University of Nevada, Reno
Blending Into the Background?: The Influence of Situation Cues on Perceptions of Racially Ambiguous Individuals
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Social Psychology
by
Kerry S. Kleyman
Dr. Markus Kemmelmeier/Dissertation Advisor
August, 2010
i
Abstract
With an increased growth in interracial relations in the United States, more and more
people have mixed racial heritage or background. The large and increasing number of
biracial or multiracial individuals blurs racial boundaries and challenges longstanding
racial classifications, which are based on the assumption of distinct, non-overlapping
categories. Currently, there are many individuals who are racially ambiguous to
observers, that is, they cannot be easily categorized as a member of a specific racial
group. Based on the notion that people have implicit expectations that certain situations
are more likely to be characteristic for some racial groups rather than others, I
hypothesized that observers rely on situational cues to disambiguate the targets. Further,
individual differences in belief and attitude structures, especially social dominance
orientation, implicit theories and need for structure, should play a role in the process of disambiguating the target. I predicted that situation cues would lead to an overall assimilation effect across three levels of face version; 75% Black (asymmetrical Black),
50% Black (symmetrically biracial) and 25% Black (asymmetrical White). Across two studies, this assimilation effect was found; ambiguous targets were perceived as darker
when paired with a Black situational cue, and perceived as lighter when paired with a
White situational cue. In Study One, implicit theories moderated the influence of
participant gender and face version on the perception of the target, such that male entity
theorists showed an assimilation effect when the target was asymmetrically White.
Further, results from Study One found that SDO moderated the perception of the target.
In particular, high SDO men showed strong contrast effects for the asymmetrical White ii
target, such that in the White context, the target was perceived as darker, indicating that
these men emphasized any potential non-White feature, thus subscribing to the perceptual
one-drop rule. This effect was not found for women. Study Two sought to test the cross-
race effect, predicting the ambiguous targets categorized as ingroup would be more
accurately recognized. However, the results did not support previous research.
Interestingly, individual difference effects occurred primarily in the within groups design
(Study One), but not in the between groups design (Study Two). Overall, categorization
of racially ambiguous faces appears to be influenced by the situation, as well as the level
or symmetry of ambiguity, and belief and attitude structures of the perceiver.
Implications for eyewitness testimony and other identification tasks are discussed.
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Table of Contents
ABSTRACT ...... i
LIST OF TABLES ...... vi
LIST OF FIGURES ...... vii
Chapters
1. INTRODUCTION ...... 1
2. CATEGORIZING RACIALLY AMBIGUOUS TARGETS: CONTRAST AND
ASSIMILATION ...... 5
2.1. The functional nature of social categories ...... 5
2.2. The importance of social categorization ...... 5
2.3. The process of categorization and category selection ...... 7
2.4. Relevant features in social categorization ...... 8
2.5. How categorization is influenced by situation expectations ...... 10
2.6. Effects of contextual stereotypes on the perception of ambiguous targets ...... 13
2.7. Assimilation and contrast effects in perception of ambiguous targets ...... 16
2.8. The cross-race effect ...... 19
3. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN PERCEPTIONS OF RACIALLY AMBIGUOUS
TARGETS………...... 22
3.1. Social Dominance Theory ...... 22
3.2. Implicit Theories ...... 31
3.3. Need for Structure ...... 35
4. THE INFLUENCE OF GENDER AND SPORTS ...... 39
5. OVERVIEW AND HYPOTHESES ...... 42 iv
5.1. Overview of Studies ...... 42
5.2. Hypotheses ...... 43
6. PILOT STUDIES ...... 48
6.1. Pilot Study 1 ...... 48
6.2. Pilot Study 2 ...... 51
7. STUDY 1……...... 55
7.1. Method and Participants ...... 60
7.2. Procedures ...... 64
7.3. Results…… ...... 68
7.4. Discussion ...... 87
8. STUDY 2…… ...... 92
8.1. Method and Participants ...... 95
8.2. Materials and Procedures ...... 97
8.3. Results…… ...... 100
8.4. Discussion ...... 112
9. GENERAL DISCUSSION ...... 116
9.1. Limitations ...... 127
9.2. Implications ...... 130
REFERENCES ...... 135
APPENDICES ...... 150
Appendix A: Social Dominance Orientation Instrument ...... 150 v
Appendix B: Implicit Theories Instrument ...... 151
Appendix C: Personal Need for Structure Instrument ...... 152
Appendix D: Distractor Task (Study One) ...... 153
Appendix E: Distractor Task (Study Two) ...... 154
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List of Tables
1. Frequencies of sports associated with White or Black athletes by gender of
participant (Pilot Two) ...... 53
2. Participant Characteristics (Study One) ...... 60
3. Tests of the effects of experimental variables and gender: face version, situation
cue and significant interactions. (Study One) ...... 73
4. Tests of effects and interactions of Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), face
version, situation cue, and gender (Study One) ...... 81
5. Tests of effects and interactions of Implicit Theories, face version, situation cue,
and gender (Study One) ...... 86
6. Participant Characteristics (Study Two) ...... 96
7. Tests of the effects of experimental variables and gender: face version, situation
cue and significant interactions. (Study Two) ...... 105
8. Tests of effects and interactions of Implicit Theories, face version, situation cue,
and gender (Study Two) ...... 109
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List of Figures
1. Context dependency in visual perception ...... 11
2. Example of 2 parents, and 3 children (one face series) ...... 63
3. Examples of target faces embedded in situation cues...... 64
4. Example of face stimuli response categories constructed for Study One ...... 67
5. Two-way interaction of face version by situation cue (Study One) ...... 76
6. Two-way interaction of gender by situation cue (Study One) ...... 77
7. Three-way interaction of gender by face version by situation cue (Study One) ...79
8. Three-way interaction of SDO by gender by situation cue (Study One) ...... 83
9. Four-way interaction of SDO by gender by face version by situation cue (Study
One)...... 84
10. Example of study two recognition task (Study Two) ...... 99
11. Example of study two manipulation check (Study Two) ...... 100
12. Two-way interaction of face version by situation cue (Study Two) ...... 106
13. Three-way interaction of gender by situation cue by face version (Study Two) .107
14. Four-way interaction of gender by situation cue by face version by implicit
theories (Study Two) ...... 110
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Chapter 1: Blending into the background?:
The influence of situation cues on perceptions of racially ambiguous individuals
On July 22, 2005, Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes was fatally shot at close range by London Metropolitan Police on the London Underground
(http://inquest.justice4jean.org/). Although a Brazilian citizen without any connections to terrorism, his death was the result of him being misidentified as an Ethiopian suicide bomber. Less than five months later, on December 7, 2005, Rigoberto Alpizar, a Costa-
Rica born U.S. citizen, was fatally shot at Miami International Airport by Federal Air
Marshals (Morrissey, 2005). Following the events of 9/11, police and security personnel have been on high alert for potential terrorists, principally within major transportation hubs worldwide. What connects these cases is that Menezes and Alpizar’s appearance was ambiguous enough to allow security forces to mistake them for individuals of Middle
Eastern extraction—the stereotypical background of contemporary terrorists. Put differently, the fact that these men could not be unambiguously classified as South
American allowed for erroneous conclusions about their ethnicity—and ultimately led to their deaths.
These two cases illustrate that perceivers, when determining the ethnic or racial group membership of others, may have to overcome a great deal of ambiguity, even when they know about the typical appearance of members of a specific group. This issue is particularly pertinent to Americans, given that there has been a steady increase in the number of individuals who indicate their racial or ethnic heritage as mixed. Specifically, the United States Census Bureau found nearly 7 million multiracial Americans in the
2000 Census, the first year during which respondents were not forced to label themselves 2 as members of only one racial category (United States Census Bureau, 2009). Thus, how do people determine others’ racial group membership for those who are not easily classifiable?
Arguably, racial ambiguity research is still in its infancy; yet, there have been many significant contributions to our understanding of mixed-race or racially ambiguous individuals. Previous research in racial ambiguity has primarily focused on identification of racial markers (e.g. Blair, Judd, Sadler, & Jenkins, 2002; Blair, Judd, & Chapleau,
2004; Eberhardt, Davies, Purdie-Vaughns, & Johnson, 2006), level of prejudice or attitudes of racism (e.g. Blascovich, Wyer, Swart, & Kibler, 1997; Devine, Plant,
Amodio, Harmon-Jones, & Vance, 2002), target’s affect (e.g. Duncan, 1976; Hugenberg,
2005; Hugenberg, & Bodenhausen, 2004) or peripheral objects on the target (e.g. Payne,
2001; Unkelbach, Forgas, & Denson, 2008).
A question that previous research has only begun to explore, which is central in this dissertation, is if, and how the social context or specific environment influences the perception of race for racially ambiguous targets. That is, if a person is not unambiguously Black or unambiguously White, would this person be more likely to be perceived as White in an environment in which one would expect mostly White individuals compared to an environment in which one would expect mostly Black individuals? To date, one of the few lines of research to have examined contextual effects is by Levin and Banaji (2006), as well as Eberhardt, Dasgupta and Banaszynski (2003).
Levin and Banaji (2006, Study 2) examined how the perception of skin tone of a racially ambiguous target was influenced by explicit racial labels of Black or White next to the target face. When asked to adjust an object on a computer screen to match the lightness 3 or darkness of the target’s skin tone, participants consistently picked lighter skin tones for the same ambiguous face when the target was labeled White, and the reverse when the target was labeled Black. These results corroborated findings by MacLin and Malpass
(2003) who utilized distinct racial markers (i.e. Hispanic or Black hairstyle) in conjunction with an ambiguous face. MacLin and Malpass found evidence for a perceptual assimilation effect: Perceivers categorized an ambiguous face as Hispanic when paired with a stereotypical Hispanic hairstyle, but categorized the same face as
Black when paired it was paired with a stereotypical Black hairstyle.
Using White and Black racial labels, similar to Levin and Banaji (2006),
Eberhardt et al.’s (2003) objective was to determine whether participants would classify racially ambiguous targets as Black or White (Study 1 & 2) and if the racial labels would bias memory for the targets in an open-ended selection task (Study 2). Eberhardt et al. found that the racial labels indeed affected both categorization of the ambiguous targets’ race, and the memory of the target, but that participants’ implicit theories qualified these effects, as explained below. In apparent contrast to these findings, however, Corneille,
Huart, Becquart, and Brédart (2004, Study 1) presented faces at various locations on a mixed-race continuum (i.e. Caucasian – North African) to participants and also provided subtler labels, consisting of social information such as ethnic names or statements highly typical of Belgians (White condition) or North Africans (Black condition). They found that the individuating social information about a target did not influence the categorization of said target. Thus, although the available studies provide a solid foundation for the investigation of context effects in race perception research, there is also an open question concerning the robustness of the same effects. 4
This dissertation attempts to extend the work of Levin and Banaji (2006), and
Eberhardt et al. (2003) by providing implicit situation cues (i.e. contextual, situational, or environmental information) in place of the explicit racial labels. The present research examines how real world situation cues influence the perception of race for ambiguous targets embedded within these contexts. Further, following Corneille et al. (2004), the present research utilizes targets along various locations on the mixed-race continua (i.e.
Black – White) to examine how different types of ambiguity influence the perception of race. Other objectives include examining the cross-race effect and memory distortions of mixed-race individuals, and investigating individual difference factors that moderate the relationship between situation cues and perception of race.
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Chapter 2: Categorizing racially ambiguous targets: Contrast and Assimilation
2.1 The functional nature of social categories
Why do people categorize? Most researchers would agree that social categorization is a functional “must have” in our social world (Corneille & Judd, 1999;
Devine & Sherman, 1992). Categories allow us to organize and quickly comprehend the individuals and situations around us. The same way that people organize their CD collections into genres of music (i.e. Classical, Rock, etc.); people also categorize individuals around them into meaningful categories. For instance, we can easily categorize our music collection into Rock and Classical music, but what if we come across a fusion band of Bluegrass and Rock? How would you categorize this band? Or, how would you categorize a collection of songs that span multiple genres on a single
CD? The same could be said about individuals within a society. There are some people that are easy to categorize; but the difficulty arises when the category is not quite obvious to the perceiver. The most overarching categories in person perception are based on stimuli immediately present at the beginning stage of almost all interactions: age, race, and gender (Fiske, 1992). Subtypes and combinations of these categories allow individuals to further categorize based on other physical and immediately available factors, such as attractiveness or facial maturity. This provides an inherent reliance on physical cues and convenient categories that facilitate perceivers to classify and respond quickly.
2.2 The importance of social categorization
Social categorization can have profound positive or negative consequences for people (Banks & Eberhardt, 1998; Hugenberg & Bodenhausen, 2004). If an individual is 6 categorized as a member of a positively stereotyped group, the individual may also garner the benefits of the positive stereotypes, such as acceptance or trust. However, if the individual is categorized as a member of a negatively stereotyped group, that individual may be subjected to the associated subtle or blatant discriminatory behaviors or attitudes
(Macrae & Bodenhausen, 2000). The negative effects of this categorization have been shown in numerous studies on the categorization of stimuli as Black and the accompanying negative consequences (e.g. Banks & Eberhardt, 1998; Blair et al., 2002;
Blair et al., 2004; Eberhardt et al., 2006; Payne, 2001). For instance, the same interpersonal behavior, such as an ambiguous shove, was considered to be more hostile when committed by a Black man as compared to a White man (Duncan, 1976). Similarly, simulated Black targets, even when unarmed, were more likely to be shot in an experiment in which participants were asked to decide, within less than a second, whether they needed to defend themselves against a threat (Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink,
2002). Additional studies suggest that within the criminal justice system, perceptually more prototypical African Americans, that is, those with more stereotypical Afrocentric features, were more likely to receive longer sentences or the death penalty compared to
African Americans will less stereotypical Afrocentric features (Blair et al., 2004;
Eberhardt et al., 2006). Sometimes, the effects of stereotyping are moderated by the specific context. Gordon and Anderson (1995) showed that the social expectations of particular types of crimes (i.e. burglary or bank embezzlement) were strongly attached to race, such that Black perpetrators were associated with burglary, whereas White perpetrators were associated with bank embezzlement. Gordon and Anderson found that the social expectations had real consequences if the expectation did not match the race. 7
For instance, Black and White perpetrators were judged more harshly when their crime was consistent with the social expectation (i.e. Black perpetrator and burglary or White perpetrator and embezzlement). These studies, as well as several others, indicate the importance of racial categorization, and the implied consequences.
2.3 The process of categorization and category selection
Categories typically consist of stimulus objects that are grouped together on the basis of their perceptual similarities (Banks & Eberhardt, 1998; Corneille & Judd, 1999).
These types of groupings are psychologically useful because they provide the individual with information about the shared perceptual features that result in stereotypes. Based on a bottom-up, exemplar based model of memory, categorization is based upon retrieval cues, and the prototypes that share similarity to the cue or feature. For example, a person may see an individual wearing a hard hat, and then associate this individual with other people that also wear hard hats; thus, categorizing the individual as a construction worker because the salient retrievable cue (i.e. hard hat) shares perceptual similarity with the prototypical construction worker (i.e. construction workers wear hard hats).
However, objects can often be categorized in a multitude of ways. Macrae,
Bodenhausen, and Milne (1995) showed how varying situation cues activated different group representations, and thus, activated a particular stereotype. When presented with chopsticks, a Chinese woman was categorized as “Chinese,” as confirmed in a subsequent word association test; but when the same target was presented with makeup, she was categorized as “female” (Macrae et al., 1995). The fact that perceivers often need to select a category from multiple available ones is particularly pertinent to research targeting racially ambiguous individuals. For instance, in the Macrae et al. study, what if 8 the woman was racially ambiguous and her features did not fit the typical Chinese woman? Would the participants still associate her with Chinese-related words when seen using chopsticks?
Macrae et al. (1995) illustrated the perceived need to select between two non- exclusive categories, such that participants could categorize one of two of the woman’s identities, Chinese or female. The current study differs slightly because the categorizations of a target as Black or White are viewed as mutually exclusive. Corneille et al. (2004) conducted four studies to investigate categorization and memory of racially mixed faces. They found an accentuation effect, such that any prominent ethnic feature on an ambiguous face was recollected as more typical of that ethnic group (i.e. an Asian feature was recollected as more stereotypically Asian in the recollection task). Further, from this work, it was clear that as perceivers focus on a particular cue they further distance their mental representations from any dissimilar items, thus, making the categorical differences more salient in defining their group memberships. By categorizing a face as White, that face will be remembered as more stereotypically White, and thus less likely to posses other-race features.
2.4 What are the features that are relevant in social categorization?
Stereotypic racial markers or features have received a lot of attention in the race perception literature. In particular, the role of Afrocentric features in face perception, such as style of hair, fullness of lips, and pigment of skin tone. Many of these articles use the recognizable Black stereotype of hostility, aggression, or threatening situation to investigate perceptions within crime-type paradigms (Correll et al., 2002; Duncan, 1976;
Herr, 1986; Payne, 2001). One such study investigated the influence of Afrocentric facial 9 features in criminal sentencing (Blair et al., 2004). In this study, a sample of Florida
Department of Corrections criminal photos were used to assess the level of stereotypical
Black (i.e. Afrocentric) features for both White and Black defendants. Findings revealed no racial differences between White and Black defendants in prison time as a function of
Afrocentric features; however, regression analyses revealed that within each racial group, those with more Afrocentric features received longer sentences. Thus, whether White or
Black, the defendants with more stereotypic Black features were more likely to receive a longer prison term, regardless of the type or severity of crime. A similar study by
Eberhardt et al. (2006) investigated capital-sentencing for Black defendants. Using real death-eligible cases from Philadelphia, photos of the defendants were rated for race stereotypicality. It was found that in sentencing, Black defendants with more Afrocentric features received the death penalty more often; in particular this occurred when the victim was White. These studies clearly demonstrate that physical racial markers play a role in categorizing the target into a specific racial group, which in turn activates prejudice or discriminatory behaviors towards those who have more prominent
Afrocentric features. However, sometimes the absence of specific racial markers creates ambiguity; thus, what other features do we use to guide our perceptions?
Aside from physical facial features of the individual, peripheral objects attached to or associated with the person can be used in the categorization process. These objects can be represented by a particular style of clothing, jewelry and accessories, or different styles of headgear. In a recent study, researchers used the shooter bias paradigm to investigate the effects of Muslim headgear (i.e. a turban or hijab; Unkelbach et al., 2008).
The “shooter bias” paradigm is a shoot/don’t shoot weapons perception task, typically 10 utilizing White and Black “perpetrators.” It is a high-speed threat assessment and response task where people have to decide how to respond to respond to a target who is either presented with a firearm, thus representing a threat, or who is presented without one. Specifically, participants are given the choice to shoot a potential attacker or to not shoot them. Participants are generally quicker to shoot unarmed Black targets, consequently activating the association between Black males and weapons or aggression
(Correll et al., 2002; Payne, 2001). However, instead of using the traditional weapons vs. non-weapons in the shooter bias paradigm, Unkelbach et al. varied the headgear on a racially ambiguous target who was wearing the hijab or not. They found that the feature of Muslim headgear induced participants to shoot the target more often, similar to Correll et al.’s (2002) original results when Black perpetrators were used as the target. In all targets, the physical features of the face were identical; the only factor that was manipulated was the presence or absence of the ethnic headgear. This suggests that peripheral objects play an important role in categorization as well as physical facial features (Macrae & Bodenhausen, 1995).
2.5 How categorization is influenced by situation expectations
Social perceivers bring their own assumptions and expectations to a context and will utilize stereotypes and mental representations to fill in the blanks to resolve any potential ambiguity (Bruner & Minturn, 1955; Martin & Macrae, 2007). When we enter a new social situation, we already have preconceived ideas of what we can expect. For example, if you are invited to a pee-wee league ice hockey game, and you have never been to an ice hockey game, you may still know that you should dress warm (i.e. ice hockey is a cold sport), and that you should wear team colors (i.e. to show team spirit). 11
Armed with this knowledge, you have mentally prepared yourself for an event that you have not yet experienced.
Past literature suggests that perceivers have very strong expectations based on the situation. This is especially true in the case of ambiguous information. In the classic 1955 experiment on accessibility of perceptual categories, and the hypothesize-and-test nature of perception, Bruner and Minturn (1955) discussed the importance of context on the power of perception. The influence of the context led the perceiver to categorize the letter
B or number 13 differently depending on the surrounding context (i.e. numbers or letters). The ‘B’ and the ‘13’ are, in fact, physically identifiable, that is, the context of a series of numbers or letters constrains what you expect to see, and what you are ready to identify. A similar study was conducted by Selfridge (1955, cited in Wittenbrink, Judd, &
Park, 2001), to show the context dependency of the letter “A” or “H.” When the A/H was shown between T-E, the letter was perceived to be an H, whereas when the letter was between a C-T, the letter was perceived to be an A (see Figure 1). These simple experiments demonstrate the strong influence of context in forming expectations of ambiguous stimuli.
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Social situations can present similar expectations to the simple number/letter combinations above. Although more complex than simple letters and numbers, social situations carry with them certain expectations about what individuals could reasonably expect to see and experience. For example, in two studies, Wittenbrink et al. (2001) manipulated race-stereotypic contexts as either positive (e.g. family BBQ) or negative
(i.e. jail cell). The resulting context effect led the authors to conclude that positive vs. negative racial stereotypes varied the automatic responses participants had to social category cues. What this means is that the social category cue automatically brought to mind stereotypes about a specific racial group, leading the perceivers to respond in a stereotype-consistent manner. Wittenbrink et al. also found evidence that the stereotype brought to mind (of an unambiguous racial target) was influenced by the contextual cue.
This suggests that stereotypes may be automatically triggered by contextual information, and thus, the contextual information will influence an individual’s response.
