The Roles of Group Status and Group Membership in the Practice of Hypodescent
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Child Development, May/June 2020, Volume 91, Number 3, Pages e721–e732 The Roles of Group Status and Group Membership in the Practice of Hypodescent Steven O. Roberts Arnold K. Ho Stanford University University of Michigan Selin Gulg€ oz€ Jacqueline Berka, and Susan A. Gelman University of Washington University of Michigan Hypodescent emerged in U.S. history to reinforce racial hierarchy. Research suggests that among contempo- rary U.S. adults, hypodescent continues to shape social perception. Among U.S. children, however, hypodes- cent is less likely to be endorsed. Here, we tested for hypodescent by introducing U.S. children (ages 4–9) and adults (N = 273) to hierarchically ordered novel groups (one was high status and another was low status) and then to a child who had one parent from each group. In Study 1, we presented the groups in a third-party context. In Study 2, we randomly assigned participants to the high-status or the low-status group. Across both studies, participants did not reliably endorse hypodescent, raising questions as to what elicits this practice. Is a child with one Black parent and one White par- practiced by young U.S. children (Roberts & Gel- ent Black, White, or something else? According to man, 2015). The present experiments provide a sys- the principle of hypodescent, Black-White children tematic test of hypodescent among children and are Black (i.e., they are categorized as members of adults—using novel group targets devoid of socio- their lower-status parent group), but according to cultural background and characterized only by sta- the principle of hyperdescent, they are White (i.e., tus—and therefore further our understanding of members of their higher-status parent group; Davis, when and how hypodescent emerges in develop- 1991; Ho, Sidanius, Levin, & Banaji, 2011; Roberts ment. & Gelman, 2015). For much of U.S. history, hypode- scent dictated how people with mixed-race parents The History of Hypodescent in the United States were treated and thus contributed to maintaining a rigid U.S. racial hierarchy. In today’s society, Hypodescent is embedded within notions of hypodescent is no longer a federal practice, but hierarchy and ancestry (Davis, 1991; Morning, research demonstrates that it often persists as an 2005). During the era of U.S. slavery, mulattos (i.e., individual belief among U.S. adults (Ho, Kteily, & “hybrids,” referring to Black-White individuals) Chen, 2017; Ho et al., 2011; Peery & Bodenhausen, were often perceived as threats to the social 2008). Recent developmental research, however, boundaries that separated low-status slaves (i.e., suggests that hypodescent is less likely to be Black people) and high-status slavers (i.e., White people). In an effort to maintain White dominance, Steven O. Roberts and Arnold K. Ho contributed equally to several states, particularly those in the South, this study. enforced “one-drop rules” according to which This research was supported by a National Science Foundation Black-White individuals were classified as Black by Graduate Research Fellowship and a Ford Foundation Predoc- toral Research Fellowship awarded to Steven O. Roberts, a Rus- virtue of their Black ancestry. For example, in Mis- sell Sage Foundation Fellowship award to Arnold K. Ho, and a souri, individuals with one-eighth of Black ances- National Institute of Child Health and Human Development try were legally classified as Black, whereas in grant (HD-36043) to Susan A. Gelman. We thank the partici- “ ” pants, and also the research assistance of Elizabeth Garcia, Kerrie Alabama, individuals with a single drop of Leonard, Kevin Ma, Tiffany Valencia, and Abigail Tzau. We also “Black blood” were classified as Black. Thus, thank Craig Smith and the Living Laboratory at the University of Michigan. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Steven O. Roberts, Department of Psychology, Stanford Univer- © 2019 Society for Research in Child Development sity, 450 Serra Mall, Building 420, Stanford, CA 94305. Electronic All rights reserved. 0009-3920/2020/9103-0037 mail may be sent to [email protected]. DOI: 10.1111/cdev.13279 e722 Roberts, Ho, Gulg€ oz,€ Berka, and Gelman although these laws proposed that race was quan- The Motivation Behind Hypodescent tifiable and rooted in ancestry, the fact that racial A Preference for High-Status Over Low-Status Groups classifications varied across states (and across and Negativity Bias social groups, see Maillard, 2005) highlighted how socially constructed and arbitrary they were, and Rozin and Royzman (2001) integrated findings that their primary purpose was simply to maintain from a wide variety of domains to advance the the Black-White color divide. view that human and nonhuman animals generally Indeed, even after slavery was abolished, the fear give greater weight to entities they view as nega- that Black-White individuals would disrupt the U.S. tive, compared with equivalent entities they view racial hierarchy persisted (Davis, 1991). Therefore, as positive. For example, negative events