Stereotyping by omission: eliminate the negative, accentuate the positive

America's racial framework of superiority and Americanness embedded in natural language

America's racial framework can be summarized using two distinct dimensions: superiority/inferiority and Americanness/foreignness. We investigated America's racial framework in a corpus of spoken and written language using word embeddings. Word embeddings place words on a low-dimensional space where words with similar meanings are proximate, allowing researchers to test whether the positions of group and attribute words in a semantic space reflect stereotypes. We trained a word embedding model on the Corpus of Contemporary American English-a corpus of 1 billion words that span 30 years and 8 text categories-and compared the positions of racial/ethnic groups with respect to superiority and Americanness. We found that America's racial framework is embedded in American English. We also captured an additional nuance: Asian people were stereotyped as more American than Hispanic people. These results are empirical evidence that America's racial framework is embedded in American English.

A Bias Toward Kindness Goals in Performance Feedback to Women (vs. Men)

While research has documented positivity biases in workplace feedback to women versus men, this phenomenon is not fully understood. We take a motivational perspective, theorizing that the gender stereotype of warmth shapes feedback givers' goals, amplifying the importance placed on kindness when giving critical feedback to a woman versus a man. We found support for this hypothesis in a survey of professionals giving real developmental feedback (Study 1, N = 4,842 raters evaluating N = 423 individuals) and five experiments with MBA students, lab participants, and managers (Studies 2-5, N = 1,589). Across studies, people prioritized the goal of kindness more when they gave, or anticipated giving, critical feedback to a woman versus a man. Studies 1, 3, and 5 suggest that this kindness bias relates to gendered positivity biases, and Studies 4a and 4b tested potential mechanisms and supported an indirect effect through warmth. We discuss implications for the study of motivation and workplace gender bias.

Structure learning principles of stereotype change

Why, when, and how do stereotypes change? This paper develops a computational account based on the principles of structure learning: stereotypes are governed by probabilistic beliefs about the assignment of individuals to groups. Two aspects of this account are particularly important. First, groups are flexibly constructed based on the distribution of traits across individuals; groups are not fixed, nor are they assumed to map on to categories we have to provide to the model. This allows the model to explain the phenomena of group discovery and subtyping, whereby deviant individuals are segregated from a group, thus protecting the group's stereotype. Second, groups are hierarchically structured, such that groups can be nested. This allows the model to explain the phenomenon of subgrouping, whereby a collection of deviant individuals is organized into a refinement of the superordinate group. The structure learning account also sheds light on several factors that determine stereotype change, including perceived group variability, individual typicality, cognitive load, and sample size.

Children's use of pragmatic inference to learn about the social world

Young children often endorse stereotypes-such as "girls are bad at math." We explore one mechanism through which these beliefs may be transmitted: via pragmatic inference. Specifically, we ask whether preschoolers and adults can learn about an unmentioned social group from what is said about another group, and if this inferential process is sensitive to the context of the utterance. Sixty-three- to five-year-old children and fifty-five adults were introduced to two novel social groups-Stripeys and Dotties-and witnessed a speaker praising abilities of one group (e.g., "the Stripeys are good at building chairs"). To examine the effect of context, we compared situations where the speaker was knowledgeable about the abilities of both groups, and had been queried about the performance of both groups (broad context), versus situations where the speaker was only knowledgeable about one group and was only asked about that group (narrow context). Both preschoolers and adults were sensitive to context: they were more likely to infer that the group not mentioned by the speaker was relatively unskilled, and were more confident about it, in the broad context condition. Our work integrates research in language development and social cognitive development and demonstrates that even young children can "read between the lines," utilizing subtle contextual cues to pick up negative evaluative messages about social groups even from statements that ostensibly do not mention them at all. HIGHLIGHTS: After hearing a speaker praise one group's skill, preschoolers and adults infer that an unmentioned group is relatively less skilled across a range of measures. These inferences are context-sensitive and are stronger when the speaker is knowledgeable of and asked about both groups' skill level. These results shed light on how children may indirectly learn negative stereotypes, especially ones that adults are unlikely to state explicitly. This work extends previous research on children's developing pragmatic ability, as well as their ability to learn about the social world from language.