There are, of course, many situations or contexts that are not particularly strong in regards to the expectations they inspire, but there are also many contexts that are clearly associated with particular racial groups. For instance, when you think of a typical church in Harlem, you may expect a primarily Black congregation, or when you think of a church in Northern Maine, you may expect to find a primarily White congregation.
Although both contexts are Christian, and are church-based, one could reasonably expect different racial populations in attendance.
As the United States continues to become more diverse, and the population of mixed-race individuals continues to grow, it is likely that the context or situation will begin to play a larger role in the identification and categorization of mixed-race 13 individuals. This brings with it the possibility that racially ambiguous individuals might be categorized differently based on the specific context in which they are encountered.
For instance, most Americans would agree that Black males are associated with basketball. From the early days of the Harlem Globetrotters to slogans like “Be Like
Mike” (a reference to Black NBA basketball star Michael Jordan), basketball has become a sport strongly associated with Black athletes. Therefore, a racially ambiguous male who is playing basketball may be more likely to be categorized as Black. This could be due to the basketball cue, because there is a situation expectation that basketball players are primarily Black athletes (Stone, Perry, & Darley, 1997). Thus, it is the stereotype of the situation (i.e. basketball players are Black), and the expectation of the situation, such that if one were to attend a professional basketball game, one may have the expectation that the majority of the players will be Black. It seems probable that racial ambiguity may be unavoidable in the future; as such, it is likely that social expectations of the context will lead us to categorize the ambiguous individual in a stereotype consistent manner (Pauker
& Ambady, 2009; Maddux et al., 2004).
2.6 The Effects of Contextual Stereotypes on the Perception of
Racially Ambiguous Targets
Categorization of an individual is driven by features and (dis)similarities.
However, individuals live in a social world in which they are surrounded by meaningful contexts. From the clothes people wear, to the neighborhood they live in or the professions of which they are members, situation cues (i.e. contextual elements) that surround individuals provide rich information as to their membership in social categories.
For example, some contexts of situations provide a more well-defined stereotype than 14 others as to what perceivers could reasonably expect to see, such as a polo match in the
Hamptons. In this context, one may have the expectation that the polo players will be
White due to the knowledge of both the area (i.e. the Hamptons) and the game (i.e. polo).
Do people rely on situation information when categorizing a racially ambiguous target? The goal of the present research is to answer this question utilizing naturalistic situation cues. As summarized above, several recent studies demonstrated that context helps shape how racially ambiguous targets are being categorized; however, none of these studies relied on naturally emerging situational information. For example,
Eberhardt et al. (2003) investigated how explicit racial labels influenced memory for racially ambiguous faces. Explicit racial labels are similar to situation cues due to specific information provided to the perceiver and the expectation of how the face is most likely to look. However, they differ because explicit racial labels are less subtle and do not emerge naturally from the situation. Overall, the participants utilized the racial labels in their memory of the faces. For example, when provided with the “Black” label associated with the ambiguous face, participants were more likely to use the label information to perceive the individual as more stereotypically Black (i.e. darker skin, etc), in line with their expectations of what a Black face should look like. Other participants used the racial label information to shift their perception of the individual as less stereotypically Black
(i.e. lighter skin). What distinguished these individuals, namely differences in implicit theories, will be discussed later. What is important at this juncture is that, regardless of outcome, all participants utilized the racial labels in their processing, which shaped their subsequent memory of the target face. 15
Similarly, Levin and Banaji’s (2006) investigation of the role of racial labels in perceived lightness of faces showed the same assimilation effect as Eberhardt et al.
(2003), such that ambiguous faces that were labeled as “Black” were perceived as significantly darker in skin tone than when they were labeled “White.” This was found for targets shown in Black and White photos (Levin & Banaji), or in color (Eberhardt et al.). This finding suggests that the explicit racial label was used to disambiguate the faces. Most recently, Pauker et al. (2009, Study 3) investigated the role of racial labels in the cross-race effect, i.e. the phenomenon that the faces of ingroup members are remembered more accurately than the faces of outgroup members (see below). Once again, the findings reveal that participants relied on a racial label attached to an ambiguous face, in this case, in order to decide whether a target person was included in the ingroup or not. For instance, when the label “White” was assigned to an ambiguous face, White participants were motivated to include the target in their ingroup, and thus, had better recognition memory for the face compared to when the same ambiguous face was presented with the label “Black.” These studies, taken together, reveal that contextual information, in the form of explicit racial labels, plays an important role in how the target is perceived. This lends support to the current research, and we can now move from explicit labels to more naturally occurring situational cues. It is still an open question as to whether these similar effects will materialize with the use of naturally emerging situation cues. After all, explicit racial labels may have reflected an “in your face” approach, such that the authors’ heavy-handed manipulation ensured that research participants used the context information. However, the question here is whether people 16 will rely on natural situation cues in the first place, especially when they have strong expectation with regard to the racial stereotypicality of a particular situation.
2.7 Assimilation and Contrast Effects in Perception of
Racially Ambiguous Targets
The specific context in which a judgment is made can have a profound influence on the judgment itself. As a general rule, the more ambiguous a judged object is, that is, the more interpretation a particular judgment requires, the greater the potential impact of the judgment context (e.g., Higgins, 1996). When the presence of a particular context or prime shifts the judgment in the direction of the prime, a so-called assimilation effect occurs. Assimilation effects refer to a judgment made by the perceiver that reflects a direct relationship between the imposed stimulus and the judgment. For instance, Devine
(1989) examined the effects of automatic stereotyping on ambiguous stereotypic behaviors and race-unspecified targets, and found that the judgments made by the participants were stereotype-congruent (i.e. assimilation effects). When primed with the mostly negative cultural stereotype of African Americans, participants evaluated the ambiguous behavior by a race-unspecified target more negatively compared to a control condition. Similarly, MacLin and Malpass (2001) found that one prominent ethnic feature
(i.e. ethnic hairstyle) paired with an ambiguous face drove participants’ categorization:
When the ethnic feature was “Black hair,” participants categorized the face as Black more often, the face was perceived as darker in complexion, and more stereotypic Black features were associated with the face than when it was paired with a Hispanic feature.
However, there are also many instances, in which a supposed prime generated perceptions that were rather dissimilar from the prime, resulting in contrast effects, i.e. 17 represent the inverse relationship of the imposed stimulus and judgment by the perceiver.
One such example investigated judgments of physical attractiveness of females (Kenrick
& Gutierres, 1980). The authors found that when males used attractive models or female film actors as a comparison, the ratings of an average female’s attractiveness were significantly lower compared to a control condition. This demonstrated that the participants excluded the average female from the “attractive” model group, thus resulting in a contrast effect (i.e. the average female is rated as less attractive).
In the context of the present dissertation, a primary question is whether the perception of a racially ambiguous target will be assimilated to a stereotypically Black or a stereotypically White situation. In the domain of stereotyping and racial categorization, assimilation effects have been well documented (e.g. Devine, 1989; MacLin & Malpass,
2001; Unkelbach et al., 2008). However, while contrast effects have been established in the domain of stereotyping (e.g. Bless et al., 2001), contrast effects with regard to the racial categorization of ambiguous faces have received much less attention in the literature.
To bring clarity in a sometimes bewildering array of findings, and in order to explain the conditions under which assimilation effects and contrast effects occur,
Schwarz and Bless (1992) introduced the inclusion/exclusion model of social judgment.
Based on the Schwarz and Bless model, assimilation effects are the consequence of category inclusion, such that given the inclusion of a particular stimulus, an assimilative effect should occur. However, given the exclusion of the stimulus, the opposite effect should occur (i.e. contrast). This is based on the assumption that because evaluative judgments require not only mental representations of the target, but also a representation 18 in which the target is judged against. Similarly, Stapel and Schwarz (1998) investigated how inclusion or exclusion information of Colin Powell impacted evaluations of the
Republican Party or Bob Dole. Participants were provided information to include Powell or exclude Powell from the Republican Party, and then asked for evaluations of favorability for the Party. They found more favorable evaluations in the inclusion condition, suggesting an assimilation effect; whereas they found more unfavorable evaluations in the exclusion condition, suggesting a contrast effect.
The inclusion/exclusion model assumes that the “default operation is to include information that comes to mind in the representation of the target” (Schwarz, Groves, &
Schuman, 1998, p. 163). For instance, a racially ambiguous male is seen entering a local basketball court. The first step for the perceiver is: what information comes to mind? If prompted by the basketball cue, the perceiver may think of common associations with basketball, such as Black athletes. The second step is to make a decision if the information from step one belongs to the target category or not. For instance, the target
(i.e. the ambiguous man) may be evaluated against the stereotype of basketball players.
Thus, if the information comes to mind, and the target is perceived as belonging to that category of typical basketball players, an assimilation effect should occur and the target should be categorized as Black. However, if anything in the process provides information that would exclude the target from the category, such as blond hair, the perceiver would utilize exclusion based processing, resulting in a contrast effect (i.e. the target is categorized as White).
What is the evidence for contrast with regard to racial categorization of an ambiguous racial target? The main evidence comes from Eberhardt et al. (2003; as seen 19 below) study. Contrast effects were found for incremental theorists, such that they contrasted their judgments to the specific racial label provided. What this means is that when shown a racially ambiguous male with the label “Black,” incremental theorists chose the lighter foil more often, while entity theorists assimilated to the label, and chose the darker foil more often. Thus, in the present research, if Eberhardt et al. (2003) is replicated, I would expect to see contrast effects with incremental theorists. However, the contrast effects in the Eberhardt et al. study may have been a consequence of heavy- handed manipulation (i.e. explicit racial labels). Given that I rely on much more subtle, naturalistic situation cues, it is possible that the present research would not provide the same results. Based on the social judgment literature it is also plausible that assimilation effects may be more likely when the target is most ambiguous, but less likely when the target is less ambiguous—a hypothesis also examined here.
2.8 The Cross-Race Effect
Over the past 30 years, research on the cross-race effect (CRE) has consistently found that participants are more accurate at recognizing own-race faces than other-race faces (Brigham, Bennett, Meissner, & Mitchell, 2007). Studies most often use homogenous racial groups, typically White or Black, to investigate this effect. However, research on mixed-race or racially ambiguous faces, an increasing occurrence in our diverse societies, is scare. The only exception thus far is Pauker et al. (2009) who found that ambiguous faces were misremembered the same way other-race faces are. However, memory was improved when perceivers were motivated to include the racially ambiguous target in their ingroup, through the use of an explicit racial label (i.e. “White” or “Black”), similar to Eberhardt et al. (2003). For instance, when the participant was the 20 same race as indicated on the label, the ambiguous target was accurately identified more often than when the participant was a different race than the label. Therefore, when the perceiver was White, and the racial label provided was also White, the perceiver included the target in their ingroup, and thus, had better recognition memory due to the focus on more individuating features. As a consequence, it is likely that an overall effect of poor memory (or exclusion) will occur with ambiguous faces.
Because Pauker et al. (2009) were successful in increasing memory for ambiguous faces through the use of an explicit racial label, it is plausible that a situational expectation may cue a perceiver towards either the own-race or other-race category. For instance, instead of applying the label “White” to an ambiguous face, it is possible to apply a situation cue which suggest that individuals in the situation provided are typically
White. When an individual goes to a competitive swim meet, they may have a situation expectation that the majority of the swimmers will be White. This is due to a cultural stereotype in the United States that Black individuals rarely participate in aquatic sports
(e.g., Rasmussen, Esgate, & Turner, 2005). Thus, with the situation expectation in hand, the individual may come across an ambiguous target, and spontaneously apply the White category label that is consistent with their expectation of who would be swimming in the meet. This categorization into the own-race category should enhance the individual’s ability to better recognize the target in a later recognition task. In other words, assimilating the ambiguous target to the perceiver’s racial category, suggested by the situation cue, should increase accuracy of memory. However, if the perceiver comes across the same target in the same location, and, despite the own-race situation cue, the target is judged as other-race, this would result in a contrast effect. For example, the 21 perceiver sees the target at the swim meet. The perceiver then excludes the target from what a typical swimmer looks like, resulting in poorer memory for the target. 22
Chapter 3: Individual differences in perceptions of
racially ambiguous targets
So far, the discussion has focused on how racially ambiguous targets may be categorized. In Chapter 3, the focus has shifted to why a racially ambiguous target may be perceived as ingroup or outgroup. The present dissertation proposes three individual difference factors that should influence the perception of race: social dominance orientation, implicit theories, and personal need for structure.
3.1 Social Dominance Orientation
Social dominance theory posits that most human social systems are structured as group hierarchies, and as such, provides a framework for understanding intergroup conflict (Pratto, Sidanius, & Levine, 2006). The two fundamental assumptions of social dominance theory are that human systems are predisposed to be organized as group- based hierarchies, and that the common forms of social oppression (e.g., racism, slavery, etc.) are the specific instantiations of this tendency to create, maintain, and re-create some form of group-based social hierarchy. It is because of this hierarchical system that dominant groups favor ways to maintain their social position, and thus embrace the existing arrangement. One way in which dominant groups are able to maintain the existing hierarchical system is through discrimination, either interpersonal relationships or through larger social institutions (i.e. education, criminal justice, etc.; Kemmelmeier,
2005). Legitimizing myths are defined as unsubstantiated ideologies that a majority of the population holds that validate the social hierarchy and the unequal distribution of socially valued resources (Sidanius, Liu, Shaw, & Pratto, 1994). Legitimizing myths are used to maintain the social hierarchy and justify the inequalities. People differ, however, in the 23 degree in which they endorse these ideologies, and this is captured through an individual difference measure constructed by Pratto et al. (1994).
According to social dominance theory, the primary individual difference variable that facilitates and maintains social hierarchies is social dominance orientation (SDO), which refers to the degree that individuals prefer equality versus inequality among social groups (Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994). SDO was not created as a personality variable, per se, but rather as a representation of individual variation largely influenced by the groups in which they belong. Consequently, SDO can be conceived of as the individual’s preferred social-attitudinal orientation of intergroup relations. SDO has been related to an array of sociopolitical attitudes that either support or oppose egalitarianism, but primarily of interest in the current study is the strong relationship to ethnic and racial prejudice. Utilizing multiple samples for the validity and reliability of their instrument, Pratto et al. (1994) have found strong correlations between SDO and anti-Black racism, the Modern Racism Scale, the Pro-Black scale, and the Anti-Black scale (see also Pratto, Sidanius & Levin, 2006; Pratto, Stallworth, & Conway-Lanz, 1998;
Sidanius, Liu, Shaw, & Pratto, 1994). Research has shown that members of socially dominant groups typically have higher levels of SDO, whereas members of subordinate groups typically show lower levels of SDO (Pratto et al., 2006).
According to social dominance theory, there are three types of group-based hierarchies that exist according to social dominance theory (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999).
The first is gender, which will be discussed in more detail below. The second is age, and the third refers to arbitrary distinctions between social groups. Specifically, arbitrary set groups are ones in which the groups and status positions are socially constructed. For 24 example, a biracial individual could be considered Black in one culture, White in another, or simply biracial in yet another, depending on the timeframe and culture. And depending on how they are labeled or categorized, individuals with virtually identical characteristics might be treated differently (Foels & Pappas, 2004). Arbitrary set groups are theorized to exist due to power and status differences between groups of people, the most prominent
(and focus of the present research) of which is race or ethnicity. Particularly in the United
States, understanding how the arbitrary set system of racial hierarchies’ works is important, as the category boundaries vary across societies and historical periods (Pratto et al., 2006).
Eberhardt and Randall (1997, as cited in Banks & Eberhardt, 1998) argued that
“racial categories did not emerge simply as the products of energy and time-saving devices, but as functional entities constructed in the service of social power and cultural domination.” According to social dominance theory, membership in a racial category always denotes status within a racial or ethnic hierarchy. In order for such a hierarchy to be stable, it is critical that racial categories themselves, as well as membership in said categories, are stable. If this were not the case, the very basis for one group’s power and domination over another group would be but transitory.
Arguably, this dynamic has important implications for racial categorization.
Specifically, dominant racial groups should be invested in maintaining stricter racial group boundaries than subordinate racial groups, whose group boundaries may be more permeable.
For instance, although both White and Black participants in the Pauker et al.
(2009, Study 1) had better memory for same-race faces than other-race or race- 25 ambiguous faces, it was the White participants who drew a much stronger distinction between the same-race and race-ambiguous faces than Black participants. This suggests that White participants (i.e. members of dominant racial group) maintained a narrower racial boundary than did Black participants (i.e. members of a subordinate racial).
The narrower racial boundary would result in over-excluding racially ambiguous individuals from the perceivers ingroup. This reflects a typical pattern that has become manifest in the infamous one-drop rule. The one-drop rule is historically linked to slavery in the South and Jim Crow as a response to miscegenation fears. It thus refers to any person with one drop or more of African “blood,” as that individual will be perceived as and identified with Black identity (Khanna, 2010). For instance, high SDO White participants may perceive more ingroup homogeneity, and thus have narrowed inclusion criteria for their ingroup, maintaining a distinct racial boundary. As such, situation cues would have little to no impact for high SDO White participants on how they categorize an ambiguous target; but instead, the focus would be on the fact that the target is not unambiguously White, and thus, categorize them as Black regardless of the situation cue.
However, given the large amount of variation within dominant and subordinate groups, there should be members within the dominant group who do not subscribe to the one-drop rule. This variation can be expected to be reflected in whether the dominant group member is high or low on SDO, i.e. whether they are accepting of group-based inequality or whether they oppose it. Within the context of social dominance research, it is well established that high SDO White individuals are more invested in their dominant group status and are more likely to emphasize categorical distinctions (Fang, Sidanius, &
Pratto, 1998; Pratto et al., 2006; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999; Sidanius et al., 2000). That 26 said, there are two distinct possibilities in how high SDO White individuals may affect the perception of racially ambiguous targets: (a) high SDO White individuals are more likely to reject a racially ambiguous person and categorize them as “Black,” in line with the one-drop rule; or (b) situation cues should have a stronger impact on high SDO White individuals because they are more attentive to group membership, and try to identify the correct one. The reason for the latter might be that high SDO White individuals are keen on maintaining intergroup boundaries. This implies that especially when there is maximum uncertainty about the target they may try to resolve ambiguity by relying on situation cues that reveal the true identity of the target. Pauker et al. (2009, Study Two) demonstrated that situation cues can have a profound impact of the social perception of targets. As summarized above, when an explicit racial label was used with the ambiguous
(and non-ambiguous) face, White participants had better memory for any face labeled
“White”, which is consistent with the own-race bias (Pauker et al.). So far, one could assume that with no contextual information, ambiguous faces may be perceived with the
‘one-drop rule’ criteria, but with explicit race information, that ambiguous faces may be included as same-race more often than not, particularly for high SDO White participants.
The big question, yet unanswered, is what influence a natural emerging situation cue may have on the perception of race for high SDO White participants. This is a question that I hope to answer in the current research.
Low SDO White individuals, on the other hand, should be much more inclusive in their categorization, such that ambiguous targets should be assimilated to the stereotyped context. For instance, low SDO White participants may perceive racial groups as more equal in status, and thus, have wider inclusion criteria for their ingroup, making the racial 27 boundaries more permeable. This is what Pauker et al. (2009) found, that Black participants (i.e. lower status) had less distinct racial boundaries than did the White participants, and thus, showed better memory for ambiguous faces than did White participants. This would support previous findings of a contrast or inclusion effect in low prejudiced participants (Blascovich et al., 1997; Uhlmann, Dasgupta, Elgueta,
Greenwald, & Swanson, 2002).
Outgroup Male Target Hypothesis
Gender has a function in social life, and thus, plays a unique and vital part in the group based hierarchies. Men and women perform different gendered roles across cultures. Specifically, men are overrepresented in roles and institutions that are hierarchy- enhancing (i.e. maintenance and justification for group-based oppression and inequality), such as lawyers, judges, military, and business executives. At the same time, women are overrepresented in roles that are hierarchy-attenuating (i.e. ideologies that support equality), such as teachers, social workers, and charity volunteers (Pratto et al., 2006).
This results in asymmetrical equality by gender, such that, according to social dominance theory, men are higher on the social hierarchy and are thus afforded more power and privileges in most cultures.
These differences in gender roles contribute to the maintenance of legitimizing myths of gender, such as men as the head of the household and breadwinner. This is done through the gender socialization in the family, community and institutions. Male socialization goals are typically regarded as higher status and competitive, preparing those individuals to achieve high status in the future. Female socialization goals are typically regarded as lower status and focus on nurturing (Howard & Hollander, 2000). 28
For example, if you walk down any toy aisle in a store, you will notice that the typical boys aisle contains chemistry sets, pretend tools, guns and other weapons, sporting equipment; whereas typical girls aisles are furnished with dolls, kitchen sets, pretend make-up kits, and tea sets. This continues through their childhood, with boys expected to do more masculine chores, such as mowing lawns, whereas girls are expected to babysit.
In many cultures, both dominant and subordinate groups endorse legitimizing myths; however, dominant groups tend to endorse these myths more than subordinates and, thus, tend to score higher on the SDO scale on average. This phenomenon is called ideological asymmetry (Pratto et al., 2006). In the case of gender, this ideological asymmetry has been found to be a stable characteristic such that men are found to have higher SDO scores than women (Foels & Pappas, 2004; Haley, Sidanius, Lowery, &
Malamuth, 2004; Pratto et al., 2006; Pratto et al., 1994). Dubbed the invariance hypothesis, social dominance theory predicts that, across cultures and social contexts, men have higher SDO scores than women. This has been largely supported the gender asymmetry is largely invariant (Pratto et al.). For example, Sidanius, Levin, Liu and
Pratto (2000) investigated the invariance hypothesis across nine different countries with over 7000 respondents. They found that SDO differences between arbitrary-set groups
(i.e. race, ethnicity, etc.) changed as a function of the size of the power gap or status. This was not the case, however, for gender. The size of the gender gap between male and female remained essentially the same, regardless of the size of the power gap or status.