have a when the United States entered the era of Jim greater influence on mood compared to positive Crow, census enumerators enforced hypodescent events (Taylor, 1991) and monetary losses are nationally; Black-White individuals, regardless of weighed more heavily than equivalent monetary where they lived or how they self-identified, were gains (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979; both cited in classified as Black (i.e., Negro). Although the one- Rozin & Royzman, 2001). Extending their analysis drop rule was abolished across states over time, the to the domain of racial categorization, Rozin and federal practice of allowing Multiracial people to Royzman (2001) quoted the legal scholar Neil identify with only a single race continued until the Gotanda, who wrote, “The metaphor (for defining a “Multiracial Movement” of the 1990s, in which racial underclass) is one of purity and contamina- multiracial activists lobbied and protested against tion: White is unblemished and pure, so one drop the use of rigid racial categories and subsequently of ancestral Black blood renders one Black. Black led U.S. federal agencies to allow people to “check ancestry is a contaminant that overwhelms White all that apply” (see Brunsma, 2006; Morning, 2005). ancestry.” Rozin and Royzman (2001) further Ultimately, as the United States entered the era of pointed to the example of the Hindu caste system, Barack Obama, U.S. race concepts became more “where contact with lower castes produces much flexible than ever. more contagion than does contact with higher Hypodescent is no longer a federal practice, castes,” and to the Nazis’ Nuremburg laws, which though research demonstrates that it continues to dictated that “one Jewish grandparent was suffi- shape how U.S. adults conceptualize Multiracial cient for designation as Jewish.” individuals. For example, Ho et al. (2011, 2017) Ho et al. (2015) examined whether White peo- found that both Black and White Americans cate- ple’s preference for White people over Black people gorize a Black-White person as more Black than might lead them to weigh Black ancestry more White even when explicitly told that the person heavily than White ancestry when categorizing has one Black and one White parent. Social and Black-White individuals (i.e., show a negativity cognitive psychological research point to at least bias), and found that this was indeed the case. two motivations for this effect: (a) a preference for Interestingly, and consistent with the notion that high-status over low-status groups, which can negatively evaluated entities are weighed more combine with a negativity bias to lead perceivers heavily than positively evaluated ones, Ho et al. to weigh low-status ancestry more heavily than (2015) also found some evidence that perceivers high-status ancestry (Ho, Roberts, & Gelman, who preferred Black people over White people 2015; Noyes & Keil, 2018), and (b) a desire among actually showed a tendency to categorize Black- high-status group members to protect the integrity White individuals as more White (but notably, par- of the high-status group, which can lead to “in- ticipants on average preferred Whites over Blacks). group overexclusion” (Castano, Yzerbyt, Bour- Noyes and Keil (2018) found that this negativity guignon, & Seron, 2002; Knowles & Peng, 2005). bias was domain-general: how a sample of mostly In the current studies, we set up a novel social United States White adults categorized liquid and hierarchy in which a preference for high-status racial mixtures was predicted by the extent to over low-status groups (Studies 1 and 2) and a which they perceived components of the mixture as desire to protect the high-status ingroup (Study 2) dangerous (e.g., a mixture of water and cyanide may operate to produce hypodescent. This design was conceptualized as cyanide, just as a mixture of allows us to test whether these factors are suffi- White and Black was conceptualized as Black). In cient in eliciting hypodescent among children and short, a preference for high-status over low-status adults. groups can lead perceivers to weigh low-status Hypodescent e723 ancestry more heavily than high-status ancestry, perhaps especially when one is a member of the leading to hypodescent. Notably, perceivers do not high-status group (and thus may additionally be need to belong to the groups they are judging for motivated to protect the ingroup). this process to occur—they simply need to be biased against the low-status target group (e.g., due The Development of Hypodescent to a general and early emerging tendency to dislike low-status groups; Horwitz, Shutts, & Olson, 2014). Few studies have examined hypodescent among U.S. children; indeed, all of the research on hypode- scent cited in the previous section was conducted A Desire to Protect the Ingroup with adult participants. This gap is unfortunate, Research based on social identity theory—which given that understanding when and how hypodes- argues that intergroup bias derives from individu- cent emerges in development is important for help- als’ desires to enhance the standing of social groups ing to reveal the underlying mechanisms.