The Development of Intersectional Social Prototypes

Abstract

Race and gender information overlap to shape adults’ representations of social categories. This overlap can lead to the psychological “invisibility” of people whose race and gender identities are perceived to have conflicting stereotypes. In the present research ( N = 249), we examined when race begins to bias representations of gender across development. In Study 1, a speeded categorization task revealed that children were slower to categorize Black women as women, relative to their speed of categorizing White and Asian women as women and Black men as men. Children were also more likely to miscategorize Black women as men and less likely to stereotype Black women as feminine. Study 2 replicated these findings and provided evidence of a developmental shift in categorization speed. An omnibus analysis provided a high-powered test of this developmental hypothesis, revealing that target race begins biasing children’s gender categorization around age 5 years. Implications for the development of social-category representation are discussed.

Why Developmental Research on Social Categorization Needs Intersectionality

“…In the case of race and gender, this can manifest as Black women being seen as less prototypical of their gender category. Indeed, in this study, by early childhood, children were slower to identify Black women as members of their gender, and more likely to miscategorize the gender of Black women than of White and Asian women (Lei et al., 2020). Children were also less likely to ascribe stereotypically feminine traits (e.g., nice and empathetic) to Black women than to White and Asian women.…”

“…An intersectional perspective prompts us to consider not only whether some groups experience more bias than others, but also how bias might manifest differently for different groups. For example, one study (Lei et al., 2020) traced the early development of a unique form of bias in children’s representations of Black women—that of intersectional invisibility (Purdie‐Vaughns & Eibach, 2008). Intersectional invisibility emerges when someone is not seen as prototypical of the social categories to which they belong.…”

“…This shift to greater specificity is a way to not only encourage researchers to read more broadly (to understand more thoroughly what the specific construct might be), but also to integrate qualitative and quantitative research (a key challenge of bringing intersectionality into psychology). That is, by considering more fully the unique experiences of people with multiple minoritized identities (e.g., invisibility for Black women, Lei et al., 2020; or exoticization for Asian women, Mukkamala & Suyemoto, 2018), and using that as the basis for the research design, researchers can test hypotheses in a more focused way instead of just testing for potential differences among an increasing number of experimental cells.…”

Perceived prototypicality of Asian subgroups in the United States and the United Kingdom

“…Finally, we theorized that prototypes are informed by history but we did not examine how history steeps into our mental representations. Children are able to develop complex intersectional prototypes as early as 5 years old (Lei et al, 2020). Our understanding of racial groups is learned early because race and racism are infused within the structures of societies (Ray, 2019;Salter et al, 2018).…”

“…Prototypes are culturally and contextually determinant and they are informed by numeric representations as well as familiarity with the group (Dotsch et al, 2016;Hogg, 1993;Lei & Rhodes, 2021;Rosch, 1978;Vogel et al, 2021). For instance, women vary considerably in race, physical features, and psychological traits, but some women (e.g., White and stereotypically feminine women) are seen as more prototypical and representative of the female gender group than others (e.g., Black women, masculine women) in most Western societies (Lei et al, 2020;Purdie-Vaughns & Eibach, 2008;Thomas et al, 2014). Those that deviate from the prototypical image of their social groups are often disliked, forgotten, punished, or discredited (Goh et al, 2021;Phelan & Rudman, 2010;Purdie-Vaughns & Eibach, 2008;Schug et al, 2017;Sesko & Biernat, 2010;Vogel et al, 2021).…”