The invariance hypothesis would therefore lead to the prediction that men will have higher scores of SDO than women. It is theorized that this is due to women’s roles as caretakers to their children (Navarrete et al., 2010). 29
Social dominance theory recognizes that dimensions of hierarchy do not exist in isolation, but that they intersect. Thus, social dominance theory offers specific predictions for the combinations of gender and race, an arbitrary set dimension of hierarchy. The initial hypothesis, the subordinate male target hypothesis (SMTH), predicted that arbitrary-set discrimination would be much more severe against subordinate males than females (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). Evidence for subordinate male discrimination was found in several studies ranging from employment and salaries, to the criminal justice system. For example, one study found housing discrimination against Black men, but not
Black women (Sidanius & Pratto). It was found that the primary motive driving the discrimination against the subordinate male was a desire to harm.
In a recent article, Navarrete et al. (2010), further refined the subordinate male target hypothesis, and created the Outgroup Male Target Hypothesis (OMTH). This posits that intergroup biases are, first, a gendered phenomenon. That said, the OMTH specifies that men have more of these biases because they are more competitive and more oriented toward intergroup conflict and competition, a notion at the heart of social dominance theory. Navarrete et al. conducted four studies, and found that men and women use different psychological systems because they have differing motives when confronted by an outgroup member. Men used a system of aggression along with motives of dominance, which resulted in greater racial bias and negativity. For example, in their
Study 1, the authors asked participants to imagine that they were an official responding to the misbehavior of a student organization, and asked to select an appropriate monetary fine. They found that men fined the outgroup male student organization excessively, showing aggression, but did not fine the outgroup women’s group at the same rate. 30
Female participants did not show this same bias, but fined both the male and female outgroups equally.
Similar findings emerged from Navarrete et al.’s (2010) second study, which asked participants about their perceptions of Barack Obama and administered a trait aggressiveness questionnaire. The authors found that, among White American men, there was a positive correlation between high trait aggression and negative responses to
Obama, especially when these men were high in SDO, but never among White American females. Taken together, these studies suggest that men’s responses to an outgroup male target should be more extreme than women’s due to the nature of aggression as a means to dominate the racial outgroup (Navarrete et al., 2010).
In line with the OMTH, it is plausible that, specifically male, perceivers who employ the perceptual one-drop rule should be highly sensitive to the presence of target characteristics that could indicate that the person is not White. That is, to a White male perceiver who is concerned with maintaining racial boundaries (i.e. arbitrary-set hierarchy), any target that is not perceived as unambiguously White will be categorized as Black. To the extent that high and low SDO White male individuals differ in the degree to which they employ the one-drop rule, the greatest differences in social perception and response should be when White male perceivers that are high and low
SDO are faced with a mostly, but not completely, White target. High SDO White male individuals are likely to respond to such an individual by categorizing this person as
“Black” in line with the one-drop rule, thus perceiving the target as an outgroup member.
However, low SDO White male individuals, who are less prone to rely on the one-drop rule, are likely to categorize such a person as “White” – in line with the majority of the 31 target’s racial features, thus categorizing the target as ingroup. Further, regarding the target with predominantly Black racial features, based on the present logic there should be very little difference in racial categorization between high and low SDO White male individuals because both groups will arrive at the conclusion that the person is Black.
This suggests that the influence of SDO on racial categorization decreases with the presence of a majority of non-White racial features or when the perceiver is female; therefore, the strongest SDO effect should occur when the perceiver is male, and when comparatively few, but still recognizable non-White features are present and weakest
SDO effect should occur with an abundance of non-White racial features. Thus, in line with the OMTH, the effects of SDO should be more pronounced among high SDO White men than women.
3.2 Entity vs. Incremental Theories of Intelligence
Are you a person who believes that people are naturally intelligent, or are you a proponent that people can become increasingly intelligent through hard work and effort?
Dweck and colleagues argues that such differences represent different framework of how different individuals view the world (Dweck, Chiu, & Hong, 1995). On one hand, there are people who believe that traits are unchangeable, fixed internal characteristics of individuals. On the other hand, there are people who view traits as malleable and changeable through effort, hard work and perseverance. The former have been identified as entity theorists, and the latter, as incremental theorists (Dweck & Leggett, 1988). This theory was originally employed in understanding educational processes, and in particular student motivation and outcomes (incl. stereotype threat; e.g. women and poor math ability; Dweck, 2002; Dweck & Molden, 2005; Steele et al., 2002). 32
In the recent literature, however, it has been found that this perspective can have a strong influence on other social characteristics (e.g., Chiu, Hong, & Dweck, 1997). Of particular interest here is the relationship of implicit theories to considering category membership as relatively stable and resistant to transformation—or as psychological essence as they have become recently discussed in the literature on group cognition (e.g.,
Levy, Plaks, Hong, Chiu, & Dweck, 2001; Williams & Eberhardt, 2008; Yzerbyt, Rocher
& Schadron, 1997). For entity theorists, you may be able to take the boy out of the country, but you cannot take the country out the boy. What this old adage implies is that a person possess an inherent nature that does not change regardless of the circumstances.
However, incremental theorists may consider many category memberships to be of a less stable nature, changeable through alteration of the situation or the choice of the person.
That is, the clown stops being a clown when he chooses not to be funny anymore.
Consequences for intergroup cognition are profound. Entity theorists tend to believe that each person is a member of a category and that their task as observers is primarily to detect the correct category (Levy, Stroessner, & Dweck, 1998). This means that categorical processing and the application of stereotypes associated with others’ as well as one’s own category plays a prominent role in the intergroup cognition of entity theorists. In contrast, for incremental theorists social categories and social-categorical thinking plays a much less important role in the worldview of incremental theorists compared to entity theorists.
Based on the literature, the fact that entity theorists rely heavily on categorical versus individuating information makes it probable that they will tend towards rigidity and oversimplified cognitive processes. This oversimplified thinking would lead to a 33 heavy reliance on social categories, thus rendering individuating information inapplicable. This would result in information becoming assimilated in line with the targets’ apparent group membership, whereas the opposite may be true of incremental theorists. Incremental theorists may tend towards more in-depth process analysis in cognition, because their goal is to understand attributes. These differences have profound implications for social perception. Levy et al. (2001) investigated how implicit theories influenced susceptibility to stereotypes, perceived ingroup homogeneity, intergroup biases and discrimination of familiar and novel groups. This work supports the implicit theories perspective, suggesting that entity theorists place greater weight on group traits or ingroup homogeneity, whereas incremental theorists place greater weight on dynamic processes. The authors suggest that implicit theories provide a useful framework for understanding how people arrive at their final impressions of individuals or groups.
Eberhardt et al. (2003) provided a first glimpse at how an individual’s implicit theories play a role in race perception. As mentioned previously, Eberhardt et al. presented their participants with racially ambiguous faces that were either labeled
BLACK or WHITE. Entity theorists produced an assimilation effect in response; that is, when accompanied by a WHITE label, they considered it more likely that the ambiguous face indeed belonged to a White person. Conversely, incremental theorists produced a contrast effect: when presented with the same face and label (i.e. still WHITE), they were more likely to consider the target person to be Black.
Explicit racial labels, as in the Eberhardt et al. (2003) study, may be stronger than the more naturalistic situation cues used as a target’s group membership in the current studies. In the present research, it is probable that entity theorists will follow the same 34 pattern as in the Eberhardt et al. study, such that assimilation effects will occur with the ambiguous target and the Black or White stereotyped context. The initial prediction for the incremental theorists is that they will also follow the same pattern as in the Eberhardt et al. study, such that they will process the stereotypic context information, and then will contrast away from it. However, Eberhardt et al.’s findings are potentially ambiguous with regard to what they reveal about incremental theorists. As discussed by these authors, the fact that the racial labels were displayed prominently may have forced incremental theorists to consider the alleged racial category of the ambiguous target. In other words, the responses of incremental theorists may have been an artefact in that
Eberhardt et al.'s racial labels were “too much in the face” of incremental theorists. When provided with subtler and more naturalistic cues as to the targets’ racial identity, it is possible that incremental theorists would not react quite as strongly or, given the lower relevance of social categories for their outlook on the social world, not at all.
The current research should replicate Eberhardt et al.’s (2003) findings such that entity theorists will likely produce assimilation effects. At present, it is unclear if
Eberhardt et al.’s findings will be replicated for incremental theorists, as it may be considered equally likely that they will not produce the same contrast effect. In fact, they may show a null effect. An assimilation effect similar to the direction of the one found previously for entity theorists may be possible as well; however, if the latter occurs, it must be expected to be considerably weaker.
Similarly, implicit theories should have consequences for recognition memory.
Ambiguous targets who, with the help of the situation cue, are assimilated and categorized into the observer’s own racial group should be remembered better than 35 ambiguous targets which are not categorized in this manner. This prediction follows
Pauker et al. (2009) whose studies revealed superior memory for ambiguous targets who were included in the respondents’ ingroup. It is also predicted that the provided situation cue may be less effective in categorizing an ambiguous target as ingroup or outgroup; hence, incremental theorists should be likely to remember all ambiguous targets equally well. This would suggest that incremental theorists focus more on individuating information, whereas entity theorists focus more on group information.
Finally, implicit theories should also have consequences for memory distortion.
The situation cue will shift or distort the memory of the ambiguous target towards the more typical category exemplar. This prediction follows the work of Corneille et al.
(2004) whose studies found that ambiguous faces classified into a specific ethnic group were later remembered as more prototypical of said ethnic group. As such, it is predicted that entity theorists would not only categorize an ambiguous target in line with the situation cue, but that the cue will bias the memory in the direction of the situation cue.
That is, entity theorists’ memory should show that the ambiguous target is Whiter than the original or Blacker than the original, depending on the situation cue.
3.3 Need for Structure
The final individual difference investigated here is how an individual’s desire for simple structures influences how people perceive racially ambiguous faces. The construct of need for structure is the modern incarnation of the concept of intolerance of ambiguity, which received considerable attention during the middle of the 20th century (Thompson,
Naccarato & Parker, 2001). It taps individual differences in the motivation to achieve or maintain simple concepts when thinking about the world. This implies that individuals 36 high in need for structure are more likely than those low in need for structure to be guided by established cognitive structures such as categories, stereotypes or scripts, or more likely to generate such generalized representations of the world when they encounter new stimuli or situations.
The need for structure is frequently measured using Neuberg and Newsom’s
(1993) 12-item Personal Need for Structure (PNS) scale. Kruglanski’s concept of Need for Closure (NFC; Kruglanski, Webster, & Klem, 1993) scale was once considered a theoretical rival of the PNS construct. However, research by Neuberg, Judice and West,
(1997) showed that the NFC is to a large extent interchangeable with the PNS scale in that both tap the underlying construct of need for structure. These authors also demonstrated that the PNS scale demonstrates a clearer unidimensional structure, and greater validity and internal consistency than the NFC scale.
Almost two decades of research on need for structure has established this construct as critical for many aspects of social cognition. Dijksterhuis et al. (1996) investigated how individual differences influenced stereotype recall and judgments. The authors found that individuals high in need for structure made more stereotypical judgments, and were able to better recall stereotype-consistent information. Much less than participants low in need for structure, those high need for structure had a very poor memory for stereotype inconsistent information. That is, high need for structure was associated with a strong assimilation effect such that information that did not challenge prior expectations was neglected whereas the memory for information confirming existing expectations was enhanced. Dijksterhuis et al. suggest that high NFC participants 37 virtually “froze” on their primary stereotypes and thus, did not process any individuating information (i.e. high NFC participants were unyielding to new information).
Schaller, Boyd, Yohannes, and O’Brien (1995) conducted a study to investigate the role of PNS in the formation of stereotypes. Using a group impression formation task, participants were asked to create judgments about the groups. Overall, Schaller et al. found that participants high in PNS utilized more simplistic reasoning strategies and were quicker to acquire erroneous stereotypes. Based on the available literature, it is suggested that high PNS participants, due to their reliance on simple categorical structures, may be less likely to encode more complex information, thus not accounting for relevant information (i.e. task difficulty). This would predict that because high PNS individuals rely on simple information when making categorical decisions, they tend to use low- complexity processing. Based on this assumption, one can argue that the high PNS participant will only look at the non-Whiteness of the ambiguous target and categorize as outgroup (i.e. Black). They do this without considering the contextual information, because considering the context would require more complex processing.
On the other hand, because the aim of individuals high in need for structure is to maintain simplicity, there should be a natural aversion towards ambiguous information.
As such, it is possible that low tolerance for ambiguity could result in an assimilation of the perceiver’s judgments to recently activated constructs, thus reflecting categorization based on what is most accessible (Moskowitz, 1993). Moskowitz conducted a cued-recall test to examine individual differences in categorization. He found that participants high in
PNS tended to engage more in the categorization process than those low in PNS. This implies that there are individual differences in the motivation to categorize. In light of the 38 high need to categorize, this would result in a different prediction, that high PNS participants are more likely to make categorical distinctions, and thus, when a target is ambiguous and presented with an ingroup cue, they may be more likely to perceive that target as part of their ingroup. In this sense, it seems that a high PNS would enhance the contextual effects for the perceiver.
Need for structure, thus, appears to have the potential to play a moderating role in perception of racially ambiguous targets. There are, however, two distinct lines of argument concerning the implications for PNS for the categorization and memory of such targets. First, based on the above reviewed research, one can expect that a high PNS person will rely more heavily on simply and easily available information in the categorization of others. Second, given that racially ambiguous individuals appear as “not
White”, high PNS White individuals should be more likely to categorize such an individual as “other”, i.e. as Black (cf. Pauker et al., 2009). Finally, given that high PNS participants utilize simple processing strategies; their attentional focus should be primarily, if not exclusively, on the face of the person. This means that they are not very likely to take into consideration the also available situation cue, as this would require additional processing effort. In brief, high PNS individuals are likely to neglect any contextual information, and base their categorizations of a racially ambiguous target on how similar the target is to a White person.
39
Chapter 4: The influence of gender and sports
The present dissertation focuses on situational expectations in the domain of sports. Thus, it is important to establish that people hold spontaneous stereotypes and expectations vis-à-vis different sports. For example, Peruche and Plant (2006) paired faces with sports-related items or neutral objects. For example, participants saw a basketball or pizza paired with either a White or Black male face, and were asked to identify if the object was sports-related. The results corroborated previous findings, such that neutral objects, such as pizza (i.e. the target), when paired with a Black a face (i.e. context cue) was perceived as sports-related more often than when paired with a White face. This suggests that people have clear stereotypes about sports and sports participants, and that these stereotypes function at an implicit level. The current studies will utilize sports-related contexts in a similar way, but with the focus on how the context influences the perception of race, instead of the race influencing the categorization of the object.
Another consideration specific to the domain of sports is the fact that it is highly gender, and that there are stark differences in men and women’s knowledge, and involvement within the domain of sports. The first is that men tend to be more identified with the domain of sports than women. This is primarily due to the media effects of sports celebrating masculine ideals. For example, Colley, Berman and van Millingen
(2005) investigated gender differences in the perceptions of athletes. Participants were given a sport, and asked to draw an athlete. The male children and adolescents drew all male athletes, and the female children drew more female athletes than male. However, the female adolescents drew more male athletes, and these tended to be highly visible male celebrities (almost no female celebrities were drawn). This strongly suggests that 40 the media influenced the participants’ perception of sports. Further, Hardin and Greer
(2003) investigated the impact of gendered media and sports. They found that the media emphasized what they termed “a manhood formula,” suggesting that sports belong to men. This is found through the ways sports are televised, the messages of the advertisers, and the gender-appropriateness of the sports. For example, when the Olympics air every four years, the most prime time coverage goes to gender-appropriate sports, such as women’s figure skating, diving, or gymnastics, instead of women’s shot put or soccer.
Hardin and Greer also found that even for the women who had grown up with Title IX
(education amendment making gender discrimination for athletics illegal) and had participated in sports, the same views as previous generations regarding gendered sports existed. Taken together, this suggests that men tend to be more identified with (gender appropriate) sports than women.
Second, men tend to be more knowledgeable about specific sports details, though both men and women do share a basic understanding of the gendered nature of sports disciplines as well as, more generally, what kinds of people play what types of sports. For example, sports participation has traditionally been dominated by the male athletes, and although the number of women participating in sports has grown over the years, the majority of sports-related perceptions remain the same as in years past. With the passage of Title IX, participation in sports has grown exponentially for young women (Women’s
Sports Foundation, 2003). Although the growth has been large, there remain strong, traditional attitudes regarding gender-appropriate sports. For example, one study has found that girls are more popular when they participate in gender-appropriate sports (e.g. gymnastics) than when they participate in gender-inappropriate sports (e.g. baseball; 41
Holland & Andre, 1994). Further, men tend to be more knowledgeable about sports in general than women, such that they watch more televised sporting events, consume larger amounts of sports-related content, and use the internet for sports-related information more often than woman (Gantz & Wenner, 1991). This could lead to one of two conclusions, (1) a lesser influence of the situation cue for men, as their expertise would allow them to process more individuating information about the target; or (2) that men may be more influenced by the situation cue due to their knowledge of the type of players they would expect to see. Both outcomes have been documented in individuals with high levels of expertise (e.g., Markus, Smith, & Moreland, 1985; Shanteau, 1992).
If, indeed, gender differences exist in the knowledge and identification of sports, it is plausible that the influence of such cues would be processed differently for men and women. For example, a young man who watches football regularly sees another young man of unknown race suiting up to play football. The perceiver then thinks about many cues of football players. Such as, whether the man is thin or heavy, tall or short, as this may lend reference to the position the young man plays. Then, the perceiver may think of other football players that play that position, and compare the young man to these players. On the other hand, let’s say a woman with little knowledge of football sees the same young man. She may not have the same knowledge of positions or what characteristics to look for, thus, she compares the player to a highly publicized football player, such as a quarterback (of the 32 starting quarterbacks for 2010, only 6 are Black), and then compares the player to her prototype. That said, based on differences in expertise, men and women’s expectations with regard to the racial composition of different sports might vary. 42
Chapter 5: Overview and Hypotheses
5.1 Overview of Studies
The current pair of studies investigated the influence of situation cues on the categorization of, and memory for, racially ambiguous faces with White participants. I focus exclusively on members of only one race in order to control for any potential race differences in perception because it has to be expected that people are less familiar with and less able to differentiate between the facial characteristics of members of other races
(e.g., see the cross-race effect, Brigham et al., 2007; Pauker et al., 2009). I focus specifically on White participants because this group, while being the largest racial group in the U.S., has traditionally occupied the most positions of power and prestige in
American society.
In this research participants were presented with symmetrically biracial targets
(50% Black/50% White), as well as asymmetrical White (25% Black/75% White) and asymmetrical Black (75% Black/25% White) targets, with percentages referring to the proportion of facial features from the two races. The use of different targets of varying racial composition allowed the investigation (a) whether the impact of situational context on the perception of a target varied with level of ambiguity, and (b) allowed the investigation of the one-drop rule in racial perception, according to which comparatively small proportions of non-White components should prompt a target’s categorization as
Black.
Building on Eberhardt et al. (2003), the first study employed a forced choice categorization to investigate if a racially ambiguous target would be perceived differently depending on whether it appeared in a White stereotypical context compared to a Black 43 stereotypical context. Both studies employed here focused on sports related contexts as people tend to have relatively clear stereotypes about which types of sports include more
Black or White athletes. Consequently, ambiguous faces were presented in the context of sports that were considered stereotypically White (e.g. hockey, swimming), versus stereotypically Black (e.g. basketball, 100-meter dash). Also, both studies examined the role that individual differences, specifically implicit theories, social dominance orientation, and personal need for structure, play in moderating the relationship between situational context and race categorization.
A second study investigated the relationship between categorization and recognition memory. Because it is less likely that a perceiver in the real world would be asked to explicitly categorize an ambiguous target, I explored if situation cues may bias recognition memory towards a more typical exemplar of the implied racial group.
Employing an experimental paradigm similar to Corneille et al. (2004, Study 2), participants were presented with a racially ambiguous individual and asked later to identify the same target in a lineup of several similar looking persons. Study Two and its paradigm served two goals. First, it allowed me to investigate racial biases in recognition memory based on the situation cue, whereas the first study used a repeated measures design, the second study employed a between-groups design to examine the robustness of influence of situational cues across different experimental designs.
5.2 Hypotheses
1. Hypothesis 1 (Study One and Two): Situation cues will lead to assimilation effects
such that ambiguous targets embedded within a stereotypically Black situation are
more likely to be categorized as Black, whereas the same targets embedded within a 44
stereotypically White situation are more likely to be categorized as White.
a. Hypothesis 1a: Greater ambiguity in the target will result in greater situation cue
effects: The categorization of and memory for asymmetrical Black targets and
asymmetrical White targets will be less influenced by situation cues than the
categorization of symmetrically biracial targets.
b. Hypothesis 1b: The influence of situation cues will be greater for men.
2. Hypotheses 2 (Study Two): Situation cues will influence recognition memory of an
ambiguous target;
a. Hypothesis 2a: The situation cue will shift or distort the memory of the ambiguous
target towards the more typical category exemplar (i.e. an accentuation effect, see
Corneille et al., 2004).
b. Hypothesis 2b: A target that has been categorized as an ingroup target based on
situation cue will be more accurately recognized (see Pauker et al., 2009).
