Intergroup Context Moderates the Impact of White Americans' Identification on Racial Categorization of Ambiguous Faces.

We examined how the number of groups in a categorization task influences how White Americans categorize ambiguous faces. We investigated the strength of identity-driven ingroup overexclusion-wherein highly identified perceivers overexclude ambiguous members from the ingroup-proposing that, compared with dichotomous tasks (with only the ingroup and one outgroup), tasks with more outgroups attenuate identity-driven ingroup overexclusion (a dilution effect). Fourteen studies (n = 4,001) measured White Americans' racial identification and their categorizations of ambiguous faces and manipulated the categorization task to have two groups, three groups, or an unspecified number of groups (open-ended). In all three conditions, participants overexcluded faces from the White category on average. There was limited support for the dilution effect: identity-driven ingroup overexclusion was absent in the three-group task and only weakly supported in the open-ended task. The presence of multiple outgroups may dampen the impact of racial identity on race perceptions among White Americans.

[1]  Jacqueline M. Chen,et al.  Are you one of us: Investigating cultural differences in determining group membership , 2021, European Journal of Social Psychology.

[2]  D. Barr,et al.  Understanding Mixed-Effects Models Through Data Simulation , 2021 .

[3]  D. Sanchez,et al.  A Meta-Analytic Review of Hypodescent Patterns in Categorizing Multiracial and Racially Ambiguous Targets , 2020, Personality & social psychology bulletin.

[4]  Jacqueline M. Chen,et al.  Broadening the stimulus set: Introducing the American Multiracial Faces Database , 2020, Behavior Research Methods.

[5]  Arnold K. Ho,et al.  Introducing the Sociopolitical Motive × Intergroup Threat Model to Understand How Monoracial Perceivers’ Sociopolitical Motives Influence Their Categorization of Multiracial People , 2020, Personality and social psychology review : an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

[6]  Leif D. Nelson,et al.  99% impossible: A valid, or falsifiable, internal meta-analysis. , 2019, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[7]  A. Evans,et al.  Explaining the persistent influence of facial cues in social decision-making. , 2019, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[8]  Samuel R. Sommers,et al.  At face value: Psychological outcomes differ for real vs. computer-generated multiracial faces , 2018, The Journal of social psychology.

[9]  D. Hamilton,et al.  Black + White = Not White: A minority bias in categorizations of Black-White multiracials , 2018, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

[10]  Jacqueline M. Chen,et al.  To Be or Not to Be (Black or Multiracial or White) , 2018 .

[11]  Cheryl L. Dickter,et al.  Other Than the Sum: Hispanic and Middle Eastern Categorizations of Black–White Mixed-Race Faces , 2018, Social Psychological and Personality Science.

[12]  Samuel R. Sommers,et al.  Exposure to Biracial Faces Reduces Colorblindness , 2018, Personality & social psychology bulletin.

[13]  D. Sanchez,et al.  A review of multiracial malleability: Identity, categorization, and shifting racial attitudes , 2018 .

[14]  Arnold K. Ho,et al.  “You’re One of Us”: Black Americans’ Use of Hypodescent and Its Association With Egalitarianism , 2017, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[15]  G. Nave,et al.  Is there a Publication Bias in Behavioural Intranasal Oxytocin Research on Humans? Opening the File Drawer of One Laboratory , 2016, Journal of neuroendocrinology.

[16]  Samuel R. Sommers,et al.  Social Belonging Motivates Categorization of Racially Ambiguous Faces , 2016 .

[17]  Jonathan B Freeman,et al.  A Perceptual Pathway to Bias , 2016, Psychological science.

[18]  D. Sanchez,et al.  Exposure to Racial Ambiguity Influences Lay Theories of Race , 2015 .

[19]  Gandalf Nicolas,et al.  Looking Black or looking back? Using phenotype and ancestry to make racial categorizations , 2015 .

