars and graduate students in the psychology of aging, affective science, and social gerontology will benefit from this over-view and theoretical framework.
Introduction. Significant changes are taking place in the system of gender relations in modern conditions, but the processes of interaction in it remain poorly understood. Purpose: to identify differences in attitudes towards social interaction with people of masculine and feminine types. Theoretical analysis. The analysis showed that interaction in the space of gender relations is studied through the prism of gender norms and stereotypes, as well as by the method of comparative analysis of the psychological characteristics of communication, consideri ng the gender factor. Empirical analysis. Methods: author’s questionnaire of social interaction (N = 388 people); stepwise discriminant and correlation analysis for paired samples (SPSS 27.0). Most of all, the attitude to interaction with people of the masculine and feminine types differs in the following parameters: considering the experience of relationships and partnership nature in interaction with feminine people; friendly support, mutual assistance in interaction with masculine people. Pairwise comparison of each respondent’s assessments of interaction with masculine/feminine type people showed differences in only 4 parameters: perception of rivalry between one’s own and partner, differences in values, use of intangible resources. Conclusion. For the first time, it was established what parameters differ in the attitude towards interaction with people of different gender types.
We investigate the educational and employment consequences of having a gender discordant name – one that is also given to people of a different gender. People with discordant names may be more likely to experience stigma due to the conflicting signal between their gender and the perceptions of femininity or masculinity associated with their names. Our primary measure of discordance is based on the percentage of men and women with each first name, using a large administrative dataset from Brazil. We find that both men and women with gender discordant names attain significantly less education. Gender discordant names are also negatively and significantly associated with earnings though, after controlling for educational attainment, only people with the most discordant names have significantly lower earnings. These results are corroborated when using crowd-sourced gender perceptions of names in our dataset, which suggests that stereotypes and the judgments of others are a probable mechanism for the observed disparities.
We conducted a targeted review of the literature exploring racial phenotypicality bias (RPB): perceivers' sensitivity to within‐race variation in facial target features in perceptions and judgment of others. This review revealed evidence that two distinct mechanisms underlying these effects, categorical and featural, tend to be conflated in the literature. The categorical route suggests that the pathway from target cues to stereotype application is mediated by category activation. The featural route suggests that the pathway from target cues to stereotype application is direct, bypassing category activation. The categorical route is more closely represented when researchers discuss RPB, and more often of empirical focus. With a focus on research exploring RPB toward African American people, we explain the two routes and evidence supporting their distinction. We next offer evidence estimating the degree to which they may be conflated in the empirical literature and discuss limitations to our approach. Next, we describe some potential implications of this conflation for theory, research, and applications concerning RPB. Finally, we end with some recommendations for future empirical research.
People often assume areas where black people live are dangerous, impoverished, and rundown, whereas they assume White areas to be safe, wealthy, and well-maintained (Bonam et al. in J Exp Psychol Gen 145(11):1561–1582, 2016). These space-focused racial stereotypes shape how people perceive, evaluate, and treat physical space, such as houses and neighborhoods. Further, people often associate specific types of spaces with certain races (e.g., inner-city is Black; suburb is White), making them racial exemplar spaces (Bonam, in Devaluing Black space: Black locations as targets of housing and environmental discrimination, Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Stanford University, Stanford, 2010). The present work expands insight into racialized physical space by showing how Black and White exemplar spaces and White space-focused racial stereotypes shape person-perception. Specifically, we report findings from a vignette study examining how “black” and “criminal” people perceived a target person. This target was black or white and was in a suburban or inner-city neighborhood. We also measured people’s generalized stereotypes about white areas. People thought of the Black versus White person as being more black, which in turn made the target seem more criminal. This relationship was stronger in a suburban versus inner-city neighborhood—likely because being in an inner-city area made the White target seem more black, whereas the black target seemed black no matter where he was. Additionally, the more people thought of white areas as generally safe, wealthy, and well-maintained, the more they criminalized the black—but not white—target in a suburban neighborhood. This study highlights the need to further explore how racialized physical space shapes social perception, and it provides insight into the criminalization and policing of black bodies in white spaces.
Two questions have motivated much of our research. What is the structure of social judgments from faces and what is the perceptual basis of these judgments? Twelve years ago, we proposed a simple 2-dimensional model, according to which faces are evaluated on perceived valence and power, and introduced data-driven computational models, which reveal the physical variation of faces that drive specific judgments. First, using data from our lab collected more than 10 years later and from a large cross-cultural replication project, we show that the simplistic 2D structure model is remarkably stable and generalizes to all world regions, in which data have been collected. We also discuss misunderstandings and limitations of structure models. Second, we make the assumptions of the data-driven modeling approach transparent and discuss recent developments. The computational framework allows for precise parametric manipulation of the appearance of faces, for control of shared variance between judgments, and for relating models at different levels of face processing. We also explore analyses mapping multiple social judgments simultaneously to the physical face space. We conclude with two future directions: models of hyper-realistic faces and the underappreciated role of stable individual differences in judgments.