3. Hypothesis 3: Social dominance orientation will moderate the categorization effect
(Study One and Two).
a. Hypothesis 3a (Study One and Two): Situation cues will have little impact for high
SDO participants on how they categorize an ambiguous target; but instead, the
focus will be on the fact that the target is not unambiguously White, and thus,
categorize them as Black regardless of the situation cue. As such, among high
SDO individuals, the perceptual one-drop rule will be stronger than among their
low SDO counterparts. (Note that this hypothesis is competing with Hypothesis
3b). 45 b. Hypothesis 3b (Study One and Two): Situation cues will have a stronger impact on
high SDO individuals because they are more attentive to group membership; as
such, assimilation effects will occur if the situation cue supports that a target may
be White, thus including the target in the ingroup while still maintaining
intergroup boundaries. (Note that this hypothesis is competing with Hypothesis
3a). c. Hypothesis 3c (Study One and Two): Low SDO individuals will be much more
inclusive in their categorization than high SDO individuals, such that ambiguous
targets will be assimilated to the situation cue. d. Hypothesis 3d (Study One and Two): In line with the outgroup male target
hypothesis (Navarrete et al., 2010), high SDO men will produce contrast effects
with the asymmetrical White target to the situation cue, supporting the perceptual
one-drop rule. e. Hypothesis 3e (Study One and Two): In line with the outgroup male target
hypothesis, the influence of SDO on racial perception will be more pronounced for
men than women. f. Hypothesis 3f (Study Two): The cross-race effect is greater among high SDO
people compared to low SDO people, resulting in a greater memory advantage of
asymmetrically White faces over asymmetrically Black faces in high SDO
individuals compared to low SDO individuals. g. Hypothesis 3g (Study Two): To the extent that high SDO participants are more
likely to categorize racially ambiguous targets as outgroup members than low SDO
participants, they will also have a poorer memory for them. 46
h. Hypothesis 3h (Study Two): High SDO participants will show stronger effects of
the situation cue, such that when situation signals that the person might be White
(i.e. target presented with a White situation cue), they will remember the
ambiguous target better than the ambiguous target in a “Black” context.
4. Hypothesis 4 (Study One and Two): Implicit theories will moderate any categorization
effects induced by situation cues.
a. Hypothesis 4a (Study One): Replicating Eberhardt et al. (2003), entity theorists
will be more likely to assimilate a racially ambiguous target to the situation cue.
Incremental theorists will be less likely to do so.
b. Hypothesis 4b (Study Two): Entity theorists will show more assimilation to the
situation cue, and because the perception of the target has been assimilated to the
situation cue, the target will be remembered as more typically Black when the
situation cue is Black compared to when the situation cue is White.
5. Hypothesis 5: Personal need for structure will moderate the categorization effect
(Study One and Two).
a. Hypothesis 5a (Study One and Two): High PNS participants will only look at the
non-Whiteness of the ambiguous target (i.e. the one-drop rule) and categorize as
outgroup (i.e. Black), resulting in a contrast effect. (Note that this hypothesis is
competing with Hypothesis 5b).
b. Hypothesis 5b (Study One and Two): High PNS participants will be more likely to
make categorical distinctions, and thus, when a target is ambiguous and presented
with an ingroup situation cue, they will be more likely to perceive that target as
part of their ingroup. Thus, I expect to find assimilative effects in the 47 categorization. (Note that this hypothesis is competing with Hypothesis 5a).
48
Chapter 6: Pilot Studies
To create target faces that would be perceived as racially ambiguous in the target population, two pilot studies were conducted. The first study was conducted to determine the where, along the Black-White mixed-race continuum, that the race perception shifted from White to Black categorization. The second pilot study was then conducted to identify the most realistic sets of targets, and that were perceived as most ambiguous.
Further, stereotypes about different sports were assessed to allow the selection of sports that were typically associated with White athletes and sports typically associated with
Black athletes.
6.1 Pilot Study 1
An initial study was conducted for the selection of the facial stimuli and stereotypical race-related sports contexts. Facial stimuli were generated through photo morphing software (Abrosoft FantaMorph 4). This software supported morphing (i.e. blending of one image into another in a seamless transition) of two or more faces into one final composite face (Abrosoft FantaMorph 4). Five prototypical Black and five prototypical White, young male faces were selected from the Productive Aging
Laboratory facial database at the University of Texas, Dallas (Minear & Park, 2004).
Prototypical Black faces possessed more Afrocentric features (e.g. dark skin, broad nose, fuller lips), whereas prototypical White faces possessed more Eurocentric features (e.g. light skin, narrow nose, thin lips; Blair et al., 2002; Bruyer, Leclere, & Quinet, 2004;
Eberhardt et al., 2006; MacLin & Malpass, 2003). Next, prototypical Black and prototypical White faces (i.e. parent faces) were randomly paired to create morphed facial images (i.e. child faces) using FantaMorph. For each of the five pairs of parent faces, 49 nine morphed children were created at 10% intervals along the Black parent-White parent continuum, starting at 10% (e.g. a 10% morph will contain 90% Black parent and 10%
White parent), and ending at 90%. This provided a total of 45 young male targets, each within the same age group (i.e. early twenties), and all targets displayed a neutral facial expression as controlled by the Productive Aging Laboratory. All morphed targets (i.e. children) were edited with Adobe Photoshop (Adobe Systems Inc.), and placed on a light gray background. The target faces showed no distinctive markers of clothing, hair or jewelry, and was cropped with a white rectangle to display only head of the target. All morphed facial photos were adjusted to a standardized size (10” x 8”) and resolution (300 dpi).
A convenience sample of White Midwestern University students were used to rate the 45 morphed target faces. The sample consisted of 20 students (6 male, 14 female), with a mean age of 32.25 (SD = 8.32).
Each individual face was presented to participants as part of a PowerPoint slide show on a 60” x 60” projector screen. Participants were approximately 10-18 feet from the screen and the lights were dimmed for presentation clarity. The slide presentation showed each face for five seconds, and then advanced automatically to the next face. All participants saw each of the 45 images in the same random order. Each participant completed a forced-choice task, categorizing the faces as either White or Black by checking the appropriate box. Participants were told to “take their best guess” if they were unsure.
Following this task, participants were given five minutes to write down five sports or sporting events that they typically associated with Black athletes, and then an 50 additional five minutes to write down five sports or sporting events they associated with
White athletes. The demographic questions were asked at the end, which included gender, age and race, and then participants were thanked and debriefed.
The first pilot study provided the following information. First, it defined an approximation of when the target shifted from being perceived as unambiguously Black or White to being perceived as ambiguous. This means that it helped determine at what percentage within the Black-White continuum that the race categorization changed from a known racial group to an unknown or other racial group. The results revealed that the shift in racial categorization from White to Black occurred most frequently between the
40% to 60% morphs (e.g. 40% Black/60% White). This means that faces that had near equivalent mixes of Black and White were perceived as more racially ambiguous, and faces with predominantly Black or White features were perceived as Black or White, respectively.
Second, a list of race stereotypical sports was created from the open-ended responses (6 men, 14 women), where participants were asked to list five sports or sporting events they typically associated with Black athletes. On the next page, participants were asked to list five sports or sporting events they typically associated with
White athletes. Some sports mentioned by participants that they associated with Black athletes were basketball, which was mentioned by 100% of the men and 100% of the women in this study, football (67% men, 79% women), and track (e.g. sprinting; 83% men, 79% women). Some sports that participants associated with White athletes included ice hockey, which was mentioned by 50% of male participants and 86% of female participants, swimming (33% men, 64% women), volleyball (0% men, 21% women), 51 race car driving (50% men, 21% women), and bowling (33% men, 29% women). There were a number of sports that participants listed for both the “Black athletes” and “White athletes’’ sections, including tennis, which was mentioned by 83% men, 72% women, baseball (83% men, 86% women), and golf (50% men, 64% women). The second pilot study (described below) used a forced choice paradigm to categorize these sports, along with several other additional sports and sporting events.
6.2 Pilot Study 2
A second pilot study was conducted to select a set of target faces that were perceived as most racially ambiguous. The first pilot study confirmed that the target faces perceived as most racially ambiguous clustered around an equivalent mix of 50% White parent and 50% Black parent. Ten new sets of target faces were created in the same way as the first pilot study using FantaMorph. In the creation of the 10 sets of target faces, 10
White and 10 Black parent faces were randomly paired to create 10 sets of racially ambiguous faces. Each set of parents produced seven children, ranging from 35% to 65% morphs at 5% intervals (e.g. 35% White/65% Black). This procedure provided 70 male targets, each within the same age group (i.e. early twenties) and with neutral facial expression as controlled by the Productive Aging Laboratory (Minear & Park, 2004). All target faces were edited as in the first pilot study for size (10” x 8”), and the procedure remained identical.
The second pilot study included 50 White participants (14 male, 33 female, 3 undefined) from the same Midwestern University. The age ranged from 19 to 50, with a mean age of 26.41 (SD = 6.75). From the results, the six set of targets that received responses equivalent to guessing (i.e. 50% responded Black, 50% responded White) were 52 chosen as the ambiguous facial stimuli for the first study. This was the same procedure utilized in a previous study to determine racially ambiguous faces (Pauker & Ambady,
2009). The six sets of faces did not share any parents (i.e. no sets of targets shared any parents to avoid the possibility of facial similarity). The other four sets of faces were discarded due to heavily skewed responses where the majority of participants perceived the targets as unambiguously Black or unambiguously White along the morphed continuum from 35% to 65%.
Finally, a list of sports, created from the initial pilot and additional sports from the
Olympics’ list of events, was assigned in a quick sort task, with participants checking a box for stereotypicality of Black or White athletes. Each sport was shown in large Black text on the same presentation screen for five seconds each, similar to the race categorization task. Results showed the highest percentage of sports associated with
Black athletes were basketball (90%), football (80%), boxing (90%), sprinting (84%), hurdles (88%), and the long jump (80%). The highest percentage sports associated with
White athletes were cycling (94%), auto racing (98%), swimming (94%), ice hockey
(96%), volleyball (98%), rowing (98%), and cross country skiing (98%). Sports perceived as associated with both White and Black athletes included triathlons, baseball, golf, tennis, weightlifting, marathon, and javelin. There were gender differences in race stereotypes with regard to some sports, analyzed with Fisher’s exact test. This test was used due to the small sample size and 2 x 2 contingency table design. Women, overall, tended to have slightly more extreme stereotypes than men. For example, for football,
57% of men chose “Black,” while 91% of women chose “Black,” p = .004. Weightlifting was another sport where women (55% Black) had stronger race-stereotypes than men 53
(14% Black), p = .011 (see Table 1, for all frequencies by gender).
54
Overall, the final target stimuli consisted of six sets of faces, each with a distinct set of parents. Each of the six sets of stimuli included three target faces, including one asymmetrical Black target (i.e. 75% Black/25% White morph), one asymmetrical White target (i.e. 25% Black/75% White morph), and one symmetrically biracial target (i.e.
50% Black/50% White morph). Each of the three variations were displayed with situation cues represented as sports associated with either Black athletes (i.e. basketball, football, and track) or White athletes (i.e. volleyball, hockey, and swimming; described in more detail below).
55
Chapter 7: Study One
The primary purpose of Study One was to investigate how situation cues influence racial categorization when the target is racially ambiguous. Specifically,
Hypotheses 1 (a & b), 3 (a – e), 4a, and 5 (a & b) were tested in the first study. A handful of previous studies have investigated the role of context in race categorization (Horry &
Wright, 2008; Pauker et al., 2009; Shriver et al., 2010; Unkelbach et al., 2008); however, the most pertinent research was conducted by Eberhardt et al. (2003). Although Eberhardt et al.’s findings have been discussed in some detail before; I provide a detailed discussion of their experimental paradigm because it served as a general template for Study One.
Eberhardt et al. (2003) provided participants with an image of a racially ambiguous individual, which was either labeled “Black” or “White” below the image.
After an unrelated distractor task, participants were presented with a forced choice task, in which they had to decide which of two facial images more closely resembled the previously presented one. Unbeknownst to the participants, neither of the two images were identical to the previously presented one, but both were subtle variants of it (i.e. foils), such that one was manipulated to appear to be slightly more Black than the original target, and the other one slightly more White than the original target. In effect, this forced participants to categorize their memory of the target face based on whether it more likely resembled a Black person or a White person. As illustrated earlier, Eberhardt et al. (2003) found assimilation and contrast effects of the racial label on the face selection task. Entity theorists used the label as inclusion criteria and chose the foil that best matched the given racial label. That is, if the target label was “Black,” then entity theorists were more likely to choose the more Black foil (i.e. darker) compared to when the racial label was 56
“White.” The opposite finding was obtained for incremental theorists, such that the Black foil was less likely to be chosen when presented with the label “Black” compared to when it was presented with the label “White.” Based on these findings, Eberhardt et al. concluded that implicit theories have a profound influence on how individuals use contextual information in disambiguating racially ambiguous faces.
The primary difference between the current study and that of Eberhardt et al.
(2003) is that I utilized a much more naturalistic context in place of the explicit racial labels. The use of explicit racial labels created some ambiguities in the Eberhardt et al. paradigm. First, it is not entirely clear if the authors were really talking about an implicit theory effect, or whether or not prejudice was the active ingredient, simply because previous research has found entity theorists to be related to higher levels of outgroup prejudice (Levy et al., 1998). The current study employed a measure of social dominance orientation, which has been found to be consistently related to prejudice (Pratto et al.,
2006; Sidanius et al., 1994), to test this conclusion. Second, the artificiality of the study may have played a role in shaping outcomes because the use of explicit racial labels may have invoked potential self-presentational concerns. Previous studies have found that blatantly prejudiced items can invoke self-presentational concerns, such as social desirability, even in anonymous conditions (e.g., Rattazzi & Volpato, 2003), and this may be true for explicit racial labels as well as race is still a heated topic in the United States.
Third, and most importantly, the experimental paradigm by Eberhardt et al. bears very little resemblance to the kinds of situations when contextual cues may actually have an impact on racial categorization, as shown by the Menezes or Alpizar examples. Thus, the current study utilizes naturalistic situation cues instead of the explicit racial labels. 57
In the current studies, utilizing a naturalistic context is beneficial for several reasons. First, in thinking about how some racially ambiguous men are killed, harmed or unjustly treated due to misidentification, such as de Menezes or Alpizar, it appears that the real-life context played a role in forming the expectations and perceptions of the two victims. What this means is that some contexts may have specific information that is provided to the perceiver to help disambiguate the target. While explicit racial labels provide evidence of an effect of context on perception of the target, naturally emerging situations provide more realistic scenarios in which people find themselves affected by others’ perceptions.
Second, in eyewitness situations, the eyewitness observes the target within a context that is meaningful. Targets rarely walk around with specific labels regarding how they wish to be categorized; but instead, observers use information from the target and from the context to process the information. It is assumed that perceivers rely on their expectations of a situation to help them disambiguate a target that is perceptually ambiguous and that they do this in an unsolicited manner, as the contextual information emerges naturally. For example, if an eyewitness has an expectation concerning the type of person that plays basketball, their perception of an individual playing basketball will be colored with their expectation of the situation. Thus, the current study creates a more realistic situation in which the observer will have to process and integrate information about the target and the situation cue at the same time.
Further, in contrast to the Eberhardt et al.’s (2003) research, the current study will vary the levels of racial ambiguity. This is an important aspect to include when investigating racial ambiguity because ambiguity is not always a perfectly symmetrical 58 mix of exactly 50% of one set of characteristics and 50% of another, but more so that mixed-race individuals have a variety of different proportions and mixes of racial features. Modern mixed-race populations do not necessarily consist of “racially pure” people mingling (i.e. resulting in a 50/50 mix), but instead, racial variations extend over generations, producing many different variations of ambiguity. For example, a person that is 25% Black/75% White may be the son of a parent who was 50% Black/50%
White, and a grandparent who was 100% Black. That said, people are typically racially ambiguous in asymmetrical patterns. Additionally, people may differ in what they perceive to be most ambiguous, not always perceiving the 50% Black/50% White as most ambiguous. A good example of this is the perceptual one-drop rule, where some people may have a low threshold in categorizing others based on a much lower proportion of non-White heritage. Put differently, the greatest ambiguity may be when a target appears
White, but there is some evidence of non-Whiteness (i.e. slightly darker skin tone), thus leading the perceiver to categorize the target a Black.
Thus, varying the level of racial ambiguity is motivated, first, by the assumption that within social cognition research, that more ambiguous stimulus are more likely to reveal context effects, as perceivers may draw on a broader array of information external to the stimulus compared to a less ambiguous stimulus (e.g. Higgins, 1996). This could be taken to warrant the prediction that the perception of an individual who is symmetrically biracial may show the largest context effects (see Hypothesis 1a).
However, as discussed previously, in the American racial context, the greatest ambiguity may not occur when an individual has equal parts of a racial heritage. Rather, the one- drop rule would suggest that even a comparative share of non-White heritage may pose 59 the question of whether a person is White or not, where a symmetrically biracial person is easily categorized as non-White. As hypothesized before, especially for White individuals who are very much concerned with racial group boundaries (e.g., those high in SDO), an “almost White” person might represent the most ambiguous target, and should therefore show the largest effects of situational cues (see Hypothesis 4a).
Similar to Corneille et al.’s (2004, Study 1), which asked participants to recollect mixed-race faces at 30%-50%-70% on the Caucasian-North African and Caucasian-Asian continuum, the current Study One varied the racial composition of the faces as 75%-50%-
25% on the Black-White continuum. However, going beyond Corneille et al., Study One added a manipulation of situational cues and used a forced-choice categorization task. In this forced-choice categorization task, which was adapted from Eberhardt et al. (2003), participants did not see the originally presented ambiguous targets, but instead were forced to choose between a slightly more White or a slightly more Black target.
Corresponding with previous research, I expected to find similar categorization tendencies, such that the ambiguous targets would be assimilated in the direction of the situation cue (see Hypothesis 1). In the forced choice task, this would be apparent if the
Black situation cue produced more categorizations of the Black foil vs. the White foil, and the White situation cue produced more categorizations of the White foil vs. the Black foil.
The first study utilized a repeated measures design because it provided more statistical power by reducing measurement error and increasing reliability (Keppel &
Wickens, 2004). The current study was expected to converge with the previous work and reveal the moderating effects of individual difference factors (i.e. implicit theories, social 60 dominance orientations, and personal need for structure).
7.1 Method and Participants
Participants and Design
A total of 114 students from a large, urban Midwestern University were recruited to participate in the study through their undergraduate psychology courses and email invitations to instructors. Due to the nature of the study, 22 participants were removed from analyses because they did not complete the race identification or gender question, and because the majority of them had not provide any usable data on the face selection task (122 of 132 judgments missing). From the remaining students, an additional nineteen had to be removed from analyses because they described themselves as not
White/Caucasian. The final sample consisted of 73 White students (16 men, 57 women,
Mage = 29.441, age range: 18-63 years) who completed the entire task (see Table 2, for demographics and individual difference scores). Human subject approval for Study One was granted from the IRB at the data collection site, Metropolitan State University, as
well as the IRB of the primary affiliation of the author, University of Nevada, Reno.
61
The experiment employed a 3 (Face Version: asymmetrical Black target, asymmetrical White target, symmetrically biracial target) X 2 (Situation Cue: Black cue,
White cue) repeated measures design. The primary dependent measure was the choice of one of two faces in the forced-choice foil selection task.
Individual Difference Measures
To avoid confusion, all response scales were changed to the same 7-point Likert- type scale, from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (7). Social dominance orientation was displayed first, followed by implicit theories, and lastly, personal need for structure.
The individual difference measures were asked in the beginning so that the potential bias of the experimental procedure shaping how people are responding to the individual difference variables could be avoided.
Social Dominance Orientation. The SDO scale is a 14-item scale based on statements rated by participants (Pratto et al., 1994; see Appendix A). Sample items include “To get ahead in life, it is sometimes necessary to step on other groups,” or “All groups should be given an equal chance in life” (reverse-coded). The scale was balanced so that half of the items reflected approval of inequality, while the other half reflected approval of equality. Equality items were reverse scored and all items were averaged, such that an aggregate of the 14 items produced a continuous variable from 1 = low SDO to 7 = high SDO. With the present sample, the scale showed strong internal consistency,
α = .911. Because the distribution of the scale average was heavily skewed, the SDO scores were transformed with a natural log.
The reason that SDO should be asked before other scales is that some authors argue that the scale itself is reactive (Schmitt, Branscombe, & Kappen, 2003). In other 62 words, critics argue that responding to the task calls specific groups to mind (e.g., African
Americans), which then creates the collinearity between SDO and an experimental task focusing on African Americans. Thus, by increasing the temporal distance between SDO and the experimental task and by using other personality measures effectively as
“distractor tasks,” the potential problem of the multicollinearity is minimized.
Implicit Theories. An eight-item measure developed to assess an individuals’ implicit theory was used (Levy et al., 1998; see Appendix B). Some items were designed for entity theorists to agree with (e.g., “Everyone is a certain kind of person, and there is not much that they can do to really change that”). Whereas other items were designed for incremental theorists to agree with (e.g.,” People can substantially change the kind of person they are”). Incremental items were reverse scored, such that the aggregate score produced a continuous variable from 1 = high incremental theorists to 7 = high entity theorists. With the present sample, the scale showed strong internal consistency, α = .896.
Personal Need for Structure. This 12-item scale asks participants to rate statements that reflect a high or low personal need for structure, such as, “It upsets me to go into a situation without knowing what I can expect from it,” or “I find that a consistent routine enables me to enjoy life more” (Neuberg & Newson, 1993; see Appendix C).
Statements that reflect a low personal need for structure are, “I’m not bothered by things that interrupt my daily routine,” or “I enjoy the exhilaration of being in unpredictable situations.” Low need for structure items were reverse scored, such that the aggregate score produced a continuous variable from 1 = low personal need for structure to 7 = high personal need for structure. With the present sample, the scale showed strong internal consistency, α = .890. 63
Stimulus Materials
Face Version. Results from the second pilot study provided six sets of parents to generate the six sets of target faces. There were six sets of target faces (i.e. six sets of parents), each set including one asymmetrical Black target (75% Black/25% White), one ambiguous symmetrically biracial target (50% Black/50% White), and one asymmetrical
White target (25% Black/75% White; i.e. each set of parents had 3 children) (see Figure
2). This produced 18 color photos of male, college-aged faces with neutral expressions were used as target stimuli. An oval mask was used to select only the head region (i.e. face) to embed into the situation cue (i.e. context).
