Changing Race Boundary Perception by Reading Narrative Fiction

Participants read a story about a counterstereotypical Muslim woman and were then asked to determine the race of ambiguous-race Arab-Caucasian faces. Compared to a content-matched control condition, participants who read the narrative exhibited lower categorical race bias by making fewer categorical race judgments and perceiving greater genetic overlap between Arabs and Caucasians (Experiment 1). In Experiment 2, participants determined the race of ambiguous-race Arab-Caucasian faces depicting low and moderate anger. Emotion-related perceptual race bias was observed in the control conditions where higher intensity anger expressions led participants to disproportionately categorize faces as Arab. This bias was eliminated in the narrative condition.

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