The current study analyzed the effect of simple-categorization dominance on the evaluation of crossed-categorization target from the perspective of observer (other) and actor (self). With a focus on the young–poor target, in Study 1 and Study 2, participants were assigned to observer or actor perspective and were randomly assigned to one of three experimental groups: age simple-categorization dominant, wealth simple-categorization dominant, and a control group. Study 1 demonstrated that in the observer perspective group, the evaluation of the competence of the young–poor target in the wealth simple-categorization dominant group was higher than that in the age simple-categorization dominant group. In the actor perspective group, the self-evaluation of the competence in the wealth simple-categorization dominant group was lower than in the age simple-categorization dominant group. Study 2 showed that simple-categorization dominance was not associated with the evaluation of the young–poor target. These results have implications for understanding the evaluation of the crossed-categorization target.
Diversity research often relies on experiments to make causal claims about the effects of various attributes, such as gender or race/ethnicity, on organizationally relevant outcomes. With this method, scholars intervene, then analyze the effect of the intervention on one or more outcomes. However, there remains a lack of clear, practical guidance on how to best study the effects of attributes via experiments, including some of the theoretical and ethical implications that these design and method decisions might entail. Thus, we review the literature on experimental diversity research in organizations, highlighting illustrative publications and their design choices. Throughout, we note some strengths and potential pitfalls of these approaches. In line with the approach of this methods anthology, we also describe a recent set of experimental studies on intersecting aspects of diversity by the first author of this chapter (Gloor, Li, & Puhl, 2018b) to practically exemplify some of the themes discussed within this chapter. We conclude with a discussion of ethical implications.
***This is the final version of the chapter, which went through peer- and editor-review. To be clear: despite the ResearchGate warning, this is not a pre-print.***
Using a simple videogame, the effect of ethnicity on shoot/ don't shoot decisions was examined. African American or White targets, holding guns or other objects, appeared in complex backgrounds. Participants were told to “shoot” armed targets and to “not shoot” unarmed targets. In Study 1, White participants made the correct decision to shoot an armed target more quickly if the target was African American than if he was White, but decided to “not shoot” an unarmed target more quickly if he was White. Study 2 used a shorter time window, forcing this effect into error rates. Study 3 replicated Study 1's effects and showed that the magnitude of bias varied with perceptions of the cultural stereotype and with levels of contact, but not with personal racial prejudice. Study 4 revealed equivalent levels of bias among both African American and White participants in a community sample. Implications and potential underlying mechanisms are discussed.
The content of spontaneously activated racial stereotypes among White Americans and the relation of this to more explicit measures of stereotyping and prejudice were investigated. Using a semantic priming paradigm, a prime was presented outside of conscious awareness (BLACK or WHITE), followed by a target stimulus requiring a word–nonword decision. The target stimuli included attributes that varied in valence and stereotypicality for Whites and African Americans. Results showed reliable stereotyping and prejudice effects: Black primes resulted in substantially stronger facilitation to negative than positive stereotypic attributes, whereas White primes facilitated positive more than negative stereotypic traits. The magnitude of this implicit prejudice effect correlated reliably with participants’ scores on explicit racial attitude measures, indicating that people's spontaneous stereotypic associations are consistent with their more controlled responses.
Four studies were conducted to test the hypothesis that group-related physical features may directly activate related stereotypes, leading to more stereotypic inferences over and above those resulting from categorization. As predicted, targets with more Afrocentric features were judged as more likely to have traits stereotypic of African Americans. This effect was found with judgments of African Americans and of European Americans. Furthermore, the effect was not eliminated when a more sensitive measure of categorization processes (category accessibility) was used or when the judgement context made category distinctions salient. Of additional interest was the finding that category accessibility independently affected judgment, such that targets who could be more quickly categorized as group members were judged more stereotypically.
Despite advances in understanding the brain structures involved in the expression of stereotypes and prejudice, little is known about the brain structures involved in their acquisition. Here, we combined fMRI, a task involving learning the valence of different social groups, and modeling of the learning process involved in the development of biases in thinking about social groups that support prejudice. Participants read descriptions of valenced behaviors performed by members of novel social groups, with majority groups being more frequently encountered during learning than minority groups. A model-based fMRI analysis revealed that the anterior temporal lobe tracked the trial-by-trial changes in the valence associated with each group encountered in the task. Descriptions of behavior by group members that deviated from the group average (i.e., prediction errors) were associated with activity in the left lateral pFC, dorsomedial pFC, and lateral anterior temporal cortex. Minority social groups were associated with slower acquisition rates and more activity in the ventral striatum and ACC/dorsomedial pFC compared with majority groups. These findings provide new insights into the brain regions that (a) support the acquisition of prejudice and (b) detect situations in which an individual's behavior deviates from the prejudicial attitude held toward their group.
We examined the development of racial categorizations of faces spanning the European-East Asian ("White-Asian") categorical continuum in children between the ages of four and nine as well as adults. We employed a stimulus set that independently varied skin color and other aspects of facial physiognomy, allowing the contribution of each to be assessed independently and in interaction with each other. Results demonstrated substantial development across this age range in children's ability to draw on both sorts of cue, with over twice as much variance explained by stimulus variation in adults than children. Nonetheless, children were clearly sensitive to both skin color and other aspects of facial physiognomy, suggesting that understanding of the White-Asian category boundary develops in a somewhat different way than understanding of the White-Black category boundary, in which attention to features other than skin color appear only somewhat later. Discussion focuses on the implications of these findings for theories of social categorization.