64
Situation Cue. Six color images (3 stereotypical Black sports, 3 stereotypical
White sports), resized to 576 x 720 pixels were used as situation cues (see Figure 3 for examples). Situation cues were selected to represent sports contexts associated with
Black athletes (i.e. basketball, track, football) or White athletes (i.e. volleyball, hockey, swimming).
7.2 Procedure
Participants were recruited from undergraduate psychology classes, with permission from the instructors, and participated within their class voluntarily. A computer lab or laptop cart (i.e. A laptop cart is a wireless cart that contains 40 wifi detachable laptops that are available for use in classroom) was reserved for each class, such that each participant had their own computer with a color monitor and internet access. It was possible for participants to view other participants’ screens; however, participants completed different sections at a different rate (i.e. some were faster in 65 completing the individual difference measures), and conditions were counterbalanced such that not everyone was viewing the same face version with the same situation cue.
Thus, it is unlikely that participants were influenced by the individual sitting near them.
The researcher or research assistant introduced the study, and asked participants to log into the instrument website. Although the instrument was available online, administration was only done in the computer lab or classroom where control of the screen resolution could be maintained. Once at the website, the initial screen provided informed consent and instructions for participation. Participants provided informed consent by clicking on the appropriate option on the computer screen. The remainder of the study was self-administered, and participants completed the series of individual difference measures, the six experimental conditions, and demographic questions (e.g. age, race, gender).
Survey Monkey (www.surveymonkey.com), a web-based survey application, was used to design and administer the study materials. The first page of the web-based instrument included a short introduction to the study, describing the study as a “memory task.” The next set of materials included the individual difference measures. The scales were ordered in three consecutive pages, starting with the SDO, then the implicit theories scale, and ended with the PNS.
The experimental section of the instrument represented the beginning of the experimental materials. The participant was directed to one of six experimental versions that were counterbalanced by face version (i.e. level of ambiguity) and face type (i.e. each “child” face in the six trials by each participant had different “parents), and each version contained six sets of stimulus materials (i.e. all combinations of face version and 66 situation cue). This means that each participant viewed six conditions, three White cues with one asymmetrical Black target, one symmetrically biracial target and one asymmetrical White target, and three Black cues, with one asymmetrical Black target, one symmetrically biracial target and one asymmetrical White target. The beginning screen described the procedures, and participants were told, once again, that they would be participating in a memory task. Each set of stimulus materials contained four-screens, and was a partial replication of the Eberhardt et al. (2003) materials. The first screen marked the beginning of a new condition, and reminded the participant that once they clicked “next,” the stimuli on the following page would be shown for 5 seconds. The second screen in the set consisted of a photograph of the situation cue (i.e. White or
Black cue) with the face version embedded within (i.e. asymmetrical White target, asymmetrical Black target, or symmetrically biracial target), displayed for 5 seconds.
The third screen provided an unrelated 2-minute filler task (i.e. frame game) before the participant moved on to the face selection phase (see Appendix D). The frame games consisted of a pictorial representation of a common saying. The participant had to find the correct saying in two minutes. After the two minutes were up, the frame game disappeared and the participant was prompted to go to the next screen. The final screen contained two foils for the participant to choose from and was untimed. The Black foil and White foil were created from the targets’ parents, and represented a shift of 10% more of parent 1 from the target for the darker version (Black foil) and 10% more of parent 2 from the target for the lighter version (White foil). The original target was not displayed (e.g. see Figure 4). This was repeated over six trials; participants saw all 67 combinations of each face version and situation cue, and were never presented with a target face that shared any parents (i.e. each target was unrelated).
On the final page, participants were asked general demographic questions, specifically age, race, gender, and political orientation. They were then debriefed and thanked for their participation. The entire study took approximately 30-35 minutes to complete. 68
7.3 Results
The dependent measure was the binary forced choice variable of the Black or
White foil. The variable was recoded as 0 = Black foil and 1 = White foil, with 1 meaning that the participant was more likely to have picked the White foil. The SDO,
PNS, and implicit theories scales were calculated from their specific items and reverse scored where necessary (see Appendices A – C for items reverse scored). Each scale resulted in one aggregate score for each of the SDO (higher values mean endorsement of inequality or hierarchy-enhancing, while lower values mean endorsement of equality or hierarchy-attenuating), implicit theories (i.e. higher values mean endorsement of entity theories, while lower values mean endorsement of incremental theories), and PNS (higher values indicate more need for structure). Scales were explored for normality and SDO was log transformed for normality. The three individual difference measures were uncorrelated, PNS and Implicit theories, r = .040, p = .399, SDO and PNS, r = -.003, p =
.955, and SDO and Implicit theories, r = -.025, p = .608. Thus, these measures were nonredundant. Note that the correlation between SDO and implicit theories was not significant, and thus, the present finding not consistent with Levy et al. (1998). That is, entity theorists were not higher in SDO and, presumably, higher in prejudice than incremental theorists. This suggests that Eberhardt et al.’s (2003) conclusions concerning the effect of individual differences in implicit theories on the perception of racially ambiguous individuals were not necessarily confounded by concurring individual differences in racial prejudice. 69
Preliminary Analyses
Independent samples t-tests were conducted to investigate any main effects of gender on the individual difference variables. SDO scores had an overall M = 0.690 (SD
= 0.437), where higher scores represent higher endorsement of social dominance (i.e. social hierarchies etc.). There was a significant difference between men’s (Mmale = 1.139,
SD = 0.311) and women’s (Mfemale = 0.563, SD = 0.381) scores, t(71) = 5.540, p < .001.
This finding is in line with the SDO literature and the invariance hypothesis, such that
men were more likely to have higher SDO than women because of their relative position
in the societal hierarchy (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999).
Implicit theory scores had an overall M = 3.681 (SD = 0.634), where higher scores
indicated entity theorists and lower scores indicated incremental theorists. There was no significant difference between men’s (Mmale = 3.506, SD = 0.550) and women’s (Mfemale =
3.730, SD = 0.652) scores, t(71) = -1.258, p = .213, indicating no difference between men and women in implicit theories (i.e. there are as many male entity theorists as there are women).
PNS scores had an overall M = 3.924 (SD = 0.738), where higher scores represent higher need for structure. There was no significant difference between men’s (Mmale =
3.770, SD = 0.647) and women’s (Mfemale = 3.968, SD = 0.761) scores, t(71) = -0.948, p =
.347. This indicates that men and women do not differ in their personal need for structure.
Test of Hypotheses
The current study used a repeated measures design with two categorical
experimental variables, gender, and continuous individual difference variables as
moderators in an analysis of a dichotomous outcome variable. Because the dichotomous 70 dependent variable violates central assumptions of analysis of variance (ANOVA), it made this statistical method inappropriate. A more appropriate technique was the generalized estimating equations (GEE) to examine the influence of situation cues and face version, as well as respondent gender and individual difference moderators, on respondents’ judgment of race categorization. GEE analysis is a powerful analytical approach that is beginning to be adopted by social and behavioral researchers (e.g.,
Penner et al., 2010; Villarruel, Cherry, Cabriales, Ronis, & Zhou, 2008). There are three main advantages of using the GEE over other analyses (Moulton, Kemmelmeier,
Sicafuse, & Lykes, 2010): (1) GEE provides a general framework for the analysis of many different types of variables (e.g., continuous, ordinal, dichotomous, polydichotomous, and count); (2) GEE has relaxed assumptions in regards to normality and heteroscedasticity, while permitting essentially the same types of statistical tests of factorial and continuous predictors as ANOVA; and (3) GEE provides robust estimations of the standard error, even when correlation structures are unspecified (Hanley, Negassa,
Edwardes, & Forrester, 2003). As recommended by Ghisletta and Spina (2004), an unstructured correlation structure was applied because the data were naturally organized in cluster-hierarchies with each respondent providing one rating for each combination of the repeated measures factors (i.e. one face selection for each condition). A series of sensitivity analyses using other correlation structures confirmed that allowing correlations between different responses made by the same person to vary freely was the most appropriate specification.
Across different models tested, PNS (see Hypotheses 5a and 5b) was never involved in any significant effects and did not contribute to the model fit; thus, it was 71 removed from further consideration. The final model included the two experimental variables (face version, situation cue), gender, and two individual difference measures
(SDO, Implicit theories). Pearson residuals were calculated to investigate potential outliers. This was used to check the model fit, as well as investigate the individual contribution of each data point to the Wald χ2 statistic (Nelder, 1990). The two responses
that were associated with residuals of greater than three standard deviations (Pearson
Residual > 2.58) were removed from final analyses. An unstructured correlation matrix
estimate was used in the model because there was minimal missing data and the
unstructured does not make any assumptions about the nature of pair-wise correlations
(Hanley et al., 2003). Also, a probit model was used (instead of a logit model) because
the choice in the recognition task reflects that the perception is a gradual shift in the
perception of racial characteristics (i.e. the foils were not 100% Black or 100% White)
instead of an explicit categorization of Black or White, which would favor the logistic
model (Johnson & Kim, 2004). The means reported through the remainder of the study
one analyses are the estimated marginal means and standard errors of the estimates. The
mean estimates range from 0 to 1, where 1 reflects the maximum estimated probability of
picking the lighter foil in the recognition task.
Finally, a median split of SDO and Implicit Theories was used for demonstration
purposes and ease of understanding, to illustrate the nature of the effects in graphical
format reported through Study One results. However, all analyses were performed using
SDO and Implicit Theories as continuous variables. Further, when no bar is shown on
Study One graphs, the estimated marginal mean was too small to display (i.e. close to 0). 72
The influence of the situation cue and face version
Hypothesis 1
Hypothesis 1 predicted that situation cues would lead to assimilation effects in the face selection task, and this main effect of situation cue emerged, Wald χ2(1) = 9.210, p =
.002. Targets embedded in the White situation cue were perceived as lighter (MWhite_cue =
0.519, se = 0.093), whereas targets embedded in the Black situation cue were perceived as darker (MBlack_cue = 0.064, se = 0.058). This indicates an assimilation effect of the
situation cue. The estimated marginal means of the asymmetrical Black target were close
to 0.5, which indicates that participants were randomly choosing the lighter or darker foil.
This suggests the differential efficiency of the Black vs. White situation cue such that
participants were influenced more by the Black situation cue, and less by the White
situation cue, supporting Hypothesis 1 (see Table 3 for full results).
Hypothesis 1a
Hypothesis 1a predicted that greater ambiguity in the target would result in
greater situation cue effects, such that the asymmetrical targets would be less influenced by the situation cue. There was a main effect of face version, Wald χ2(2) = 5.771, p =
.056. The asymmetrical White target (Masym_white = 0.085, se = 0.094) and symmetrically biracial target (Msym_biracial = 0.203, se = 0.114) were perceived as similar, pairwise p =
.424; however, they both differed significantly from the asymmetrical Black target
(Masym_black = 0.495, se = 0.107), where the symmetrically biracial target differing slightly,
pairwise p = .063, and the asymmetrical White target differed the most, pairwise p =
.004. Recall that the dependent variable reflects whether participants select the lighter or darker foil during the “face selection” phase of the experiment. In the absence of context, 73
74
I would not have expected any differences. However, what the above pattern of results indicates is that, when previously presented with an asymmetrical Black target, participants were more likely to choose the lighter foil compared to when presented with an asymmetrical White target. Conversely, when participants saw a target who was asymmetrical White or symmetrically biracial, they were more likely to choose the foil that was darker than when presented with an asymmetrical Black target. What this seems to suggest is that, when faced with the asymmetrical Black target, participants may be randomly picking either the darker or lighter foil, i.e. they seem most undecided in the face selection task. However, when presented with a lighter target, either the symmetrically biracial or the asymmetrical White target, they showed a much clearer preference for the darker foil. This supports the one-drop rule, such that when the proportion of “Blackness” in the target was minimal, yet sufficient enough to raise doubt about being unambiguously White, the participant gravitated toward the darker foil.
This main effect was further qualified by a significant situation cue x face version two-way interaction, Wald χ2(2) = 9.464, p = .009. It was predicted that the
symmetrically biracial target would be most influenced by the situation cue; however,
this was not the case. The symmetrically biracial target was perceived as darker when
paired with the Black situation cue (MBlack_cue = 0.065, se = 0.084), but was not influenced
by the White situation cue (MWhite_cue = 0.442, se = 0.181); however, this relationship was marginally significant, pairwise p = .059, supporting Hypothesis 1a. It was also predicted that the asymmetrical targets would be less influenced by the situation cue. For the asymmetrical Black target, this was supported, as the asymmetrical Black target was unaffected by the situation cue, MWhite_cue = 0.446, se = 0.151 vs. MBlack_cue = 0.544, se = 75
0.151, p = .644. However, the asymmetrical White target was influenced the most by the situation cue of the three face versions. When this target was presented with the White situation cue, participants (MWhite_cue = 0.664, se = 0.132) were much more likely to select
the lighter (Whiter) foil compared to when the same asymmetrical White target had been
presented with a Black situation cue (MBlack_cue = 0.001, se = 0.003), pairwise p < .001.
This suggests that, in the minds of participants, the racial category of the asymmetrical
White target was somewhat uncertain and thus easily influenced by additional cues,
leading those provided with a White situation cue to shift their perception; such the target
appeared somewhat Whiter, and those provided with a Black situation cue to shift their
perception; such that the target appeared somewhat Blacker. By contrast, the
asymmetrical Black target was unmoved by the presence of different situation cues (see
Figure 5). Interestingly, research participants were equally likely to pick a lighter or darker foil, which might suggest that, in line with previous findings on the cross-race effect (e.g., Brigham et al., 2007), they were unable to distinguish the foil faces, and essentially responded by selecting one of the two targets at random. Overall, this pattern of findings indicates that the asymmetrical White target was similar to the symmetrically biracial target (equal parts of Black and White elements), such that they both appeared ambiguous enough to require the information from the situation cue to form a judgment.
This supports Hypothesis 1a, such that the clearly unambiguous target (i.e. mostly Black) was uninfluenced by the situation cue.
In sum, my results show mixed support for Hypothesis 1 and 1a. The main effect of the situation cue was in the predicted direction, such that assimilation effects were seen overall. In the face version by situation cue, again, there was support for the 76
symmetrically biracial target showing assimilation effects when paired with the White and Black cues. However, the same effects were seen in the asymmetrical White targets, but not in the asymmetrical Black targets. This seems to support the perceptual one-drop rule. I had hypothesized that the symmetrical biracial target (50/50 mix) would be most influenced by the situation cue, assuming that ambiguity would be greatest when the constituent components are of equal strength. However, the perceptual one-drop rule implies an asymmetrical relationship, such that ambiguity is not the greatest under the
50/50 distribution, but rather that a target with any perceived non-Whiteness provides enough ambiguity to rely on other evidence to categorize. 77
Hypothesis 1b
Hypothesis 1b predicted that situation cues would be more influential for men than women. As predicted, the influence of situation cues was greater for men, as reflected in a situation cue x gender interaction, Wald χ2(1) = 14.19, p < .001. When
shown the Black situation cue, men (MBlack_cue = 0.001, se = 0.003) judged the target as
significantly darker than did women (MBlack_cue = 0.514, se = 0.042), pairwise p < .001,
thus confirming the anticipated gender effect (see Figure 6). Similarly, when shown the
White situation cue, men (MWhite_cue = 0.669, se = 0.164) judged the target to be somewhat
78
lighter than did women (MWhite_cue = 0.365, se = 0.040), pairwise p = .072, again
supporting a gender effect in the face selection task. For men, there was a significant
assimilation effect, pairwise p < .001, such that the White situation cue produced a shift
towards the perception of the target as lighter, whereas the Black cue produced a shift
toward the perception of the target as darker. At the same time, for women, this effect
was significant but reversed, pairwise p = .010.
This interaction was further qualified by a three-way interaction of situation cue x
face version x gender. When the target was asymmetrically Black, situation cues did not
have any influence on the responses of men (MBlack_cue = 0.382, se = 0.281 vs. MWhite_cue =
0.442, se = 0.292), pairwise p = .881; however, they did influence women (MBlack_cue =
0.699, se = 0.063 vs. MWhite_cue = 0.449, se = 0.073), pairwise p = .010. For women, there was a contrast effect, such that the asymmetrical Black target was perceived as lighter when paired with the Black cue and darker when paired with the White cue. For women, this was not found for the symmetrically biracial target, pairwise p = .173, nor for the symmetrical White target, pairwise p = .617. For men, the symmetrically biracial
(MBlack_cue = 0.004, se = 0.015 vs. MWhite_cue = 0.672, se = 0.324), pairwise p = .040; and
-10 -9 asymmetrical White targets (MBlack_cue = 1.505 , se = 2.241 vs. MWhite_cue = 0.845, se =
0.167), pairwise p < .001, were influenced the most by the situation cue, revealing
assimilation effects for the men (see Figure 7).
This suggests that men were affected by the situation cue when the target was
lighter, using the cue to disambiguate the target, whereas the women were influenced by
the situation cue when the target was darker, using the cue to exclude the target from the
specific category (i.e. asymmetrical Black target shown in the White cue led to 79
perceiving the target as darker). Thus, women did not show any signs of an assimilation effect. These results support Hypothesis 1b, such that the influence of situation cues was greater for men than women when the target was most ambiguous (i.e. symmetrically biracial or asymmetrical White).
The influence of social dominance orientation
Hypotheses 3a, 3b, and 3c
The first in this cluster of hypotheses predicted that situation cues would have a minimal impact for high SDO participants because the focus for these individuals is on whether the target is unambiguously White or not (Hypothesis 3a). There was no main effect of
SDO on the face judgment task, Wald χ2(1) = 1.907, p = .167, but there was a significant 80 two-way interaction of SDO by situation cue, Wald χ2(1) = 15.336, p < .001. SDO always
moderated the selection of the foil, such that higher levels of SDO were linked to selecting the lighter foil, reflecting a perception of the target person as more White; however, this impact of SDO was more pronounced in the presence of a White situation cue (b = .634, se = .459, p = .167) compared to a Black situation cue (b = .113, se = .432, p = .793). This indicates that high SDO and low SDO individuals may differ regarding
White situation cues, such that high SDO individuals are more likely to respond to the presence of the White situation cue by choosing the lighter foil than low SDO individuals, resulting in an unexpected assimilation effect.
This two-way interaction was further qualified by a three-way interaction involving SDO, face version and situation cue, Wald χ2(2) = 8.636, p = .013. High SDO
participants were more likely to pick the lighter face when the target was symmetrically
biracial and paired with a White situation cue than low SDO participants (b = .934, se =
.503, p = .063; see Table 4). It was hypothesized that high SDO individuals would utilize
the one-drop rule, and that any ambiguous target would be judged on any features that
would exclude them from the ingroup. This did not seem the case here, as symmetrically
biracial targets were included in the ingroup, but only when the situation cue was White.
This means that the high SDO participants relied on the situation cue in distinguishing
their ingroup boundaries.
The outgroup male target hypothesis
Hypothesis 3d and 3e
It was hypothesized that the influence of SDO would be stronger for men
(Hypothesis 3e) and that men would be more inclined towards the one-drop rule than 81
women – in line with the outgroup male target hypothesis (Hypothesis 3d). Although the gender by SDO interaction only approached a statistical tendency, Wald χ2(1) = 2.663, p
= .103, men showed a strong simple effect, such that high SDO males were more likely to
choose the darker foil than their low SDO counterparts, b = -3.569, se = 1.130, p = .002.
This effect was not found for women, b = .634, se = .459, p = .167. This is in line with 82
Hypothesis 3d and 3e, such that the influence of SDO on men is more extreme than for women, and that high SDO men are more likely to categorize the target as outgroup, regardless of the level of ambiguity.
This interaction was further qualified by a three-way interaction involving SDO, situation cue and gender, Wald χ2(1) = 20.994, p < .001. SDO did not play a role for women’s response regardless of whether they encountered a face with a White situation cue (b = .634, se = 459, p = .167) or a Black situation cue (b = .113, se = .432, p = .793).
However, the men followed a very different pattern. When paired with a Black situation cue, high SDO men were more likely to perceive the target as lighter than low SDO men
(b = 10.310, se = 3.472, p = .003), producing a contrast effect. But when paired with the
White situation cue, high SDO men were more likely to perceive the target as darker than
low SDO men (b = -3.569, se = 1.130, p = .002, see Figure 8), again, producing the
predicted contrast effect. Low SDO men followed an assimilation pattern.
Finally, a significant four-way interaction was found, Wald χ2(2) = 9.721, p =
.008. For men shown the Black situation cue, the effect of SDO was strongest when the
target was asymmetrical White (simple slope b = 10.310, se = 3.472, p = .003) resulting
in a contrast effect for high SDO participants. In other words, when an “almost White”
individual was presented in the context of a stereotypically Black sport, high SDO
seemed to focus on the fact that this individual was not stereotypically Black, and
perceived him as slightly more White than the original. The same effect was still
significant, but weaker, when the target was ambiguous (simple slope b = 4.449, se =
2.093, p = .034), but it was weakest and non-significant when the target was
asymmetrical Black (simple slope b = 1.036, se = 1.385, p = .455). For men shown the 83
White situation cue, again, the effect of SDO was strongest when the target was asymmetrical White (simple slope b = -3.569, se = 1.130, p = .002), weaker when the target was ambiguous (simple slope b = -1.467, se = 1.463, p = .316), and had virtually no effect when the target was asymmetrical Black (simple slope b = -.307, se = 1.315, p =
.815). That is, when an “almost White” individual was presented in the context of a stereotypical White sport, high SDO participants seemed to focus on the fact that the target person was not really White and; hence, they were more likely to perceive the individual to be somewhat more Black than the individual was in reality. Put differently, 84
the Whiter a racially ambiguous target seemed to be, the more likely were high SDO participants to show a contrast effect. There was no effect of SDO for women (see Figure 85
9). This supports the perceptual one-drop rule (Hypothesis 4a) and the OMTH
(Hypothesis 4d), such that high SDO male participants, but not female participants, categorized the target as darker when the target was mostly White.
