Does This Recession Make Me Look Black? The Effect of Resource Scarcity on the Categorization of Biracial Faces

Rodeheffer, Christopher D.; Hill, Sarah E.; Lord, Charles G.

doi:10.1177/0956797612450892

Cited by 80 publications

(78 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Although scarcity has been shown to affect explicit decisions about an individuals' group membership (12,13), our finding that scarcity-elicited perceptual biases operate implicitly suggests that such biases are particularly resistant to detection and, consequently, regulation. These findings point to the need for a new class of proactive intervention strategies that prevent perceptual biases from forming in the first place, as well as stronger institutional protections that prevent the prejudices evoked by perceptual biases from influencing behavior.…”

Section: (Methods)mentioning

confidence: 65%

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Economic scarcity alters the perception of race

Krosch

Amodio

2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

252

186

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Significance Racial disparities on socioeconomic indices expand dramatically during economic recession. Although prior explanations for this phenomenon have focused on institutional causes, our research reveals that perceived scarcity influences people’s visual representations of race in a way that may promote discrimination. Across four studies, scarce conditions led perceivers to view Black people as “darker” and “more stereotypically Black” in appearance, relative to control conditions, and this shift in perception under scarcity was sufficient to elicit reduced resource allocations to African American recipients. These findings introduce a “motivated perception” account for the proliferation of racial and ethnic discrimination during times of economic duress.

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Section: (Methods)mentioning

confidence: 65%

“…Prior research has shown that scarcity increases decisions to exclude biracial individuals from the White majority group (12,13), perhaps to preserve resources. However, mounting evidence suggests that even perceptions of race are malleable and that biases in race perception have implications for the expression of prejudice.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Economic scarcity alters the perception of race

Krosch

Amodio

2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

252

186

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“…Research on the underpinnings of this categorization bias, often called hypodescent , has focused primarily on social motivations, demonstrating that among White adults, beliefs about equality, threats to the hierarchical status quo, racial biases, and political ideology undergird hypodescent (Chen, Moons, Gaither, Hamilton, & Sherman, 2014; Ho, Sidanius, Cuddy, & Banaji, 2013; Krosch & Amodio, 2014; Krosch, Berntsen, Amodio, Jost, & Van Bavel, 2013, Kteily, Cotterill, Sidanius, Sheehy-Skeffington, & Bergh, 2014; Rodeheffer, Hill, & Lord, 2012). Less research has identified cognitive biases that contribute to hypodescent (but see Halberstadt, Sherman, & Sherman, 2011) and we are aware of no research that has identified the interplay of cognitive biases and social motivations.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Essentialism and Racial Bias Jointly Contribute to the Categorization of Multiracial Individuals

Roberts²,

Gelman

2015

Psychol Sci

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Categorizations of multiracial individuals provide insight into the psychological mechanisms driving social stratification, but few studies have explored the interplay of cognitive and motivational underpinnings of these categorizations. In this paper, we integrate research on racial essentialism (i.e., the belief that race demarcates unobservable and immutable properties) and negativity bias (i.e., the tendency to weigh negative entities more heavily than positive entities) to explain why people might exhibit biases in the categorization of multiracial individuals. As theorized, racial essentialism, both dispositional (Study 1) and experimentally induced (Study 2), led to the categorization of Black-White multiracial individuals as Black, but only among individuals evaluating Black people more negatively than White people. These findings demonstrate how fundamental cognitive and motivational biases interact to influence the categorization of multiracial individuals.

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“…Scarce resources have been shown to restrict the inclusiveness of people's ingroups. For example, in experiments by Rodeheffer, Hill, and Lord (2012), cues about scarcity led people to categorize fewer biracial individuals as belonging to their racial ingroup. Indeed, it seems that the very conditions of contemporary homelessness-scarce resources and symbolic and physical threats to well-being-encourage the reproduction of stigma and stereotyping via ingroup-outgroup differentiation.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%