Presents an integrative model of the emergence, direction (assimilation vs. contrast), and size of context effects in social judgment.
Research suggests that context influences judgments and implicit evaluations (e.g., attitudes toward a person depend upon the context in which we encounter that person). Importantly, previous research presents contextual cues at encoding, such that participants learn about a target person in context. Here, we decouple the process of learning about targets from manipulations of context. Participants in our studies learned about the intelligence and athleticism of a novel male target in a neutral context. Subsequently, we implicitly measured participants' attitudes toward the target in an intelligence-related or neutral context (Study 1) and in intelligence-related and athletic-related contexts (Study 2). In both studies, contextual cues (which were absent during encoding) influenced attitudes at retrieval.
Social cognition research has generated widespread interest in recent years. Although researchers may differ in the specific concepts and methods they have in mind when they speak of “social cognition”, they generally agree that the ultimate goal of their research is to identify the cognitive processes that presumably mediate people’s responses to the information they encounter in social contexts. The “input” variables of concern include the content, source, and context of information available in the social environment. Prominently studied “output” variables include attitudes, beliefs, judgments, and occasionally, overt physical behavior. The objective of social cognition research is to specify the cognitive processes linking these variables.
Three studies tested basic assumptions derived from a theoretical model based on the dissociation of automatic and controlled processes involved in prejudice. Study 1 supported the model's assumption that high- and low-prejudice persons are equally knowledgeable of the cultural stereotype. The model suggests that the stereotype is automatically activated in the presence of a member (or some symbolic equivalent) of the stereotyped group and that low-prejudice responses require controlled inhibition of the automatically activated stereotype. Study 2, which examined the effects of automatic stereotype activation on the evaluation of ambiguous stereotype-relevant behaviors performed by a race-unspecified person, suggested that when subjects' ability to consciously monitor stereotype activation is precluded, both high- and low-prejudice subjects produce stereotype-congruent evaluations of ambiguous behaviors. Study 3 examined high- and low-prejudice subjects' responses in a consciously directed thought-listing task. Consistent with the model, only low-prejudice subjects inhibited the automatically activated stereotype-congruent thoughts and replaced them with thoughts reflecting equality and negations of the stereotype. The relation between stereotypes and prejudice and implications for prejudice reduction are discussed.
Researchers studying a range of psychological phenomena (e.g., theory of mind, emotion, stereotyping and prejudice, interpersonal attraction, etc.) sometimes employ photographs of people as stimuli. In this paper, we introduce the Chicago Face Database, a free resource consisting of 158 high-resolution, standardized photographs of Black and White males and females between the ages of 18 and 40 years and extensive data about these targets. In Study 1, we report pre-testing of these faces, which includes both subjective norming data and objective physical measurements of the images included in the database. In Study 2 we surveyed psychology researchers to assess the suitability of these targets for research purposes and explored factors that were associated with researchers' judgments of suitability. Instructions are outlined for those interested in obtaining access to the stimulus set and accompanying ratings and measures.
Although evidence from a variety of disciplines suggests that skin tone is a basis of discrimination among Blacks, research in social psychology has virtually ignored this topic. Two experiments examined the causal role of skin tone in the perception and representations of Blacks. Paralleling the effect of race and other social category dimensions, Study 1 showed that variation in skin tone can influence the organization of social information. Study 2 demonstrated differentiation in stereotypes of Blacks based on skin tone. Results from both investigations suggest that skin tone is an important factor in both Blacks’ and Whites’ representations of Blacks.
Two experiments examined the influence of skin color on American Hispanics' and Chileans' attitudes towards their ethnic ingroup and toward subgroups within their ingroup. When implicit attitudes were examined, both American Hispanics and Chileans expressed strong preference for the lighter complexioned subgroup ("Blanco" in Spanish) over the darker complexioned subgroup ("Moreno" in Spanish) within their ethnic ingroup. Implicit preference for Blancos was evident among self-identified Moreno as well as Blanco participants in both countries, suggesting that the desirability of light skin apparently supersedes national boundaries and can reverse the ubiquitious ingroup favoritism effect usually obtained in intergroup research. When participants' implicit attitudes towards Hispanics versus Caucasians were assessed, national differences emerged: Chileans expressed implicit preference for Caucasians over Hispanics whereas American Hispanics did not favor either group. Self-report measures of attitudes revealed less consistent evidence of prejudice and preference based on skin color.
Research on skin tone and Afrocentric features provides evidence that people use phenotypes (visible phys-ical characteristics) to make inferences about the degree to which stereotypes about the racial group apply to the individual (i.e., to make impressions of others). However, skin tone and Afrocentric features have been confounded in prior research on this topic. The present study examines whether facial features (lip thickness, nose width) have effects on Whites' affective reactions to Black targets, above and beyond the well-documented skin tone effect by experimentally crossing variation in facial features and skin tone. The results showed that both skin tone and facial features independently affected how negatively, as opposed to posi-tively, Whites felt toward Blacks using both implicit and explicit measures. The findings that Whites reacted more negatively toward Blacks with darker skin tone and more prototypical facial features than toward Blacks with lighter skin tone and less prototypical facial features on the explicit measure may indicate that Whites are unaware of the negative effects that Blacks' phenotypes can have on their racial attitudes. The pre-sent study demonstrated that subtle facial features, in addition to salient skin tone, also play an important role when predicting Whites' feelings about Blacks. One implication is that it is important to raise people's awareness about the effects that Blacks' phenotypes can have on their attitudes.