These results indicate that racial perception may be systematically different between men and women. This result is broadly consistent with the outgroup male target hypothesis (Navarrete et al., 2010), which might be taken to suggest that men are more likely to perceive someone as an outgroup member if they cannot unambiguously include them in their ingroup.
The Influence of Implicit Theories
Hypothesis 4a
This hypothesis predicted that situation cues produce an assimilation effect among entity theorists, but not necessarily among incremental theorists. This predicted situation cue x implicit theories interaction did not reach significance, Wald χ2(1) = 0.556, p =
.456. In other words, there was no difference in the extent to which implicit theories moderated participants’ responses to the situation cues, although entity theorists were
always slightly, though never significantly, more inclined to select the darker foil as
reflected in small, but negative coefficients (see Table 5). However, these results do not
provide support Hypothesis 4a.
There was no main effect of implicit theories on the face selection task, Wald
χ2(1) = 0.060, p = .806. However, there was a two-way interaction involving implicit
theories x face version, Wald χ2(2) = 6.150, p = .046. Entity theorists exhibited a greater likelihood of choosing a lighter foil for the asymmetrical Black target than incremental theorists (b = .488, se = .263, p = .063), but not for the symmetrically biracial targets (b = 86
.130, se = .268, p = .627) or asymmetrical White targets (b = -.061, se = .248, p = .806).
The most pronounced interaction in this model involved gender and implicit theories, Wald χ2(1) = 7.510, p = .006. Male entity theorists were far more likely to
choose the lighter foil than male incremental theorists (b = 1.847, se = .719, p = .010),
while implicit theories had no influence among women (b = -.061, se = .248, p = .806).
There was a three-way interaction of implicit theories by face version by gender,
Wald χ2(2) = 8.252, p = .016. In particular, male entity theorists were more likely to
choose the lighter foil when shown the asymmetrical White target than male incremental
theorists (b = 1.847, se = .719, p = .010); there were no differences with the asymmetrical 87
Black target (b = .215, se = .691, p = .756) or the symmetrically biracial target (b = .789, se = .830, p = .342). Further, female entity theorists were more likely to choose the lighter foil when shown the asymmetrical Black target than female incremental theorists
(b = .488, se = .263, p = .063). Among women, individual differences with regard to implicit theories had no effect with regard to the asymmetrical White target (b = -.061, se
= .248, p = .806) or the symmetrically biracial target (b = .130, se = .268, p = .627).
In summary, the results are not consistent with Eberhardt et al. (2003), as the implicit theories did not moderate the influence of situation cues on perception of the target (Hypothesis 4a). However, unexpectedly, implicit theories had the largest moderating effect on face version, such that asymmetrical (i.e. asymmetrical Black or asymmetrical White) versions of the target produced the most differences between entity and incremental theorists. Male entity theorists perceived the target as lighter when the target had the most “White” features, whereas female entity theorists perceived the target as lighter when the target had the most “Black” features.
7.4 Discussion
The primary purpose of the first study was to determine how situation cues influence racial categorization. In my face selection paradigm, I found that situation cues influenced selections, such that darker foils were chosen when the Black situation cue was present, and lighter foils were chosen when the White situation cue was present. At the most general level, the present findings are consistent with previous studies showing that situation cues, such as clothing, contextual information, or explicit labels, are influential in the labeling and categorization of an ambiguous individual (Pauker et al.,
2009; Unkelbach et al., 2008; Eberhardt et al., 2003). 88
However, racial perception in Study One was dependent on individual difference factors. The prominent finding of the first study was the four-way interaction involving
SDO, gender, situation cue, and face version. This four-way interaction shows that the there is a differential impact of SDO on racial perception. In fact, it seems that the results are best understood if one assumes that high SDO individuals are applying the perceptual one-drop rule. When the target person is “almost White,” there seems to be the greatest need for interpretation on the part of high SDO men. Based on previous research in social cognition (e.g., Higgins, 1996), it is precisely under these circumstances that contextual information, such as situational cues, has the largest impact. And consistent with this line of reasoning, among the high SDO individuals, the situation cue had the greatest impact on the perception of the asymmetrical White target (25% Black; 75% White). The effect was much weaker, but in the same direction when the target was symmetrically biracial to equal proportions (i.e. 50% White, 50% Black), but the effect completely disappeared with the asymmetrical Black target (25% White, 75% Black). The assumption behind my interpreting of this finding as evidence of an application of the one-drop rule is that, for high SDO individuals, any increase in non-White characteristics or features removed uncertainty as to the racial membership of the target and, hence, allowed high SDO perceivers to determine the racial group membership based on target characteristics alone.
In essence, this pattern suggests that high SDO individuals are highly sensitive to the context, but that their focus is on the perceptual misfit between the target and the situation, creating a contrast effect between the target and the contextual information. In this way, they contrast their perception of the target away from the provided situation 89 expectation concerning the potential racial membership of the group. Thus, the “almost
White” individuals were perceived to be less White in a stereotypically White context, and more White in a stereotypically Black context.
As expected, men and women embarked on the disambiguation of racially ambiguous faces rather differently Although there were some differences in terms of reliance on situation cues, the most striking difference was that for women SDO did not moderate the perception of racially ambiguous individuals at all, whereas for men, the moderating effect of SDO was dramatic, as described above. This lends support for the social dominance theory and, specifically the outgroup male target hypothesis (OMTH), such that high SDO men were the ones maintaining a stricter racial boundary by eliminating “almost White” male targets from their ingroup. In terms of the OMTH, men were most threatened by the asymmetrical White targets for whom their status as ingroup or outgroup members was not clear. In other words, the findings suggest that men, much more than women, are asking the question “Are you ingroup or outgroup?” And in order to answer this question, men were much more likely to rely on all of the available cues to confirm a particular identity.
Women, however, do not seem to be asking the same “who are you?” question or at least not with the same consequences as the men. The strongest effects for women were found for any of the three targets paired with the White situation cue, which seemed to highlight that low SDO women perceived the target to be more likely to be White. This suggests that, given an ambiguous target, high SDO women were more likely to assimilate their perception of the face to the cue, than were low SDO women. This finding contrasts with that for high SDO men, whose results suggested that were more 90 motivated to maintain the racial boundaries.
In terms of its findings pertaining to implicit theories, at the most general level
Study One is consistent with Eberhardt et al.’s (2003) in that the present findings revealed effects of contextual cues while demonstrating that implicit theories indeed moderate racial perception. In the current study, the situation cue did not interact with implicit theories, such that the situation cue did not lead to an assimilation effect for entity theorists, as in the Eberhardt et al. findings. Thus, the current study qualifies the
Eberhardt et al. research, in that the face version (i.e. which was not investigated by
Eberhardt et al.) interacted with implicit theories, and not the situation cue. This is a potential qualification to the Eberhardt et al. findings, such that the racial composition of the face, as well as the gender of the participant played a role in the face selection. In fact, it was the asymmetrical (i.e. asymmetrical Black or asymmetrical White) versions of the target that produced the most differences between entity and incremental theorists, such that male entity theorists perceived the target as lighter when the target was asymmetrically White, than did male incremental theorists.
One of the reasons for the different effects of implicit theories is that the current study utilizes a more naturalistic (and thus, realistic) context. In their discussion,
Eberhardt et al. (2003) suggested that incremental theorists may be repelled by strong explicit trait labels (i.e. “Black”), and indifferent to more subtle trait labels. The current study suggests that with more naturalistic cues, the findings are consistent with the notion that incremental theorists are indifferent to the context, and that entity theorists process the any identifiable information (i.e. the face version in this case) and use it in their judgments about which type of target they have seen. 91
Further, the present research introduced multiple levels of ambiguity. The symmetrical version, as in the Eberhardt et al. (2003) study was used, represented a 50/50 mix of Black and White “parents.” In addition, asymmetrical Black (75% Black) and asymmetrical White (75% White) individuals were also represented, as well as six different sets of targets (i.e. six morphs all with different parents). This addition of asymmetrical faces allowed for one to explore the conditions under which situation cues were more or less influential in shaping racial perceptions.
One of the interesting questions that arise from the first study is the peculiar finding of the face version effect. In the absence of context, I would not have expected any differences. However, what this indicates is that, when previously confronted with an asymmetrical Black target, participants chose someone more White. Conversely when they saw someone who was asymmetrical White or ambiguous, they choose the foil that was more Black. This means that the White participants perceived the asymmetrical
White target (i.e. 25% Black/75% White) as more Black than he really was, which is consistent with Pauker et al. (2009) findings that ambiguous targets were categorized as outgroup without motivations for inclusion, and thus, remembered poorly. This finding was unexpected, and will be tested again in Study Two.
92
Chapter 8: Study Two
The categorization results obtained in the first study are a good indication of what an observer would recall when influenced by a situation cue—after all, the results showed a strong effect of situation cue on racial categorization (i.e. Black cues produced darker selections, White cure produced lighter selections). However, Study One did not provide the chance for participants to accurately recall the target, because the original target was not an option in the face selection task. Although there are certainly situations, which require explicit categorization of race, such as giving a description of a perpetrator to a police officer, most situations do not require such explicit racial categorization. For example, you are driving through a high-crime neighborhood, and see an ambiguous individual breaking into a car; how would the neighborhood influence your perception of the car burglar? When you are asked to view a police lineup the next day, you may use the contextual information, such as the expectation of who would be burglarizing a car, to distort your recognition of the individual. If you are White and associate the situation with “Black,” and then apply the category of Black to the perpetrator, you will likely not have a very accurate memory of the perpetrator in the first place because of the cross-race effect. Further, it is likely you will choose an individual from the lineup that is more prototypically Black. This leads to the hypothesis that (1) due to the cross-race effect, it could be predicted that a White observer would be less accurate when there is a Black situation cue, making the “perp” an other-race target, and (2) if the target is categorized into an other-race group, the later recognition memory will be distorted and more prototypical of a member of that racial group.
Thus, the second study explores the relationship between situation cue and face 93 recognition accuracy. Although based on an established task in the literature, the first study did not include the original target in the categorization task, therefore, it is uncertain if the perceiver would have been accurate or not. In Study One, it is possible that after, seeing the second or third target-in-situation, the participant may have figured out that they would be asked about the specific target. This may have biased the responses, such that participants may have focused on the target face only, without processing the situation cue. Thus, a manipulation check was added to Study Two to identify if participants processed the situation cue. Further, the second study provides the original target as well as six foils to determine accuracy in recognition, similar to the design employed by Corneille et al. (2004, Study 1). This paradigm provided an identification task that included the original target (unlike Study One), and also included three darker foils (i.e. 5%, 10%, and 15% more of parent 1, and 5%, 10%, and 15% more of parent 2). This allowed for the participant to accurately identify the original target, or to determine the level of memory bias from the original target (i.e. the amount of distortion from the original target).
The second study also used a recognition task to address memory for the situation cue. This was done by employing a recognition-based manipulation check by showing the original situation cue and two foils (i.e. small changes to the situation cue, such as a subtle change in the color of the basketball court). The memory-for-situation cue recognition task sought to remove any ambiguity that was in Study One, namely, that there was no firm evidence that people did pay attention to the situation cue and process the situation cue in Study One. 94
The current study also employed a between subjects design. The repeated measures design used in Study One may have sensitized individuals to the existing differences between faces and between situation cues. Eberhardt et al. (2003) used a between groups designs, thus, it may be theoretically possible to replicate some of their findings in a between groups design vs. the within groups design used in Study One.
I hypothesized that Study Two would essentially replicate the cross-race effect, such that more same-race typical faces (i.e. 75% White) would be more likely to be included in the White participant’s own-race group, thus benefiting from enhanced memory. This was in line with Pauker et al. (2009), such that the symmetrically biracial and asymmetrical White or Black faces were more accurately remembered when included in the ingroup (Hypothesis 2a). Further, ingroup cues, such as White situation cues, should convey a memory benefit in that the face is remembered more accurately (i.e.
White context; Hypothesis 2b). In addition, there are again potential moderating effects of the individual difference variables. For instance, entity theorists should show more assimilation effects based on the situation cues, thus leading to ingroup categorization, in line with Eberhardt et al. (2003). This prompts more accuracy (i.e. remembering individuating information) leading to better accuracy in recognition of same-race categorized targets (Hypothesis 4b).
Further, given that high SDO participants, particularly men, are inclined to maintain clear racial boundaries, there are two possible outcomes. First, high SDO participants may show stronger cross-race effects than low SDO participants for the asymmetrical White target than the asymmetrical Black target (Hypothesis 3f). However, because it is possible that high SDO participants rely on situation cues to determine 95 categorization, it is also possible that the White situation cue would provide enough inclusion criteria for the high SDO White participant, thus leading to more accurate memory of race-matching situation cue (Hypothesis 3g). Second, because high SDO participants are more likely to categorize lighter ambiguous targets as outgroup members, while low SDO participants are more likely to include lighter ambiguous targets, it is expected that high SDO participants will show poorer recognition memory of lighter ambiguous targets while low SDO participants show the reverse (Hypothesis 3h).
Aside from the expected relationships of the cross-race effect, I also expected to find some memory distortions. Utilizing a similar paradigm as Levin and Banaji (2006), it can be predicted that the situation cue will induce memory biases as a function of situation expectations (Hypothesis 2a). For example, Levin and Banaji found that an ambiguous target face paired with a race-specific situational cue (i.e. explicit racial labels under target faces; e.g. “BLACK”) influenced the perceived skin tone of the target (i.e. target was perceived as more Black). This is what I expected to find with a subtler situation cue (i.e. natural environment), such that the situational cue will influence the perception of the target in the direction of the situation expectation. For example, an ambiguous target embedded in a basketball game context (i.e. Black situation cue), will result in a distorted memory, recognizing the target as more Black. Conversely, an ambiguous target embedded in a volleyball game context (i.e. White situation cue), will result in a distorted memory, recognizing the target as more White.
8.1 Method and Participants
Two hundred and ninety-one students from a large, urban Midwestern University were recruited to participate in the study through their undergraduate psychology courses 96
and email invitations to instructors. With a medium effect size (d =.50) and 5 degrees of freedom, 216 participants were needed for the between subjects design (36 per condition). Individuals who had participated in Study One or either of the Pilot Studies were removed. Due to the nature of the study, 23 participants were removed from analyses because they did not complete the race identification demographic. Another 72 participants identified their race as non-White (i.e. Black, Hispanic, etc.). Nine participants were removed due to no selection made on the primary dependent variable
(i.e. the target choice in the recognition task). The final sample consisted of 187 White students (48 men, 139 women, Mage = 29.87, age range: 17-64 years) who completed the
entire task (see Table 6, for demographics and individual difference scores). As with
Study One, human subject approval for Study Two was granted from the IRB at the data
collection site, Metropolitan State University, as well as the IRB of the primary affiliation of the author, University of Nevada, Reno. The experiment employed a 3 (Face Version: asymmetrical Black target, asymmetrical White target, symmetrical biracial target) X 2 97
(Situation Cue: Black cue, White cue) between-groups design. The primary dependent measure is target choice in the recognition task. There were 7-12 men and 18-27 women in each condition.
8.2 Materials and Procedure
The materials were identical to the first study with the following exceptions. In
Study Two, each participant only participated in one experimental condition and was presented with only one target (i.e. between-groups design). Further, the current study used stimulus replication, that is, there were two versions of the same stimulus, with roughly half of all participants seeing a version of one face (offspring of parents A & B) whereas the other half saw a version of the other face (offspring of parents C & D). These versions were called face series, where each series contained three “children” that were asymmetrical Black, symmetrically biracial, and asymmetrical White. Finally, the distractor task was extended, which will be described in detail. After the informed consent and introduction page, and the three individual difference scales (i.e. SDO, implicit theories, and PNS), each participant was randomly assigned to one of the twelve conditions. The first experimental screen consisted of a photograph of the situation cue
(i.e. White or Black cue) with the face version embedded within (i.e. asymmetrical White target, asymmetrical Black target, or symmetrical biracial target), displayed for 5 seconds.
Face Version. Six color photos of male, college-aged faces with neutral expressions were used as target stimuli from Study One. There were face series (i.e. two sets of parents), each producing one set of: asymmetrical Black target (75% Black), symmetrical biracial target (50% Black), and an asymmetrical White target (25% Black; 98 i.e. each set of parents had 2 children) (see Figure 2). An oval mask over only the facial area was used to select the face only to embed into the context.
Situation Cue. Two color images (One Black cue: basketball, One White cue: volleyball), resized to 576 x 720 pixels, were used as the situation cues (See Figure 3 for examples). Situation cues were selected to represent sports contexts associated with
Black athletes (i.e. basketball) or White athletes (i.e. volleyball). The two situation cues selected had high agreement by gender in the second pilot study on their association with
White athletes or Black athletes, thus, the two situation cues were: basketball and volleyball.
Following the stimulus screen (i.e. the target embedded in the situation cue), participants were asked to work on a logic problem for 5 minutes. The logic problem showed a timer that counted down from 5 minutes. Once the 5 minutes were completed, the problem disappeared, and the participant was prompted to move to the next screen.
The logic problem contained a short set of information about five different people and the occupations they were currently employed information provided several clues, but did not explicitly state which person was in which occupation (see Appendix E). On the next screen, it was the participant’s job to connect each of the five people to their correct occupation.
Following the logic problem, the next screen contained the recognition task. This task contained six foils and the original target in order from, (condition 1) darkest to lightest or (condition 2) lightest to darkest, for the participant to choose and was untimed
(see Figure 10). The Black and White foils were created from each original target in three
5% intervals in both directions on the Black/White continuum. For instance, the final 99 seven faces for the symmetrically biracial face were 35%, 40%, 45%, 50% (original),
55%, 60%, 65% White, but for the asymmetrical White target the final seven faces were
60%, 65%, 70%, 75% (original), 80%, 85%, 90% White. The faces were shown in order, and participants were asked to select the face they remembered from the “context.”
Manipulation check. Due to some potential ambiguity in Study One regarding the processing of the situation cue, an additional page was added to each condition. The manipulation check contained three situation cue pictures, one of the original situation cue (i.e. background image without the target individual), and two foils (i.e. similar backgrounds without the target individual). The pictures were slightly varied and the participant was asked to choose the photo of the situation cue from the original picture.
For example, if the situation cue was the basketball court, one picture may have had red court outlines, the other may have blue court outlines, and a third may be from a different perspective; see Figure 11). This was a manipulation check to ensure that the participant 100
processed the contextual information.
The procedure was identical to the first study, with the addition of the instructions for the situation cue recognition task. Upon completion, participants were debriefed and thanked for their participation. The entire study took approximately 20 minutes to complete.
8.3 Results
The dependent measure was the face recognition variable of the White and Black foils along with the original target. These were recoded as 0 = original target and correct identification; values of -1, -2, and -3, respectively, were assigned for distortions (i.e. morphs) of 5%, 10% and 15% toward the Black end of the continuum, and +1, +2, and
+3, respectively, were assigned for distortions (i.e. morphs) of 5%, 10% and 15% toward the White end of the continuum. Situation cue recognition recall responses were coded into 1 = match or 0 = no match. Six participants (3%) failed to choose the correct situation cue for the manipulation check. In the spirit of achieving a robust analysis (e.g.,
McClelland, 2000), analyses were run with and without these six participants, and 101 because no substantive differences were found, the six participants were included in the final analyses.
Preliminary Analysis
The SDO, PNS, and implicit theories measures were computed as in Study One.
Scales were explored for normality and SDO was log transformed for normality. All three scales showed good internal consistency in the present sample: SDO α = .928, PNS α =
.865, and Implicit Theories α = .870. The three individual difference measures were essentially uncorrelated, PNS and Implicit theories, r = .109, p = .129, SDO and PNS, r =
.058, p = .423, and SDO and Implicit theories, r = .099, p = .168. As in Study One, the absence of significant correlations meant that these measures were nonredundant.
Independent samples t-tests were conducted to investigate any main effects of gender on the individual difference variables. SDO scores had an overall M = 0.842 (SD
= 0.439), where higher scores represent higher endorsement of social dominance (i.e. social hierarchies, etc.). There was a marginally significant difference between men’s
(Mmale = 0.944, SD = 0.479) and women’s (Mfemale = 0.807, SD = 0.421) scores, t(185) =
1.876, p = .062. This finding is in line with the SDO literature, such that men were more
likely to have higher SDO than women because of their relative position in the societal
hierarchy (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). Similarly, Implicit theory scores had an overall M =
3.759 (SD = 0.603). There was a significant difference between men’s (Mmale = 3.563, SD
= .583) and women’s (Mfemale = 3.827, SD = 0.597) scores, t(185) = -2.663, p = .008. This
indicates that women are more likely to be entity theorists than men. PNS scores had an
overall mean of M = 4.097 (SD = 0.670), where higher scores represent higher need for
structure. There was not a significant difference between men’s (Mmale = 4.015, SD = 102
0.600) and women’s (Mfemale = 4.126, SD = 0.692) scores, t(184) = -.987, p = .325. This
indicates that there was no difference between women and men in personal need for structure (see Table 6 for full results).
Manipulation check
A manipulation check was conducted to determine if participants processed the
situation cue and had memory for it. Of the final 187 participants, only six (2 men, 4
women) did not correctly identify the situation cue on a later recognition task. This
indicates that people routinely pay attention to the context in which a target appears, even
when they are not explicitly prompted to do so, or when they are sensitized to varying
contexts in a repeated-measures design. The model was run with and without the six
participants who failed the manipulation check, and there were no significant differences
in the results. Thus, the six participants were included in the final analysis.
The Final Model
The current study used a between-subject design with three categorical
experimental variables, gender, and continuous individual difference variables as
moderators in an analysis of a ratio outcome variable, analyzed with a factorial analysis
of variance (unless otherwise noted). Across different models tested, PNS (i.e.
