Category Salience Determines Implicit Attitudes Toward Black Female and White Male Targets

Category Salience Determines Implicit Attitudes Toward Black Female and • When Black females are distinctive along gender, they should elicit positive evaluations; White Male Targets however, when they are distinctive along race, they should elicit negative evaluations. Jason Mitchell, Harvard University Brian Nosek and Mahzarin Banaji, Yale • On the other hand, when White males are University distinctive along gender, they should elicit negative evaluations; when they are distinctive along race, they should elicit positive Introduction evaluations. How do perceivers choose one of a target’s many social groups as the basis for a social Method judgment? Participants. Ten Harvard undergraduates, all of whom were white females: earlier research has • Social cognition has documented the demonstrated that white perceivers show the most stereotypes, attitudes, and behaviors that result extreme race evaluations, while female perceivers when perceivers categorize a social target as show the most extreme gender evaluations. belonging to a particular group. Procedure. At the beginning of each go/no-go • Individuals, however, belong simultaneously to block, participants saw two category labels (e.g., multiple social groups (e.g., an elderly White BlackFemale + good) and were instructed that professor). they should press the space bar whenever they saw a name or word that matched one of those • What factors determine which of a target’s categories. If a presented item did not match one multiple groups will become the basis for of the categories, participants were told simply to categorization? What are the consequences for allow the trial to time out. Items were presented the resulting social judgment made about that one-at-a-time and appeared on screen for 600 target? msec. Participants were obliged to make their response while the item was on screen; responses Category distinctiveness is one of the factors outside of this response window were scored as predicted to determine categorization errors. • Category distinctiveness suggests that a person Dependent Measures. For each block, we will be categorized along the dimension that computed a sensitivity index by taking the most differentiates him/her from others in the difference between the ratio of correct space bar social environment. responses to total critical items minus the ratio of incorrect space bar responses to total distracter Thus: items. Automatic evaluations toward a social – Black women in a room of only white group were indexed as the difference in people (white men and women) will be performance when that group was categorized categorized as black. along with good words minus performance when – The same black women in a room of only that group was categorized along with bad men (black and white men) will be categorized words, e.g., (BlackFemale + good) minus as female. (BlackFemale + bad). Automatic evaluations can be used to infer Design different categorizations of the same social Three separate go/no-go tasks measured target automatic evaluations toward black female and white male targets under conditions of gender, • Earlier research has demonstrated that: neutral, and race category distinctiveness. – Automatic evaluations are generally negative toward black targets and positive Category distinctiveness was manipulated by the toward white targets (Dasgupta et al., in press; particular distracter names used in each block. Fazio, Jackson, Dunton, & Williams, 1995; In order to make a category distinctive, Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) distracters differed from the target group along a – Automatic evaluations are generally single dimension (see schematic below). For positive toward females and negative toward example, in order to make gender distinctive for males (Lemm & Banaji, 1999). black female targets, distracters were black male

Poster presented at the meeting for the Society of Personality and Social Psychology, February 2000, Nashville, TN and white male names. In order to make race distinctive, on the other hand, distracters were Performance for Superordinate Groups white female and white male names.

0 . 7 5

p=. 0 0 2 p=. 0 0 3 p=. 0 0 2 p<. 0 0 1 0 . 7 4 We predicted that participants would… 0 . 6 5 0 . 7 1

• when gender was distinctive: show 0 . 5 5 0 . 5 9 0 . 5 7 0 . 5 5 0 . 4 5 positive evaluations toward black females and 0 . 4 9 0 . 3 5 negative evaluations toward white males. 0 . 2 9 0 . 3 4 0 . 2 5

• when race was distinctive: show negative B l a c k W h i t e F e m a l e M a l e evaluations toward black females and positive Superordinate Group evaluations toward white males. " +g o o d " " +b a d " To the extent that manipulating category distinctiveness produces different automatic Performance in Black Female Blocks evaluations toward the same social group, we can infer that participants must have implicitly 0 .9 0 construed targets along different dimensions. 0 .8 0

0 .7 5 0 .7 0 To measure automatic evaluations of black 0 .7 1

0 .6 4 females, we compared performance in these two 0 .6 0

0 .5 8 0 .5 8 blocks: BlackFemale+good and BlackFemale+bad. 0 .5 4 0 .5 0 To manipulate category distinctiveness for black S ex N eut r al R a c e female targets, each go/no-go task used different Task distracter names: B F+good B F+ba d

Sex: black male, white male Neutral: black male, white female Performance in WhiteMale Blocks

Race: white female, white male 0 .9 0

0 .8 0 To measure automatic evaluations of white 0 .8 2 males, we compared performance in these two 0 .7 0 0 .7 0

0 .6 6 blocks: WhiteMale+good and WhiteMale+bad. 0 .6 5 0 .6 0

To manipulate category distinctiveness for white 0 .5 8 0 .5 4 male targets, each go/no-go task used different 0 .5 0 S ex N eut r al R a c e distracter names: Task

Sex: black female, white female W M +good W M +b ad Neutral: black male, white female Race: black female, black male Conclusion As a check on the reliability of the new go/no-go • Category Distinctiveness can dictate the way in procedure, we also measured automatic which a social target is construed by perceivers. evaluations toward superordinate gender (female, male) and race (black, white) groups. • A single social target – such as a black female or white male – can elicit two qualitatively These blocks took the same form as those for different automatic evaluations as a function of multiply-construable groups, except there was no the way in which perceivers construe them. category distinctiveness manipulation: • Automatic evaluations can be a useful way to Female+good Female+bad determine the manner in which a target has been Male+good Male+bad construed, because a single target can belong to Black+good Black+bad two or more groups with opposing evaluations. White+good White+bad • We introduce a new procedure for measuring automatic evaluations, modeled after standard go/no-go paradigms.

Poster presented at the meeting for the Society of Personality and Social Psychology, February 2000, Nashville, TN