[20]  D. Bates,et al.  Fitting Linear Mixed-Effects Models Using lme4 , 2014, 1406.5823.

[21]  D. Amodio,et al.  Economic scarcity alters the perception of race , 2014, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[22]  Kerri L. Johnson,et al.  Recalibrating gender perception: face aftereffects and the perceptual underpinnings of gender-related biases. , 2014, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[23]  J. Jost,et al.  On the ideology of hypodescent: Political conservatism predicts categorization of racially ambiguous faces as Black , 2013 .

[24]  Amy J. C. Cuddy,et al.  Status boundary enforcement and the categorization of black–white biracials , 2013 .

[25]  J. Ioannidis.  Why Science Is Not Necessarily Self-Correcting , 2012, Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

[26]  D. A. Kenny,et al.  Treating stimuli as a random factor in social psychology: a new and comprehensive solution to a pervasive but largely ignored problem. , 2012, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[27]  V. Plaut,et al.  Identity Form Matters: White Racial Identity and Attitudes Toward Diversity , 2012 .

[28]  N. Ambady,et al.  A dynamic interactive theory of person construal. , 2011, Psychological review.

[29]  Daniel R. Little,et al.  Short-term memory scanning viewed as exemplar-based categorization. , 2011, Psychological review.

[30]  Daniel T Levin,et al.  Evidence for hypodescent and racial hierarchy in the categorization and perception of biracial individuals. , 2011, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[31]  Rhiannon N. Turner,et al.  Cognitive adaptation to the experience of social and cultural diversity. , 2011, Psychological bulletin.

[32]  Glyn W. Humphreys,et al.  The Dynamics of Category Conjunctions , 2009 .

[33]  Andrea M Hussong,et al.  Integrative data analysis: the simultaneous analysis of multiple data sets. , 2009, Psychological methods.

[34]  G. Bodenhausen,et al.  Black + White = Black , 2008, Psychological science.

[35]  K. Peng,et al.  White selves: conceptualizing and measuring a dominant-group identity. , 2005, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[36]  Vincent Yzerbyt,et al.  Who may enter? The impact of in-group identification on in-group/out-group categorization , 2002 .

[37]  Darren A. Spielman.  Young Children, Minimal Groups, and Dichotomous Categorization , 2000 .

[38]  M. Augoustinos,et al.  The minimal group paradigm: Categorization into two versus three groups , 1995 .

[39]  V. Yzerbyt,et al.  The Ingroup Overexclusion Effect - Impact of Valence and Confirmation On Stereotypical Information Search , 1992 .

[40]  J. Crocker,et al.  A Collective Self-Esteem Scale: Self-Evaluation of One's Social Identity , 1992 .

[41]  J. Turner,et al.  The significance of the social identity concept for social psychology with reference to individualism, interactionism and social influence , 1986 .

[42]  R. Rosenthal.  The file drawer problem and tolerance for null results , 1979 .

[43]  E. Rosch,et al.  Family resemblances: Studies in the internal structure of categories , 1975, Cognitive Psychology.

[44]  H. Tajfel,et al.  Social categorization and intergroup behaviour , 1971 .

[45]  H. Tajfel.  Cognitive aspects of prejudice , 1969, Journal of Biosocial Science.

[46]  M. Posner,et al.  On the genesis of abstract ideas. , 1968, Journal of experimental psychology.

[47]  Lisa Giamo,et al.  Seeing Similarity or Distance? Racial Identification Moderates Intergroup Perception After Biracial Exposure , 2014 .

[48]  D. Hamilton,et al.  Natural ambiguities: Racial categorization of multiracial individuals , 2012 .

[49]  V. Esses,et al.  Intergroup Competition and Attitudes Toward Immigrants and Immigration: An Instrumental Model of Group Conflict , 1998 .

[50]  V. Yzerbyt,et al.  The ingroup overexclusion effect: Identity concerns in decisions about group membership , 1995 .