Outlines present conceptualizations of stereotypes in psychology, and discusses theoretical approaches linking ethnic stereotypes to negative attitudes and discriminatory behavior. Research results concerning the content of ethnic stereotypes, their development and resistance to change, and the reciprocal nature of intergroup stereotypes are reviewed. Several critical issues, E.g., methodological problems and the "kernel of truth" controversy, are also discussed. It is suggested that none of the current definitions of stereotype are completely adequate. It is proposed that much of the ambiguity, both conceptual and empirical, in this area may be reduced if stereotypes are regarded as generalizations that are considered as unjustified by the person who affixes the label. There are several types of criteria under which a generalization may be considered unjustified. (3 P. Ref.)
Prior to each target letter string presented visually to 120 university students in a speeded word–nonword classification task, either {bird, body, building,} or {xxx} appeared as a priming event. Five types of word-prime/word-target trials were used: bird-robin, bird-arm, body-door, body-sparrow, and body-heart. The stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between prime and target letter string varied between 250 and 2,000 msec. At 2,000-msec SOA, reaction times (RTs) on bird-robin type trials were faster than on xxx-prime trials (facilitation), whereas RTs on bird-arm type trials were slower than on xxx-prime (inhibition). As SOA decreased, the facilitation effect on bird-robin trials remained constant, but the inhibition effect on bird-arm decreased until, at 250-msec SOA, there was no inhibition. For Shift conditions at 2,000-msec SOA, facilitation was obtained on body-door type trials and inhibition was obtained on body-sparrow type. These effects decreased as SOA decreased until there was no facilitation or inhibition. On body-heart type trials, there was an inhibition effect at 2,000 msec SOA, which decreased as SOA decreased until, at 250-msec SOA, it became a facilitation effect. Results support the theory of M. I. Posner and S. R. Snyder (1975) that postulated 2 distinct components of attention: a fast automatic inhibitionless spreading-activation process and a slow limited-capacity conscious-attention mechanism. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Proposes a model to account for recent findings on the time needed to decide that a test instance is a member of a target semantic category. It is assumed that the meaning of a lexical term can be represented by semantic features. Some of these features are essential or defining aspects of a word's meaning (defining features), while others are more accidental or characteristic aspects (characteristic features). This defining vs characteristic distinction is combined with a 2-stage processing mechanism in such a way that the 1st stage determines the similarity between the test instance and target category with respect to both defining and characteristic features, while the 2nd stage considers only agreement between defining features. This model is shown to be consistent with most semantic memory effects, and 2 experiments on category size and instance-category verification using undergraduates as Ss provide further detailed support for it. (11/2 p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Three studies show that people whose physical features are seen as more (versus less) racially stereotypical are more vulnerable to social rejection and exclusion from those outside their group. In Study 1, which used an online social networking site, Blacks perceived as more physically stereotypical were found to have fewer non-Black friends, compared to less-stereotypical Blacks. In Study 2, which used an experimental paradigm, requests for friendship made to non-Blacks by more-stereotypical Blacks were more likely to be rejected than those made by less-stereotypical Blacks. Finally, in a college dormitory, people judged to have more (vs. less) racially stereotypical physical features were found to interact less often with outgroup members. This work substantiates a growing body of research demonstrating that people who are perceived as more physically stereotypical of their racial group are particularly vulnerable to discriminatory treatment by outgroup mem-bers across a variety of life domains.
Research shows that target race can influence the decision to shoot armed and unarmed Black and White males (e.g., Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink, 2002). To date, however, research has only examined category level effects by comparing average responses to Blacks and Whites. The current studies investigated whether target prototypicality influences the decision to shoot above and beyond the effect of race. Here, we replicated racial bias in shoot decisions and demonstrated that bias was moderated by target prototypicality. As target prototypicality increased, participants showed greater racial bias. Further, when targets were unprototypic, racial bias reversed (e.g., participants mistakenly shot more unarmed Whites than Blacks). Study 2 examined whether these effects were observed among police officers. Although police showed no racial bias on average, target prototypicality significantly influenced judgments. Across both studies, sensitivity to variability in Whites' prototypicality drove these effects, while variation in Black prototypicality did not affect participants' decisions.