Hypothesis 5a, 5b) was never involved in any significant effects and did not contribute to
the model fit; thus, it was removed from further consideration. The final model included
the three experimental variables (face series i.e. which of the two sets of faces; face
version, situation cue), gender, and two individual difference measures (SDO, Implicit
theories), which is the same as Study One with the addition of the face series. The face
series (i.e. the series of “children” from two unique “parents”) was included in the model 103 to control for which of the two faces the participant viewed. The means reported through the remainder of these analyses reflect picking the lighter or darker foil in the recognition task, with -3 as the darkest foil and +3 as the lightest foil.
The influence of situation cue and face version
Hypothesis 1a
Hypothesis 1 predicted that situation cues would lead to assimilation effects in the recognition task, and this main effect of situation cue emerged, F(1, 145) = 11.479, p =
2 .047, P = .027. The Black situation cue led to darker selections (MBlack_cue = 0.042, SD =
1.800) and White cues lead to lighter perceptions (MWhite_cue = 0.187, SD = 1.849). This
supports Hypothesis 1, as the situation cue led to overall assimilation effects in the
recognition task, suggesting that the influence of the cue led to memory distortions of
lighter (with the White cue) or darker (with the Black cue) foils. Further, there was a
2 main effect of face version, F(2,145) = 23.494, p = .018, P = .054. Asymmetrical Black
targets were falsely recognized after a five minute delay, with participants choosing
darker foils as indicated by a mean that was negative and reliably different from zero
(Masym_black = -0.627, SD = 1.711), t(186) = -5.011, p < .001. This is different from Study
One, in which participants picked the foil essentially at random. The symmetrically
biracial target (Msym_biracial = 0.524, SD = 1.874; t(186) = -3.824, p < .001, and this was reliability different from 0) and asymmetrical White target (Masym_white = 0.385, SD =
1.683; t(186) = -3.128, p = .002, and this was reliably different from 0) produced lighter foils, consistent with Study One. Pairwise comparisons revealed that the asymmetrical
Black target differed from the ambiguous target (pairwise p = .038), and from the asymmetrical White target (pairwise p = .006). The latter two conditions (symmetrically 104 biracial and asymmetrical White target) did not vary from each other, pairwise p = .538
(see Table 7 for full results). This is in line with the accentuation effect (i.e. Corneille et al., 2004), such that the darker targets (i.e. asymmetrical Black targets) were remembered as darker, as indicated by the negative means. This is in line with the accentuation effect
(e.g. Corneille et al., 2004), whereas the lighter face (i.e. asymmetrical White) was mis- recognized as Whiter than it really was, and the darker face (i.e. asymmetrical Black) was mis-recognized as Blacker than it really was.
Hypothesis 1a
Hypothesis 1a predicted that greater ambiguity in the target would result in greater situation cue effects, such that the asymmetrical targets would be less influenced by the situation cue. There was a significant two-way interaction involving situation cue
2 and face version, F(2, 145) = 19.968, p = .033, P = .046. Symmetrically biracial targets
were remembered as darker when paired with the Black situation cue (MBlack_cue = -0.032,
SD = 1.888) compared to when paired with the White situation cue (MWhite_cue = 1.063, SD
= 1.722), pairwise p = .006. The situation cue did not have any influence on
asymmetrically Black targets, MBlack_cue = -0.500, SD = 1.796 vs. MWhite_cue = -0.759, SD
= 1.640, pairwise p = .163, nor did they have an influence when the target was
asymmetrically White, MBlack_cue = 0.571, SD = 1.614 vs. MWhite_cue = 0.167, SD = 1.763,
pairwise p = .402. This indicates that only for the symmetrically biracial target did the
situation cue have an influence on the perception of the targets racial heritage (see Figure
12). This supports Hypothesis 1a, such that the greatest ambiguity (i.e. symmetrically 105 biracial target) produced the only significant assimilation effect of the three ambiguous targets. 106
The influence of gender
Hypothesis 1b
Hypothesis 1b predicted that situation cues would be more influential for men than
2 women. There was no main effect of gender, F (1, 145) = .476, p = .683, P = .001;
2 however, there was a gender x situation cue interaction, F(1, 145) = 9.778, p = .066, P
= .023. Men (MBlack_cue = -0.400, SD = 1.698 vs. MWhite_cue = 0.321, SD = 1.744, pairwise
p = .034) were significantly more influenced by the situation cue than were women
(MBlack_cue = 0.158, SD = 1.819 vs. MWhite_cue = 0.127, SD = 1.905, pairwise p = .873; see
Figure 12). Just like in Study One, this supports Hypothesis 1b in that men were more
influenced by the situation cues than women. Additionally, the predicted gender x face 107
version x situation cue three-way interaction also approached significance, F(2, 145) =
2 15.190, p = .073, P = .035 (see Figure 13).
Assimilation effects occurred for men who saw the symmetrically biracial target
(MBlack_cue = -1.400, SD = 1.517 vs. MWhite_cue = 0.889, SD = 2.147), pairwise p = .028,
indicating that, when paired with the Black cue, men perceived the target as significantly
darker than when paired with the White cue. Similarly, when the target was
asymmetrically Black, men perceived the target was darker when paired with the Black
cue (MBlack_cue = -0.857, SD = 1.864) and lighter when paired with the White cue
(MWhite_cue = 0.571, SD = 1.718), pairwise p = .033. This influence of the situation cue
was not found for the asymmetrical White target (MBlack_cue = 0.625, SD = 1.188 vs.
MWhite_cue = -0.250, SD = 1.357), pairwise p = .392. For women, the same assimilation
effect was found with the symmetrically biracial target (MBlack_cue = 0.231, SD = 1.861 vs. 108
MWhite_cue = 1.130, SD = 1.576), pairwise p = .061, again indicating that the situation cue influenced perception of the target when the target was symmetrically biracial. However, the situation cue did have an influence when the target was asymmetrically Black
(MBlack_cue = -0.391, SD = 1.803 vs. MWhite_cue = -1.182, SD = 1.402, pairwise p = .199), or
asymmetrically White (MBlack_cue = 0.556, SD = 1.739 vs. MWhite_cue = 0.444, SD = 1.977,
pairwise p = .863). This indicates that the situation cue had an influence on men when the
target was darker (i.e. asymmetrically Black and symmetrically biracial), but not when
the target was mostly White (i.e. asymmetrical White target). For women, however, the
situation cue was only influential when the target was symmetrically biracial (i.e. 50/50
mix).
The influence of social dominance orientation
Hypothesis 3
There was no main effect of SDO on the recognition task, F(1, 145) = .368, p =
2 .545, P = .003, nor were any of the interaction effects from Study One reliable.
2 Specifically, neither the SDO x situation cue interaction, F(1, 145) = .074, p = .786, P =
2 .001, nor the gender x SDO interaction, F(1, 145) = .288, p = .592, P = .002, nor the
predicted three-way interaction of SDO x gender x situation cue, F(1, 145) = .718, p =
2 .616, P = .002, were significant Finally, the four-way interaction of SDO x gender x
face version x situation cue that was so prominent in Study One was not significant in the
2 current study, F(2, 145) = .022, p = .978, P < .001. SDO did not moderate the
relationship between the face version or situation cue on the recognition task. The results
did not replicate Study One’s findings supporting SDO or the outgroup male target
hypothesis. 109
The influence of implicit theories
Hypothesis 4b
There was no main effect of implicit theories on the recognition task, F(1, 145) =
2 .350, p = .555, P = .002. There was a significant four-way interaction, however, of gender by face version by situation cue by implicit theories, F(2, 145) = 3.326, p = .039,
2 P = .044, see Figure 14. Further investigation of simple effects reveals that men shown
the Black situation cue differed significantly on the asymmetrical Black target, as entity
theorists were much more likely to assimilate the target to the situation cue and select a
darker foil than incremental theorists (b = -2.381, se = 1.169, p = .043). This means that
male entity theorists perceived the “mostly Black” target as darker than did incremental
theorists. 110
111
The opposite effect occurred for the women, however, as female entity theorists were slightly more likely to contrast an asymmetrically Black target away from the Black situation cue and select a lighter foil than incremental theorists (b = 1.100, se = .595, p =
.067, see Table 8 for full test of effects). These results indicate that both men and women were influenced by the Black context when observing the asymmetrical Black target; however, they were influenced in different ways. Men who endorsed entity theories perceived the “mostly Black” target as more stereotypically Black, while women, who endorsed entity theories perceived the “mostly Black” target as less stereotypically Black than did incremental theorists. This suggests that these women may have focused on non-
Black features of the target that seemed incongruent to the context. These differences, for men or women, nor for the symmetrically biracial or asymmetrical White, did not appear in the White situation.
The cross-race effect
Hypothesis 2a, 2b
To test the cross-race effect hypotheses, I examined the accuracy of responses using a logistic regression model. To test the CRE, the dependent variable was recoded as either: 0 = match (hit), or 1 = no match (miss). I first included as predictor variables the two experimental factors (situation cue; face version) and gender, as well as their interactions. The continuous individual difference variables (SDO, and implicit theories) were centered and added to the logistic regression model as main effects. Subsequently, I formed interactive effects involving each of the two individual difference predictors and the terms reflecting the impact of experimental manipulations. The advantage of this approach is that it allowed for an examination of the net effect of each individual 112 difference variable. Regression results indicated the overall model fit of the predictors was questionable (-2 Log Likelihood = 139.168), and that the overall model was not significant, χ2(21) = 28.804, p = .119; however, the model correctly classified 83.4% of
the cases.
Investigating the frequencies of face matches, only 31 (17% accurately identified
the correct target in the recognition task. Eight (4%) correctly identified a mostly Black
target, another eight (4%) correctly identified an ambiguous target, and 15 (8%) correctly
identified the mostly White target, Wald χ2(1) = 2.328, p = .127. Although not significant, nearly half of the correct hits were within-race (i.e. White participant and
mostly White target) judgments. Situation cue did not play a role in influencing cross-
race identification, as half of the correct hits were from the White cue (52%) and the
other half were from the Black cue (48%).
8.4 Discussion
One of the goals of Study Two was to replicate the findings of Study One, in
particular, the influence of the individual difference factors and gender. The two-way
gender x situation cue, and the three-way gender x face version x situation cue were
replicated, indicating that men assimilated their perceptions of the target to the situation
cue more often than women. This meant that, when presented with the Black cue, men
perceived the target as darker, and when presented with the White cue, men perceived the
target as lighter than did women. This occurred primarily when the target was lighter (i.e.
asymmetrical White or symmetrically biracial), but not when the target was perceived as
unambiguously Black (i.e. asymmetrical Black).
The previously obtained results for SDO were not replicated. There were no main 113 effects or interactions of SDO, indicating that SDO was not influential in the recognition task in Study Two. It is possible that this was due to the small sample size, in particular males, as the higher order effects found in Study One would require a greater n to be replicated. The results for implicit theories were partially replicated, however, in Study
Two, the three-way interaction of implicit theories x face version x gender were qualified by situation cue. This four-way interaction lends some supporting evidence to the
Eberhardt et al. (2003) study, in that male entity theorists produced assimilation effects, but the females did not, and the assimilation was dependent on the face version presented.
One of the primary objectives of Study Two was to test for the cross-race effect of racially ambiguous faces. The results did not confirm this hypothesis. One potential reason is that cross-race effect research typically consists of multiple targets and multiple foils, where the participant makes a quick decision regarding if the “face” was one that was in the original batch of faces or if it was not, whereas the current study participants were presented with only one target. For example, in Pauker et al.’s (2009) study, in the learning phase, there were 30 faces (10 Black, 10 White, and 10 Ambiguous). In the recognition phase, they added 30 additional faces of the same proportion as foils, and participants were simply asked to respond as quickly and accurately as possible. The large number of targets and foils produced more hits (i.e. correctly identifying a target face). In contrast, in the current study, participants only saw one face, and then had the original and six foils to choose from, utilizing a different paradigm. Thus, the recognition task in Study Two may have been more difficult because there was a lot of competition at the retrieval stage because the faces were very similar.
It was also anticipated that the cross-race effect would differ for high vs. low 114
SDO participants. Unlike Study One, there was no moderating effect of SDO in Study
Two. There are two possible reasons for this finding. First, the repeated measures design of Study One may have sensitized participants for differences between the targets and the situation cues. For example, each participant in Study One saw two asymmetrical Black targets, two asymmetrical White targets, and two ambiguous targets. The first study had different faces and different situation cues that may have drawn attention to these aspects of the stimulus materials. As a result, participants may have used this in their face selection. In this way, the first study may have had similar issues as those in the
Eberhardt et al. (2006) study, such that the experimental paradigm may have nudged people to use the kind of information provided by the experimenter. However, in the second study, participants saw only one face and one situation cue. This may have resulted in participants paying attention to the entire stimulus materials because they did not know what they would need to remember later.
The second study did, however, replicate the situation cue effects from Study
One, such that the situation cue had an influence on the ambiguous target. When paired with the Black situation cue, ambiguous targets were perceived as much darker, and when paired with the White situation cue, ambiguous targets were perceived as much lighter. Similarly, the results support hypothesis 1b, such that the situation cue was more influential for male participants than female. This could be due to the OMTH, such that due to the ambiguity, men relied on other cues to help in the “correct” categorization, and once the categorization was made, outgroup males were perceived as darker, while ingroup males were perceived as lighter.
The most interesting effect of Study Two was the four-way interaction of implicit 115 theories by gender by situation cue by face version. When paired with the Black situation cue, male entity theorists assimilated their selections to the situation cue, whereas male incremental theorists contrasted their selection. This partially supports Hypothesis 3a and
3b, such that the results for the men with the Black situation cue are similar to Eberhardt et al.’s (2003) findings that entity theorists are more likely to assimilate to the situation cue. However, women showed the opposite, albeit weaker, effect. Female incremental theorists were more likely to assimilate their selections when paired with the Black situation cue, while female entity theorists were more likely to contrast their selections away from the situation cue.
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Chapter 9: General Discussion
The primary goal of the current dissertation was to investigate if situation cues influenced the perception of racially ambiguous individuals. The results of two studies suggest that, indeed, situation cues influenced perception for some, but not all, ambiguous targets. Assimilation effects were found in the first study for the asymmetrical
White target and the symmetrically biracial target, suggesting that targets were most ambiguous when they could not be categorized as unambiguously Black. The same effect was found in the second study for symmetrically biracial targets, lending evidence to the argument that situation cues are most influential when the target is most ambiguous. This means that in both studies, ambiguous targets were perceived as lighter when paired with the White situation cue and perceived as darker when paired with the Black situation cue.
This supports previous research that has utilized other types of cues (as discussed previously), such as different ethnic hairstyles (MacLin & Malpass, 2001), headgear
(Unkelbach, Forgas, & Denson, 2008), or racial labels (Eberhardt et al., 2003) in influencing the perception of the perceiver in the direction of the cue. This lends further support to previous work that naturally emerging cues external to the target, such as the environment, clothing, etc., play a role in how that individual is categorized and perceived by others, such that perceivers assimilate their perceptions to the contextual information.
The findings of the current studies also revealed an accentuation effect, in that targets were remembered as more typical exemplars of the social category implied by the situation cue. For example, when paired with a Black cue (i.e. basketball), perceivers’ memory of the target shifted towards more Afrocentric features, for instance, darker skin 117 tone. This was found in research by Levin and Banaji (2006), in which the authors demonstrated that White faces were perceived as lighter (i.e. more White) with the accompanying racial label of “White.” Corneille et al. (2004) found this accentuation effect for Caucasian-Asian and Caucasian-North African mixed race faces, in that perceivers presented with mixed-race targets recollected those targets as much more typical of the racial category provided. However, there was no effect of the social information the authors attached (i.e. ethnic/non-ethnic names). The Corneille et al. explained this absence of a labeling effect by their own studies not controlling for implicit theories (e.g. see Eberhardt et al., 2003), such that the entity and incremental theorists essentially averaged each other out, producing a null effect of social information. This may have been the case; however, the current results of Study One and
Two suggest that people with different implicit theories did not respond differently to varying situation cues; however, they did respond differently depending on the racial mix of the target individual (discussed in more detail below).
Although there were no specific hypotheses regarding the overall effect of face version, the different degree of mixed-race faces was influential in the perception. In
Study One, when perceivers were presented with the darkest target (i.e. asymmetrical
Black target), they essentially “guessed” on the face selection task. This suggests that when the faces were darkest, White perceivers could not distinguish between the two foils (i.e. the foils looked identical). For the other targets (i.e. symmetrically biracial and asymmetrical White), perceivers chose the darker foil much more often. One explanation for this finding could be the use of sports. Peruche and Plant (2006) found that non-Black participants associated Black faces with sports objects more often than White faces. Thus, 118 it is possible that simply using sporting event backgrounds was priming the association between Black faces and sports, resulting in a trend towards darker foil selection.
An open question prior to the studies completion was if a naturally emerging situation cue would produce the same effects as artificial or explicit situation cues.
Previous research has focused on the use of explicit racial labels (Eberhardt et al., 2003;
Levin & Banaji, 2006; Pauker et al., 2009); however very little had been done focusing on naturally emerging environmental information. Thus, the question remained: will people rely on natural cues, or even notice them? The results of the current studies indicate that people use subtler, more naturalistic cues when trying to determine a target’s race. Study One results revealed that, even though people associate sports in general with
Black athletes, White stereotypic sports (i.e. volleyball, swimming) influenced the perceiver towards the lighter foil, and the Black stereotypic sports (i.e. basketball, football) influenced the perceiver towards the darker foil. Further, results from Study
Two’s manipulation check found that over 97% of participants accurately identified the situation cue in a follow-up task, illustrating that participants paid attention to the situation cue.
Overall, these two studies highlight the functional nature of utilizing a naturally emerging situation cue to help disambiguate an individual. This supports previous research that primed with artificial cues, such as explicit racial labels (e.g. Eberhardt et al., 2003; Levin & Banaji, 2006), or other subtler cues, such as hairstyle or headgear (e.g.
Maclin & Malpass, 2003; Unkelbach et al., 2008), that found an assimilation effect of said prime to the recognition task. For instance, going back to the Eberhardt et al. study, when the racially ambiguous face was presented with the Black label, participants 119 perceived the target as darker, and when the same face was presented with the White label, participants perceived the target as lighter. Thus, the social context or specific environment influences the perception of race for racially ambiguous targets.
Social Dominance Orientation and the Outgroup Male Target Hypothesis
The research presented here generated some supporting evidence that SDO influenced the relationship between the activated stereotype context and the categorization of race (Hypothesis 3). In the first study, SDO influenced the face selection as a function of gender, situation cue, and face version. It was predicted that high SDO White individuals would be more invested in maintaining stricter racial boundaries, which was partially confirmed (Hypothesis 3a and 3c). This relationship was found with the White male participants, such that as the situation cue became lighter, the judgments became darker. For example, the high SDO White male participants who were shown a picture of an asymmetrical White male target (i.e. 75% White), judged that target as darker than the asymmetrical Black male target. High SDO White male seemed to be creating an impenetrable racial border, and categorizing the individual as non-White due to the incongruous situation cue (i.e. Black situation cue). This did not occur when presented with the White situation cue. This implies that, when high SDO White men saw a mixed-race person (i.e. asymmetrical White or symmetrically ambiguous) in a “Black situation,” they were more likely to say that this person looked Whiter. Conversely, when high SDO White men saw someone in a “White situation,” who was not unambiguously white, they perceived that person as Blacker. This latter part of the story is in line with the perceptual one-drop rule in the sense that individuals with a hint of non-White features are contrasted with the White background. However, the fact that the reverse 120 occurs also when presented with the Black background suggests that high SDO White men do not blindly apply the one-drop rule, but are instead highly sensitive to context when trying to determine the racial identity of an ambiguous target.
There were no SDO effects for women, which is in line with social dominance literature. This was anticipated as social dominance theory is predicated on the notion that societies consist of hierarchical structures. Because social dominance theory is built on social and cultural hierarchical systems, men have traditionally sat atop this hierarchy, enjoying the power, prestige, and benefits (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). As the beneficiaries of this hierarchy, based on social dominance theory, men can be expected to be more invested the maintenance of the hierarchy. Hence, for men to respond more to status cues and intergroup cues than women should be expected (c.f. Navarrete et al., 2010; Sidanius
& Pratto, 1999).
One of the more interesting results concerned its apparent support for the outgroup male target hypothesis (Hypothesis 3d). That hypothesis posited that,
“intergroup bias is primarily directed at males and is motivated by separate psychological systems between men and women that reflect the selection pressures that shaped these systems” (Navarrete et al., 2010, p. 936). This suggests that when a male is the target (as was the case in the current set of studies), male perceivers will be more biased than if the target was female. This is partially what was found in Study One, for male targets only
(i.e. female targets were not used). Overall, men were more attuned to characteristics that identify the person as a member of the outgroup, supporting Hypothesis 3e. While women tended to perceive the target as lighter, overall, indicating more inclusive motivations. It would be important in future studies to investigate female targets to test 121 the other half of the outgroup male target hypothesis, and confirm if women targets are perceived with less bias than male targets, particularly with male perceivers.
Gender and Sports
It was hypothesized that the influence of the situation cue would be greater for men than for women (Hypothesis 1b). One issue that could have had an impact on that hypothesis was that men have traditionally had more experience and knowledge about sports (Holland & Andre, 1994) as well as more identification with sports than woman
(Colley et al., 2005; Hardin & Greer, 2003). The second pilot test, however, revealed that women had stronger stereotypes of Black sports than did men, thus, if the sports hypothesis were supported, women would have been more influenced by the situation cue than men. However, this was not the case. Men were more influenced by the sports- related context, supporting Hypothesis 1b, but more likely this was due to the outgroup male target hypothesis, that was previously discussed. First, all the targets were male, and second, it was the male perceivers that were more influenced by the situation cue. This is in line with social dominance theory and the outgroup male target hypothesis, such that the influence of SDO on racial categorization should decrease with the presence of a majority of non-White features or when the perceiver is a female.
