Minority salience and the overestimation of individuals from minority groups in perception and memory

Abstract

Significance Our minds are tuned to the uncommon or unexpected in our environment. In most environments, members of minority groups are just that—uncommon. Therefore, the cognitive system is tuned to spotting their presence. Our results indicate that individuals from minority groups are salient in perception, memory, and visual awareness. As a result, we consistently overestimate their presence—leading to an illusion of diversity: the environment seems to be more diverse than it actually is, decreasing our support for diversity-promoting measures. As we try to make equitable decisions, it is important that private individuals and decision-makers alike become aware of this biased perception. While these sorts of biases can be counteracted, one must first be aware of the bias.

No evidence for social factors in the overestimation of individuals from minority groups

“…It has been well-established that observers tend to overestimate the prevalence of underrepresented samples in a population, such as a minority of blue marbles among a majority of red marbles ( 1 – 5 ). A recently published article ( 6 ) replicates this finding using faces of ethnic minority and ethnic nonminority groups but reaches the additional conclusion that the overestimation of underrepresented samples is enhanced by social knowledge; specifically, the article concludes that the prevalence of underrepresented samples is overestimated even more when these samples are known to be ethnic minorities in the observers’ society.…”

“… Replication of Experiment 5 from Kardosh et al. ( 6 ), on two differently colored backgrounds: white ( Left ) or black ( Right ). Participants estimated the proportion of White (light gray dots) and African American faces (black dots) in Black-minority or White-minority stimulus displays.…”

Reply to Gayet et al.: Minority salience as a social and cognitive phenomenon

“…In our original paper ( 1 ) we argued that social knowledge plays a meaningful role in minority salience (MS), partly basing our conclusion on findings from Experiment 5, where the effect of MS is larger when the minority of stimuli is composed of Black (vs. White) Americans. Gayet et al.…”

Do we know our visual preferences?

“…Individuals often report that the prevalence of minorities is higher than it is ( Kardosh et al, 2022 ). In the current experiment, we examined if participants are aware of how much they look at faces with specific characteristics, including minorities.…”

“…The experiment consisted of 20 matrices, each displaying of 100 neutral-expression faces previously rated as belonging to either White Americans or Black Americans taken from the Chicago Face Database ( Ma et al, 2015 ; for further details on these stimuli, see Kardosh et al, 2022 ). The percentage of faces of Black Americans changed between matrices (10%, 20%, 30%, and 40% in equal probability), with overall 25% Black faces.…”