Three studies tested basic assumptions derived from a theoretical model based on the dissociation of automatic and controlled processes involved in prejudice. Study 1 supported the model's assumption that high- and low-prejudice persons are equally knowledgeable of the cultural stereotype. The model suggests that the stereotype is automatically activated in the presence of a member (or some symbolic equivalent) of the stereotype group and that low-prejudice responses require controlled inhibition of the automatically activated stereotype. Study 2, which examined the efforts of automatic stereotype activation on the evaluation of ambiguous stereotype-relevant behaviors performed by a race-unspecified person, suggested that when subjects' ability to consciously monitor stereotype activation is precluded, both high- and low-prejudice subjects produce stereotype-congruent evaluations of ambiguous behaviors. Study 3 examined high- and low-prejudice subjects' responses in a consciously directed thought-listing task. Consistent with the model, only low-prejudice subjects inhibited the automatically activated stereotype-congruent thoughts and replaced them with thoughts reflecting equality and negations of the stereotype. The relation between stereotypes and prejudice and implications for prejudice reduction are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Previous work has shown differential amygdala response to African-American faces by Caucasian individuals. Furthermore, behavioral studies have demonstrated the existence of skin tone bias, the tendency to prefer light skin to dark skin. In the present study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate whether skin tone bias moderates differential race-related amygdala activity. Eleven White participants viewed photographs of unfamiliar Black and White faces with varied skin tone (light, dark). Replicating past research, greater amygdala activity was observed for Black faces than White faces. Furthermore, dark-skinned targets elicited more amygdala activity than light-skinned targets. However, these results were qualified by a significant interaction between race and skin tone, such that amygdala activity was observed at equivalent levels for light- and dark-skinned Black targets, but dark-skinned White targets elicited greater amygdala activity than light-skinned White targets.
This research studied 2 properties of perceived distributions of the characteristics of social category members: the probability of differentiating (making distinctions) among category members and the perceived variability (variance) of category members. The results of 4 experiments supported the hypothesis that greater familiarity with a social group leads to greater perceived differentiation and variability regarding that group. In-group members formed more differentiated and variable distributions for groups defined by age and more differentiated distributions for groups defined by nationality. For gender (where students were roughly equally familiar with people of both genders), no in-group--out-group differences occurred. Also, students perceived greater differentiation and variability among classmates over the course of a semester. To explain these results, we developed PDIST, a multiple exemplar model that assumes that people form perceived distributions by activating a set of category exemplars and then judging the relative likelihoods of different feature values on the basis of the relative activation strengths of these feature values. The results of a computer simulation experiment indicated that PDIST is sufficient to explain the results of our 4 experiments. According to the perceived distributions formed by PDIST, increasing familiarity leads to greater differentiation and variability, has a concave impact, and has greater impact on differentiation than on variability.
The content of spontaneously activated racial stereotypes among White Americans and the relation of this to more explicit measures of stereotyping and prejudice were investigated. Using a semantic priming paradigm, a prime was presented outside of conscious awareness (BLACK or WHITE), followed by a target stimulus requiring a word-nonword decision. The target stimuli included attributes that varied in valence and stereotypicality for Whites and African Americans. Results showed reliable stereotyping and prejudice effects: Black primes resulted in substantially stronger facilitation to negative than positive stereotypic attributes, whereas White primes facilitated positive more than negative stereotypic traits. The magnitude of this implicit prejudice effect correlated reliably with participants' scores on explicit racial attitude measures, indicating that people's spontaneous stereotypic associations are consistent with their more controlled responses.
Results from 5 experiments provide converging evidence that automatic evaluation of faces in sequential priming paradigms reflects affective responses to phenotypic features per se rather than evaluation of the racial categories to which the faces belong. Experiment 1 demonstrates that African American facial primes with racially prototypic physical features facilitate more automatic negative evaluations than do other Black faces that are unambiguously categorizable as African American but have less prototypic features. Experiments 2, 3, and 4 further support the hypothesis that these differences reflect direct affective responses to physical features rather than differential categorization. Experiment 5 shows that automatic responses to facial primes correlate with cue-based but not category-based explicit measures of prejudice. Overall, these results suggest the existence of 2 distinct types of prejudice.
Using a simple videogame, the effect of ethnicity on shoot/don't shoot decisions was examined. African American or White targets, holding guns or other objects, appeared in complex backgrounds. Participants were told to "shoot" armed targets and to "not shoot" unarmed targets. In Study 1, White participants made the correct decision to shoot an armed target more quickly if the target was African American than if he was White, but decided to "not shoot" an unarmed target more quickly if he was White. Study 2 used a shorter time window, forcing this effect into error rates. Study 3 replicated Study 1's effects and showed that the magnitude of bias varied with perceptions of the cultural stereotype and with levels of contact, but not with personal racial prejudice. Study 4 revealed equivalent levels of bias among both African American and White participants in a community sample. Implications and potential underlying mechanisms are discussed.
In this line of his landmark speech, Martn Luther King Jr expressed the troubling reality faced by thousands of people who are judged by the "color of their skin" instead of by more valid attributes. His reference to a specific, seemingly innocuous physical feature makes the injustice of the situation all the more apparent. Why would anyone use skin color as a basis for serious judgment? What, if anything, makes this specific feature so special? This chapter considers two, non-opposing perspectives on these questions: category-based stereotyping and feature-based stereotyping. © 2011 by Reginald B. Adams, Jr., Nalini Ambady, Ken Nakayama, Shinsuke Shimojo. All rights reserved.
This paper investigates whether within-group differences in phenotypic racial stereotypicality (i.e., extent to which individuals possess physical features typical of their racial group) of ingroup members serve as social identity contingency cues for Blacks evaluating organizations. It is hypothesized that Blacks draw information about whether their social identity would be valued based on the represented phenotypic racial stereotypicality of Black organization members. Participants viewed organizations that included high phenotypically stereotypic (HPS) Black (e.g., darker skin tones, broader facial features), low phenotypically stereotypic (LPS) Black, or only White employees. Results confirmed that Black, but not White, evaluators reported more diversity, salary, desire to work, and social identity-related trust toward the HPS, compared to LPS and White, organizations. The relationships between phenotypic racial stereotypicality condition on organizational attractiveness and diversity perceptions were mediated by identity-related trust. Results suggest considering diversity at both the group level and within group level to achieve broader benefits.