Further, the unequal distribution of experience and knowledge about sports may help explain some of the gender differences as well, in line with social dominance orientation. For instance, media effects are found to celebrate masculine ideals of sports
(Hardin & Greer, 2003), in that the media follows a “manhood formula” for the largest viewership. This would imply that women do not become as socialized in sports as do men, thus resulting in gendered differences in socialization. Also, the majority of the 122 sports contexts were sports associated with men, or considered masculine sports (e.g. football, basketball, ice hockey, volleyball, track, swimming). Although some of these sports may be considered gender neutral (i.e. swimming, track), and one sport may be considered more feminine (i.e. volleyball), all targets were male. Thus, future research should focus on two things to understand women and sports. First, there needs to be a balance of masculine and feminine sports, as well as gender neutral sports. Second, there need to be female targets because only the inclusion of female targets can help to explore the influence of experience and knowledge of sports for both genders as perceivers and targets, and further, to fully test the outgroup male target hypothesis.
Finally, because sports are highly publicized through the media (i.e. local news, etc.), it is important to note some contemporary sports-related stories may have had an impact on the current studies. First, the second pilot study investigating sports-race stereotypes was done prior to the 2009 NFL football season. Thus, because the study was done in Minnesota, the stereotype for the majority of women was that football was associated with Black athletes. This could have been because the quarterback at that time was Black (i.e. Tavaris Jackson). However, before Study One started, the Minnesota
Vikings (the NFL team of Minnesota) brought a new quarterback to the team: Brett
Farve. Brett is an older, White male, and is a future hall-of-famer. It is possible that this switch in quarterbacks resulted in a switch in stereotypes for some Minnesotans, as this was the type of news that the majority of Minnesotans were aware of because it flooded the local media for the entire football season. The other large sporting event that may have had an impact was the 2010 Olympic games in Vancouver. While the ice hockey teams were primarily White, there was a Black male speed skater (i.e. Shani Davis) that 123 received some attention due to winning several medals for the United States. For those who followed the Olympics, this may have influenced any stereotypes about race and ice- related sports.
Implicit Theories
There was some evidence that implicit theories influenced the relationship between the activated stereotype context and the categorization of race, however, not always in the predicted direction (Hypothesis 4). Based on Eberhardt et al.’s (2003) findings that explicit racial labels led to assimilation for entity theorists and contrast effects for incremental theorists, the current studies tested this hypothesis utilizing more subtle natural cues (i.e. photos of sports related contexts). The hypothesis predicted assimilation effects for entity theorists, however, this was not found consistently. The first study did not show any effects of the situation cue, but instead for gender and version of the target (Hypothesis 4a). For example, male entity theorists perceived ambiguous targets as lighter than did male incremental theorists (Study One); however, this was further qualified by the situation cue in Study Two, where male entity theorists showed assimilation effects in the Black situation, but not in the White situation. This suggests that male entity theorists are more likely to categorize unambiguous outgroup targets based on the outgroup cues available, but are not as clear in categorization when the situation is stereotypical of their ingroup. The opposite was true for women, such that female entity theorists assimilated to the White situation cue, but not the Black situation cue. This suggests that men and women differ in their inclusion/exclusion motivations in categorization of ambiguous targets.
As discussed earlier it is possible that the explicit racial labels in the Eberhardt et 124 al. (2003) studies essentially “forced” the participant to pay attention to the cue, making the contextual cue more influential than any natural cue would have been outside of the experiment. Thus, the naturally emerging cues may not have been as “in your face” and therefore, produced far less extreme responses. In Study One, gender played an influential role, in that male entity theorists remembered the asymmetrical Black target as lighter than male incremental theorists, whereas female entity theorists produced the opposite pattern. Similarly, in Study Two, when the situation cue was Black, male entity theorists remembered the asymmetrical Black target as significantly darker than did male incremental theorists, suggesting the predicted assimilation effect for men with the Black cue. Women, on the other hand, followed a pattern that was similar to Eberhardt et al.’s
(2003) incremental theorists, such that female entity theorists remembered the asymmetrical Black target as significantly lighter than did female incremental theorists, producing a contrast effect. This suggests that gender and the degree of the morph of the mixed-race face (i.e. 25%/50%/75%White) interacts with implicit theories in influencing the perception of a racially ambiguous target.
Personal Need for Structure
Personal need for structure (PNS) was hypothesized to play a moderating role in the categorization, due to the ambiguity of the target (Hypothesis 5). For example, it was initially thought that because need for structure was parallel to the concept of intolerance for ambiguity, that high PNS individuals would be attentive to information that confirmed existing expectations. In two studies, PNS did not have any effects on the perception or categorization of racially ambiguous targets. Research assumes that people with need for structure seek to achieve a simple cognitive structure, either through a 125 process called "freezing" or a process called “seizing” (Kruglanski & Webster, 1996).
“Freezing” refers to one not deviating from the conceptual clarity that one already has achieved even in light of new and contradicting info, whereas "seizing" refers to the attempt to reduce ambiguity by adopting a simplifying representation of the stimulus, while potentially ignoring other info (e.g., de Dreu, Koole, & Oldersma, 1999). It is plausible that both processes were irrelevant in the present task of identifying the race of an ambiguous individual. "Freezing" may not have happen because people did out really start out knowing if a particular target was Black or White; that is, perceivers did not already possess a simply structure to resort to. On the other hand, "seizing" may not have happened either because the target made it sufficiently clear who he was and arriving at a conclusion was not dependent on PNS levels (as just discussed). Alternative, one may argue that one conclusion ("he is black") was not cognitively simpler than the other one
("he is white"), thus making any preference for simple structure (i.e. high PNS) irrelevant to this task.
However, it is still possible that the present paradigm was simply not suitable to tap PNS effects on racial categorization. The reader may recall that previous research established that over-reliance on simplistic processing of a target resulted in categorizing this target more stereotypically (Schaller et al., 1995). Schaller et al., however, included an experimental condition in which they held participants accountable for their judgments—a condition which virtually eliminated the effects of PNS on forming erroneous group stereotypes. That is, when high PNS participants thought their judgments would be shared with another student, their responses were the same as low
PNS participants. That is, when other motivations were aroused (e.g., to make accurate 126 judgments that are defensible in front of others) then the latent motivation to achieve a simple cognitive structure gave way to this experimentally aroused motivation. In other words, high PNS people tend to be habitual lazy thinkers, but they can be motivated to engage in effortful thinking. It seems that if one were high in PNS, utilizing low- complexity processing, that their decision would be made at a more rapid rate than low
PNS individuals who are more concerned with making the correct judgment. Thus, a better way in future studies to potentially capture the moderating effect of PNS is to time the selection process (i.e. response time).
The Cross Race Effect
There was not enough conclusive evidence to support the hypothesized cross-race effect, such that the situation cue would shift or distort the memory of the ambiguous target towards the more typical exemplar, leading to more accurate recognition
(Hypothesis 2a), and recognition will be better when the situation cue matches the race of the perceiver (Hypothesis 2b). Had this been supported, it would have been in line with
Pauker et al.’s (2009) research that showed that with ingroup inclusion motivations, ambiguous targets were better remembered. However, in a recent study by Rhodes, Lie,
Ewing, Evangelista, and Tanaka (2010), they investigating this same phenomena using ingroup and outgroup contexts (i.e. White or Asian). Although the target was correctly categorized by race, the presence of an ingroup context did not motivate the participants to remember that target better, thus, the recognition memory was no better when the ambiguous target was processed as an ingroup member. Further, Shriver et al. (2010) revealed that social class had an effect on social context and the cross-race effect.
Specifically, they found that White targets paired with impoverished contexts were 127 categorized as outgroup, and thus, were not recognized accurately later. Because race and class are interrelated, future studies should test for social class to see if high class vs. low class context shows a similar effect to the current findings. This suggests that inclusion motivations need to be stronger than a natural context can provide.
9.1 Limitations
There are a few potential issues that need to be addressed. First, because sports- related stereotypes are often seen as positive Black stereotypes (opposed to neutral or negative stereotypes), it is possible that different things come to mind for different types of people (i.e. high vs. low SDO). This may influence the recognition memory, which is contingent on the categorization of the target. For example, Lepore and Brown (1997) primed participants with Black primes. In the first study, they confirmed that both high and low prejudice participants activated the same stereotype of Blacks. In the second study, they found that when they subliminally primed the participants, that the stereotype activation occurred selectively, and not all at once. Finally, in their third study, Lepore and Brown (1997) found that a direct negative prime led to similar results, primarily for high prejudiced participants. Their findings suggest that high prejudice participants are more likely to activate and apply a negative stereotype because of increased endorsement and accessibility of repeated activation and application, vs. low prejudice participants having only activation. The important point here is that high and low prejudice participants differed not in the activation of the stereotypes, but in their automatic responses to the category. Thus, it is possible that the positive stereotype of Blacks as athletes may be primed for some, whereas the category of sports is what is primed for others. However, because I collected SDO for each participant, it is possible to control 128 for level of social dominance, which has been strongly associated with prejudice in previous studies (Pratto, Sidanius, & Levin, 2006; Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle,
1994).
Although college students may be aware of the same or similar stereotypes as the general public, college students tend to be a more homogeneous group (i.e. younger, more educated, etc.). However, the student participants recruited for these studies came from a large, non-traditional urban University that has a diversity of students that closely mirrors the actual population. For example, the 2007-2008 report from the Institutional
Researcher revealed that 28% of students were minorities, and the average age of students is much older than at traditional Universities, M = 32 (range = 15-71;
Metropolitan State University, 2009). This is close to the demographic makeup of St.
Paul, Minnesota, where the University if located, which is 67% White, and 33% minorities, and the mean age is 31 (IDcide, 2009).
There were a few methodological concerns. First, although the face version and face series were counterbalanced in Study One, the situation cue order remained the same through all six conditions (i.e. volleyball was always first). It is possible that having a
White cue always first may have influenced how the other five cues were perceived after.
Distractor tasks were used; however, the timing was not automatic, as participants could click to the next screen before or after the timer expired. Second, there were large differences between the within-groups design (Study One) and the between-groups design (Study Two). The results indicate that the individual difference measures were influential in the within-groups design, but not in the between-groups design. One explanation for this could be that in the within-groups design, the multiple targets 129 allowed the participant to use other targets within the experiment as comparison for judging lightness/darkness. In the between-groups design, however, it is unclear what the participant compared the target to. This implies is that, when participants were presented with only one condition, they compared the face to their own set of faces from their own experiences and memory, and then made a judgment. Thus, it is possible that the within- groups design had a similar problem as Eberhardt et al. (2003), in that after the first stimuli, participants may have been attuned to what they should pay attention to. On the other hand, in a natural setting, it is possible that there are other “targets” that the primary target will be compared to, and in that sense, the within-groups design appears realistic.
Finally, future studies should focus on two primary factors. First, due to the artificiality of morphed faces, conducting a study with real ambiguous individuals in real settings may provide more real world scenarios. Second, from previous research it is clear that affect or valence play a significant role in influencing perception. For example,
Barrett and Kensinger (2010) investigated the role of context encoding for emotion perception. Participants viewed photos of faces showing different emotions in different contexts. Recognition memory was improved when the emotion was paired with a context vs. a neutral object, suggesting that emotion may be a function of context. Thus, it seems obvious that the next best step is to add a condition to explore the affect of the target, and affect of the perceiver. Also in the same vein, it may be useful to utilize affect- laden contexts, such as airports, jail cells, or Baptist churches. In addition, to further investigate process, it is necessary to create experimental programs where reaction times can be evaluated and subliminal primes could be used in place of explicit stereotypic 130 context. For example, the program could show a photo of an ambiguous individual and subliminally prime with a hockey stick or basketball.
9.2 Implications
The current studies provide some evidence about how we perceive people embedded in natural contexts, and the evidence suggests that the expectations that perceivers have about specific contexts or situations play a role in how an individual is perceived. In the situation of Menezes and Alpizar, it is very possible that these two men may still be alive today had they not been in the wrong place at the wrong time. If one were to assume that these two men were seen in a White situation (i.e. airport), by law enforcement, this may have resulted in the same type of contrast effect that was found in the current studies for high SDO White men. First, there is evidence that law enforcement members are disproportionately high in SDO, which is in line with social dominance theory, as their professions are involved in defending the status quo; in other words, are likely to hold system- or hierarchy-enhancing beliefs, at least more so than other professions (Sidanius, Pratto, Martin, & Stallworth, 1991; van Laar, Sidanius,
Rabinowitz, & Sinclair, 1999). Thus, it seems plausible that Menezes and Alpizar were essentially subject to a race-contrast effect on the part of high SDO men, an interpretation that is at least consistent with the fact that these individuals were shot by male police officers and no female officers were implicated in the Menezes (Bailey, 2008) or Alpizar
(Morrisey, 2005) cases. If these men had been seen in a Black situation by the same law enforcement officers, it seems possible that they would have been perceived as lighter, and thus, not as threatening. 131
These two cases would also suggest that the context plays a key role in eyewitness testimonies, and other recognition situations. As with other perception biases in eyewitness accounts, such as the cross-race effect (e.g. Brigham et al., 2007) or weapons effect (Payne, 2001), the influence of the specific context or situation will also bias the perception of the target. The results of the current studies reveal an accentuation effect, such that in the case of an eyewitness perceiving a perpetrator in a specific context, the eyewitness may remember the perpetrator as more typical of the situation’s stereotypic expectation. This means that, if the situation is perceived as stereotypic of Black men, an ambiguous perpetrator will be described to police with more Afrocentric features, or if the situation is perceived as stereotypic of White men, the same perpetrator will be described with more Eurocentric features. Either way, the meaningfulness of the situation will shift the perception of the eyewitness, becoming more typical of the perceived racial category.
However, it is not only the situation cue that will bias perception of an eyewitness. The extent of Afrocentric vs. Eurocentric features will also play a role. Not all mixed-race individuals are a perfectly symmetrical composition of 50% Black features and 50% White features, thus there are many kinds of variations of asymmetrically mixed-race individuals. It is these individuals that may be mis-perceived more often, especially when there are a majority of Eurocentric features. The evidence from the current studies suggests that these mixed-race variations are more ambiguous than the symmetrical versions. Thus, for some eyewitnesses, in particular, White men, the perpetrators that are really mostly White in terms of their objective racial features, may be described and remembered as more typical of a Black perpetrator. In the case of law 132 enforcement, this may lead to erroneous eye witness reports, prompting authorities on a search for the wrong perpetrator.
These implications rely on the assumption that racial categories in the United
States remain a Black-White dichotomy. Although the United States has become increasingly diverse, there is evidence that many Americans continue to rely on the longstanding Black-White dichotomy when considering categorization of race. Recently, one study has shown that multiracial targets in the United States who self-identify as
Black are perceived as Black, however, those who self-identify as Asian, Hispanic,
American Indian, or Middle Eastern are indistinguishable to most perceivers (Herman,
2010). This suggests that White individuals in the United States are not as adept at identifying and categorizing other racial groups aside from their own (i.e. White) and
Black. Although there is evidence in other countries of more racial categories along the
Black-White continuum (i.e. Brazil; Baran, 2007), the majority of people in the United
States still subscribe to the Black-White dichotomy (e.g. Bonilla-Silva, 2006).
At the same time, it is possible that younger generations are less likely to categorize by race, even though, in my preliminary analyses of Study One and Study
Two, age as a continuous variable did not contribute to the model and had no effect on the perception of racially ambiguous targets. Similarly, it is possible that age was associated with prejudice, as younger generations have grown up in more diverse climates and have received much more information in their education regarding race relations (Gonsalkorale, Sherman, & Klauer, 2009; Stewart, von Hippel, & Radvansky,
2009). However, if this were the case, one might expect a positive correlation between age and social dominance orientation, if one assumes that SDO is a prime predictor of 133 race prejudice. However, such a correation was not found, r = -.140, p = .256. This seems consistent, however, with previous research in that the categorization occurs automatically, and only later do some individuals correct for automatic response (e.g.
Devine, 1989; Macrae & Bodenhausen, 2000). This does not imply that the individuals are racist or prejudiced, but simply that they were socialized in the same environment and exposed to the same racial stereotypes, whether they endorse them or not.
From the current research, however, it may be possible to weaken these contextual effects. For example, Pauker et al. (2009) found through several studies that a motivation for inclusion led participants to process more individuating information about the target. Also, Peruche and Plant (2006) found that through training and repetition (i.e. pairing race-related object with neutral objects) that the racial bias was eliminated (c.f.
Correll, 2008). Further, Hehman, Mania, and Gaertner (2010) investigated how common ingroup identity moderates face perception. These authors had participants view Black and White targets in a salient ingroup (i.e. same University), and found that race biases could be eliminated in a recognition task when a non-racial cue was made salient. These findings suggest that through more diverse communities, media outlets, and social activities, race-related stereotypes about particular objects or contexts could begin to disappear.
Conclusion
As the ongoing process of globalization brings people from all regions of the world together, and societies become increasingly diverse, racial categories may not be as unequivocal as they have been in the past. This could be due to exposure to, and mobility of, new ethnic or racial groups or the rising number of people of mixed-race heritage. 134
Yet, established systems of racial classification do change, they change only very slowly
(Omi & Winant, 1994). Despite the dramatic increase in the number of Americans of mixed racial heritage, in the U.S. the majority of the general public may try to describe mixed-race individuals based on the well-established, Census-reinforced categories (i.e.
White, Black, etc.). Unlike in other societies (e.g., Brazil), America does not have a category for mixed-race or racially ambiguous individuals. Until that time, we need to understand how our perceptions of racial ambiguity affect the lives of these individuals in both positive and negative ways.
135
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Appendix A
Social Dominance Orientation Instrument
Instructions: For each of the following statements, choose whether you agree or disagree with the statement.
Strongly Disagree – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – Strongly Agree
1. Some groups of people are simply inferior to other groups.
2. In getting what you want, it is sometimes necessary to use force against other groups.
3. It’s OK if some groups have more of a chance in life than others.
4. To get ahead in life, it is sometimes necessary to step on other groups.
5. If certain groups stayed in their place, we would have fewer problems.
6. It’s probably a good thing that certain groups are at the top and other groups are at the bottom.
7. Inferior groups should stay in their place.
8. Sometimes other groups must be kept in their place.
9. It would be good if groups could be equal. [R]
10. Group equality should be our ideal. [R]
11. All groups should be given an equal chance in life. [R]
12. We should do what we can to equalize conditions for different groups. [R]
13. Increased social equality. [R]
14. We would have fewer problems if we treated people more equally. [R]
15. We should strive to make incomes as equal as possible. [R]
16. No one group should dominate in society. [R]
Note: Items with [R] are reverse scored.
151
Appendix B
Implicit Theories Instrument
Instructions: For each of the following statements, choose whether you agree or disagree with the statement.
Strongly Disagree – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – Strongly Agree
1. The kind of person someone is, is something basic about them, and it can’t be changed very much.
2. People can do things differently, but the important parts of who they are can’t really be changed.
3. Everyone is a certain kind of person, and there is not much that they can do to really change that.
4. As much as I hate to admit it, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. People can’t really change their deepest attributes.
5. Everyone, no matter who they are, can significantly change their basic characteristics. [R]
6. People can substantially change the kind of person they are. [R]
7. No matter what kind of person someone is, they can always change very much. [R]
8. People can change even their most basic qualities. [R]
Note: Items with [R] are reverse scored.
152
Appendix C
Personal Need for Structure Instrument
Instructions: For each of the following statements, choose whether you agree or disagree with the statement.
Strongly Disagree – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – Strongly Agree
1. It upsets me to go into a situation without knowing what I can expect from it.
2. I’m not bothered by things that interrupt my daily routine. [R]
3. I enjoy having a clear and structured mode of life.
4. I like to have a place for everything and everything in its place.
5. I enjoy being spontaneous. [R]
6. I find that a well-ordered life with regular hours makes my life tedious. [R]
7. I don’t like situations that are uncertain.
8. I hate to change my plans at the last minute.
9. I hate to be with people that are unpredictable.
10. I find that a consistent routine enables me to enjoy life more.
11. I enjoy the exhilaration of being in unpredictable situations. [R]
12. I become uncomfortable when the rules in a situation are not clear.
Note: Items with [R] are reverse scored.
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Appendix D
Examples of distractor tasks used in Study One (i.e. Frame Games). Two are shown, six were used in the study. Participants had two minutes to find the answer. When the two minutes expired, the frame game disappeared from the screen and participants were prompted to proceed to the next screen.
Frame Game Example#1 and answer
Frame Game Example#2 and answer
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Appendix E
Examples of the distractor task used in Study Two (i.e. Logic Problem). Each participant was presented with the same logic problem. Participants had five minutes to solve. When the five minutes expired, the logic problem disappeared from the screen and participants were prompted to proceed to the next screen, which displayed the correct responses.
Directions: You have 5 minutes to solve this logic puzzle. Make sure you use your scratch paper. The timer will let you know how much time you have left. When it says "click next", that means your time is up! Click NEXT after 5 minutes to reveal to see how you did. Read the following logic puzzle and answer in the appropriate area:
Ann, Bobbie, Cathy, and Dave are at their monthly business meeting. Their occupations are author, biologist, chemist, and doctor, but not necessarily in that order. Dave just told the biologist that Cathy was on her way with doughnuts. Ann is sitting across from the doctor and next to the chemist. The doctor was thinking that Bobbie was a goofy name for parents to choose, but didn't say anything.
ANSWER (Next Screen) Since Dave spoke to the biologist, and Ann was sitting next to the chemist and across from the doctor, Cathy must be the author, and Ann is the biologist. The doctor didn't speak, but Dave did, so Bobbie is the doctor and Dave is the Chemist.