Prior research on the development of race-based categorization has concluded that children
understand the perceptual basis of race categories from as early as age 4 (e.g. Aboud, 1988).
However, such work has rarely separated the influence of skin color from other physiognomic
features considered by adults to be diagnostic of race categories. In two studies focusing on
Black-White race categorization judgments in children between the ages of 4 and 9, as well as in
adults, we find that categorization decisions in early childhood are determined almost entirely by
attention to skin color, with attention to other physiognomic features exerting only a small
influence on judgments as late as middle childhood. We further find that when skin color cues
are largely eliminated from the stimuli, adults readily shift almost entirely to focus on other
physiognomic features. However, 6- and 8-yr-old children show only a limited ability to shift
attention to facial physiognomy and so perform poorly on the task. These results demonstrate
that attention to “race” in younger children is better conceptualized as attention to skin color,
inviting a reinterpretation of past work focusing on children’s race-related cognition.
G*Power (Erdfelder, Faul, & Buchner, 1996) was designed as a general stand-alone power analysis program for statistical tests commonly used in social and behavioral research. G*Power 3 is a major extension of, and improvement over, the previous versions. It runs on widely used computer platforms (i.e., Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Mac OS X 10.4) and covers many different statistical tests of the t, F, and chi2 test families. In addition, it includes power analyses for z tests and some exact tests. G*Power 3 provides improved effect size calculators and graphic options, supports both distribution-based and design-based input modes, and offers all types of power analyses in which users might be interested. Like its predecessors, G*Power 3 is free.
This article presents a four-category framework to characterize the contents of prescriptive gender stereotypes. The framework distinguishes between prescriptions and proscriptions that are intensified by virtue of one's gender, and those that are relaxed by virtue of one's gender. Two studies examined the utility of this framework for characterizing prescriptive gender stereotypes in American society (Study 1) and in the highly masculine context of Princeton University (Study 2). The results demonstrated the persistence of traditional gender prescriptions in both contexts, but also revealed distinct areas of societal vigilance and leeway for each gender. In addition, they showed that women are seen more positively, relative to societal standards, than are men. We consider the implications of this framework for research on reactions to gender stereotype deviants and sex discrimination.
Previous research has not sufficiently addressed factors that define and moderate racial categorization judgments. This study independently manipulated skin color and facial physiognomy to determine their relative weighting in racial categorization. Participants (N = 250) judged faces varying on 10 levels of facial physiognomy (from Afrocentric to Eurocentric) and 10 levels of skin color (from dark to light) under either no time constraints, a modest time constraint, and under a stringent time constraint. Skin color was a powerful predictor of racial typicality ratings at all levels of facial physiognomy, but participants relied upon facial physiognomy more when rating faces of light than dark skin color. Skin color was a more important cue than facial physiognomy under no time constraints, but as time constraints became more severe, skin color's importance decreased, yet it remained a more important cue at extreme physiognomy levels. The relationship between skin color and racial typicality ratings was stronger for those with more negative implicit racial attitudes. These findings suggest the primary role of skin color in racial categorization and underscore the importance of implicit attitudes in explicit categorization judgments.
The goal of the study reported in this article was to examine whether automatic processes in stereotype and prejudice activation are sensitive to task characteristics of the assessment procedure and whether these influences may account for existing inconsistencies that have recently been reported in the literature on automatic racial prejudice. Using a sequential priming paradigm with subliminal primes (“BLACK” and “WHITE”) to examine automatic prejudice, the study varied the judgment task in which the priming procedure was presented. Whereas half of the participants were asked to perform a lexical decision task (word/nonword), the remaining participants made evaluative judgments (good/bad). Results showed reliable influences of the judgment task on the observed pattern of priming effects. Moreover, the priming effects found in both conditions replicated the respective results reported in previous research that had used either evaluative or conceptual judgment tasks (Fazio, Jackson, Dunton, & Williams, 1995; Wittenbrink, Judd, & Park, 1997). In addition, the response time measure also showed different relationships with explicit measures of racial prejudice, depending on the judgment condition. In addition to their implications for the assessment of automatic stereotyping and prejudice these results suggest that automatic responses are not as invariant as it is sometimes posited.
Dynamic stereotypes characterize social groups that are thought to have changed from the attributes they manifested in the past and even to continue to change in the future. According to social role theory’s assumption that the role behavior of group members shapes their stereotype, groups should have dynamic stereotypes to the extent that their typical social roles are perceived to change over time. Applied to men and women, this theory makes two predictions about perceived change: (a) perceivers should think that sex differences are eroding because of increasing similarity of the roles of men and women and (b) the female stereotype should be particularly dynamic because of greater change in the roles of women than of men. This theory was tested and confirmed in five experiments that examined perceptions of the roles and the personality, cognitive, and physical attributes of men and women of the past, present, and future.
Prior research has shown that in addition to race-based stereotyping, people also apply stereotypes within racial groups according to the degree to which the individuals possess Afrocentric features. The present research used inverted faces to test the efficiency with which race and Afrocentric features can be extracted from faces and influence social judgment. As predicted, African Americans with stronger Afrocentric features were stereotyped to a greater degree than African Americans with weaker features, regardless of face orientation, supporting the efficiency of this form of stereotyping. Race-based stereotyping was also found to be efficient, but in this case, face inversion resulted in increased stereotyping, most likely due to the disruption of ordinary attempts to control it.
In this article, the authors identify three methodological short-comings of the classic Princeton trilogy studies: (a) ambiguity of the instructions given to respondents, (b) no assessment of respondents' level of prejudice, and (c) use of an outdated list of adjectives. These shortcomings are addressed in the authors' assessment of the stereotype and personal beliefs of a sample of University of Wisconsin students. In contrast to the commonly espoused fading stereotype proposition, data suggest that there exists a consistent and negative contemporary stereotype of Blacks. Comparing the data from the Princeton trilogy studies with those of the present study, the authors conclude that the Princeton trilogy studies actually measured respondents' personal beliefs, not (as typically assumed) their knowledge of the Black stereotype. Consistent with Devine's model, high- and low-prejudiced individuals did not differ in their knowledge of the stereotype of Blacks but diverged sharply in their endorsement of the stereotype.
A two-part study contrasted the utility of free-response and checklist methodologies for ascertaining ethnic and gender stereotypes. Descriptions of data collection, organization, and cluster and entropy analyses are provided. Results indicate that important differences emerge between data resulting from free-response methodology and those obtained with traditionally employed adjective checklists. These differences include the generation of a large percentage of physical descriptors and within-ethnic-group gender differences in stereotype content. A major finding is the generation of a large number of distinct responses coupled with low-frequency use of any particular response. Study 2 specifically examined whether free-response data are more schematic than checklist data. Results indicate that free-response data have a greater dependency and may thus be indicative of schematic response. This schematic response may, in turn, indicate more automatic processing than is evident with data from checklist methodologies.
This study examines the role of gender stereotypes in justifying the social system by maintaining the division of labor between the sexes. The distribution of the sexes in 80 occupations was predicted from participants’ beliefs that six dimensions of gender-stereotypic attributes contribute to occupational success: masculine physical, feminine physical, masculine personality, feminine personality, masculine cognitive, and feminine cognitive. Findings showed that, to the extent that occupations were female dominated, feminine personality or physical attributes were thought more essential for success; to the extent that occupations were male dominated, masculine personality or physical attributes were thought more essential. Demonstrating the role of gender stereotypes in justifying gender hierarchy, occupations had higher prestige in that participants believed that they required masculine personality or cognitive attributes for success, and they had higher earnings to the extent that they were thought to require masculine personality attributes.
Recently several implicit measures of prejudice have been developed. Prejudice indices based on these measures are computed from response differences to positive and negative targets resulting from outgroup compared to ingroup stimuli. Up to now the focus of research involving these measures has mainly been on attitudes and relations to outgroups (i.e. negative attitudes towards the outgroup). It is suggested here that implicit measures of prejudice are also influenced by one's relation towards the ingroup (i.e. ingroup identification), because they involve ingroup as well as outgroup stimuli. A correlational study and an experiment were conducted that supported this prediction. Implications for the application of implicit measures are discussed. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Prior research has shown that within racial category, group members with more Afrocentric facial features are presumed to have more stereotypic traits than those with less Afrocentric features. The present experiment investigated whether this form of feature-based stereotyping occurs when more diagnostic information is available. The participants were provided with photographs and information about the aggressive (or non-aggressive) behaviour of 64 African Americans in four different situations, and asked to predict the likelihood of aggression in a fifth situation. As expected, each instance of aggression increased estimates that a target would behave aggressively in the unknown situation. With degree of displayed aggression controlled, however, targets with more Afrocentric features were judged as significantly more likely to behave aggressively than targets with less Afrocentric features. Thus, stereotyping based on Afrocentric features occurs even when other obviously-relevant information is available. This suggests that it may be difficult to detect and avoid. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Illusory correlation refers to an erronous inference about the relationship between categories of events. One postulated basis for illusory correlation is the co-occurrence of events which are statistically infrequent; i.e., obserbers overestimate the frequency of co-occurence of distinctive events. If one group of persons “occurs” less frequently than another and one type of behavior occurs infrequently, then the above hypothesis predicts that observers would overestimate the frequency that that type of behavior was performed by members of that group. This suggested that the differential perception of majority and minority groups could result solely from the cognitive mechanisms involved in processing information about stimulus events that differ in their frequencies of co-occurrences. Results of two experiments testing this line of reasoning provided strong supprt for the hypothesis. Implications of the experiments for the acquisition of stereotypes are discussed.
Six experiments explored the hypothesis that the members of categories which are considered most prototypical are those with most attributes in common with other members of the category and least attributes in common with other categories. In probabilistic terms, the hypothesis is that prototypicality is a function of the total cue validity of the attributes of items. In Experiments 1 and 3, subjects listed attributes for members of semantic categories which had been previously rated for degree of prototypicality. High positive correlations were obtained between those ratings and the extent of distribution of an item's attributes among the other items of the category. In Experiments 2 and 4, subjects listed superordinates of category members and listed attributes of members of contrasting categories. Negative correlations were obtained between prototypicality and superordinates other than the category in question and between prototypicality and an item's possession of attributes possessed by members of contrasting categories. Experiments 5 and 6 used artificial categories and showed that family resemblance within categories and lack of overlap of elements with contrasting categories were correlated with ease of learning, reaction time in identifying an item after learning, and rating of prototypicality of an item. It is argued that family resemblance offers an alternative to criterial features in defining categories.
Four experiments dealt with the verification of semantic relations. In Experiment I, subjects decided whether an instance was a member of a specified category. For some categories (for example, birds) verification was faster when the target category was a direct superordinate (bird) than a higher level superordinate (animal), while for another category (mammal) this finding reversed. Experiment II obtained ratings of semantic distance that accounted for the previously obtained verification results. Multidimensional scaling of the ratings suggested that semantic distance could be represented as Euclidean distance in a semantic space. Experiments III and IV indicated that semantic distance could predict RTs in another categorization task and choices in an analogies task. These results place constraints on a theory of semantic memory.
The hypothesis of the study was that the domains of color and form are structured into nonarbitrary, semantic categories which develop around perceptually salient “natural prototypes.” Categories which reflected such an organization (where the presumed natural prototypes were central tendencies of the categories) and categories which violated the organization (natural prototypes peripheral) were taught to a total of 162 members of a Stone Age culture which did not initially have hue or geometric-form concepts. In both domains, the presumed “natural” categories were consistently easier to learn than the “distorted” categories. Even when not central, natural prototype stimuli tended to be more rapidly learned and more often chosen as the most typical example of the category than were other stimuli. Implications for general differences between natural categories and the artificial categories of concept formation research were discussed.
This research investigated the nature of contemporary racial stereotypes and their role in social cognition. A priming experiment was conducted in which racial categories (black, white) were presented as primes, and positive and negative black and white stereotypic words were presented as test stimuli. Subjects were asked to indicate (by pressing a response key) whether the test word characteristic could “ever be true” of the prime category or was “always false,” and reaction time was recorded. As predicted, primes of black and white most facilitated response to traits stereotypically attributed to these social groups. Thus, there appear to be important similarities between the information processing of object categories and the representation and use of stereotypes in social categorization. In addition, responses to the positive and negative evaluative words suggest that positive traits are more strongly associated with whites than with blacks, and negative characteristics are more strongly associated with blacks than with whites. Implications of these findings for social cognition, racial attitudes, and nonreactive measurement are discussed.
Behavioral scientists routinely publish broad claims about human psychology and behavior in the world's top journals based on samples drawn entirely from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. Researchers - often implicitly - assume that either there is little variation across human populations, or that these "standard subjects" are as representative of the species as any other population. Are these assumptions justified? Here, our review of the comparative database from across the behavioral sciences suggests both that there is substantial variability in experimental results across populations and that WEIRD subjects are particularly unusual compared with the rest of the species - frequent outliers. The domains reviewed include visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles, self-concepts and related motivations, and the heritability of IQ. The findings suggest that members of WEIRD societies, including young children, are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans. Many of these findings involve domains that are associated with fundamental aspects of psychology, motivation, and behavior - hence, there are no obvious a priori grounds for claiming that a particular behavioral phenomenon is universal based on sampling from a single subpopulation. Overall, these empirical patterns suggests that we need to be less cavalier in addressing questions of human nature on the basis of data drawn from this particularly thin, and rather unusual, slice of humanity. We close by proposing ways to structurally re-organize the behavioral sciences to best tackle these challenges.
Previous theorizing suggests that often-stigmatized individuals may be just as likely, if not more likely, than infrequently stigmatized individuals to protect self-regard by derogating members of low-status groups after receiving negative feedback from high-status others. Often-stigmatized individuals, however, can discount criticism from these high-status others as reflecting prejudice, thereby making outgroup derogation unnecessary as an esteem-protective strategy. Replicating past research, White participants in Experiment 1 expressed prejudices after receiving negative feedback from a White evaluator; as predicted, however, Black participants did not. In Experiment 2, participants instead received negative feedback from Black evaluators (evaluators more likely to threaten Black participants' self-regard). Here, contrary to previous theorizing, Black participants expressed prejudices, not toward another low-status group, but toward high-status Whites. In all, findings reveal flaws in previous assumptions that frequently stigmatized individuals may be especially prone to devalue lower-status others after rejection or negative feedback from members of higher-status groups.
People construct ad hoc categories to achieve goals. For example, constructing the category of “things to sell at a garage sale” can be instrumental to achieving the goal of selling unwanted possessions. These categories differ from common categories (e.g., “fruit,” “furniture”) in that ad hoc categories violate the correlational structure of the environment and are not well established in memory. Regarding the latter property, the category concepts, concept-to-instance associations, and instance-to-concept associations structuring ad hoc categories are shown to be much less established in memory than those of common categories. Regardless of these differences, however, ad hoc categories possess graded structures (i.e., typicality gradients) as salient as those structuring common categories. This appears to be the result of a similarity comparison process that imposes graded structure on any category regardless of type.