Historical representations of social groups across 200 years of word embeddings from Google Books

Using word embeddings from 850 billion words in English-language Google Books, we provide an extensive analysis of historical change and stability in social group representations (stereotypes) across a long timeframe (from 1800 to 1999), for a large number of social group targets (Black, White, Asian, Irish, Hispanic, Native American, Man, Woman, Old, Young, Fat, Thin, Rich, Poor), and their emergent, bottom-up associations with 14,000 words and a subset of 600 traits. The results provide a nuanced picture of change and persistence in stereotypes across 200 y. Change was observed in the top-associated words and traits: Whether analyzing the top 10 or 50 associates, at least 50% of top associates changed across successive decades. Despite this changing content of top-associated words, the average valence (positivity/negativity) of these top stereotypes was generally persistent. Ultimately, through advances in the availability of historical word embeddings, this study offers a comprehensive characterization of both change and persistence in social group representations as revealed through books of the English-speaking world from 1800 to 1999.

Systemic racism: individuals and interactions, institutions and society

Systemic racism is a scientifically tractable phenomenon, urgent for cognitive scientists to address. This tutorial reviews the built-in systems that undermine life opportunities and outcomes by racial category, with a focus on challenges to Black Americans. From American colonial history, explicit practices and policies reinforced disadvantage across all domains of life, beginning with slavery, and continuing with vastly subordinated status. Racially segregated housing creates racial isolation, with disproportionate costs to Black Americans’ opportunities, networks, education, wealth, health, and legal treatment. These institutional and societal systems build-in individual bias and racialized interactions, resulting in systemic racism. Unconscious inferences, empirically established from perceptions onward, demonstrate non-Black Americans’ inbuilt associations: pairing Black Americans with negative valences, criminal stereotypes, and low status, including animal rather than human. Implicit racial biases (improving only slightly over time) imbed within non-Black individuals’ systems of racialized beliefs, judgments, and affect that predict racialized behavior. Interracial interactions likewise convey disrespect and distrust. These systematic individual and interpersonal patterns continue partly due to non-Black people’s inexperience with Black Americans and reliance on societal caricatures. Despite systemic challenges, Black Americans are more diverse now than ever, due to resilience (many succeeding against the odds), immigration (producing varied backgrounds), and intermarriage (increasing the multiracial proportion of the population). Intergroup contact can foreground Black diversity, resisting systemic racism, but White advantages persist in all economic, political, and social domains. Cognitive science has an opportunity: to include in its study of the mind the distortions of reality about individual humans and their social groups.

Non-committed judgements of, versus feedback on, student essays: Is feedback inflation for students with a migration background?

When providing feedback, teachers are concerned not only with the simple transmission of information, but also with motivational and interpersonal dynamics. To mitigate these concerns, teachers may inflate feedback by reducing negative or increasing positive content. The resulting difference between initial judgments and feedback may be even more drastic for ethnic minority students: In non-communicated judgments, negative stereotypes may result in more negative judgments, whereas in feedback, concerns about being or appearing prejudiced may inflate feedback towards ethnic minority students. These hypotheses were tested in a sample of 132 German teacher students in a 2 (between subjects: feedback vs. non-communicated judgment) × 2 (within subjects: target student's migration background: Turkish vs. none) design in which participants read supposed student essays and provided their written impressions to the research team or the supposed student. Findings revealed that teacher students’ feedback was more positive than their non-communicated judgments on a multitude of dimensions. Contrary to expectations, these effects were not stronger when the student had a Turkish migration background. Instead, teacher students rated the essay of the student with a Turkish migration background more favorably both in the judgment and feedback conditions. Our results suggest that teachers adapt their initial judgments when giving feedback to account for interpersonal or motivational dynamics. Moreover, ethnic minority students may be especially likely to receive overly positive feedback. While the motivational/interpersonal dynamics may warrant some inflation in feedback, negative consequences of overly positive feedback, for which ethnic minority students may be especially vulnerable, are discussed.

How Do You Speak about Immigrants? Taxonomy and StereoImmigrants Dataset for Identifying Stereotypes about Immigrants

Stereotype is a type of social bias massively present in texts that computational models use. There are stereotypes that present special difficulties because they do not rely on personal attributes. This is the case of stereotypes about immigrants, a social category that is a preferred target of hate speech and discrimination. We propose a new approach to detect stereotypes about immigrants in texts focusing not on the personal attributes assigned to the minority but in the frames, that is, the narrative scenarios, in which the group is placed in public speeches. We have proposed a fine-grained social psychology grounded taxonomy with six categories to capture the different dimensions of the stereotype (positive vs. negative) and annotated a novel StereoImmigrants dataset with sentences that Spanish politicians have stated in the Congress of Deputies. We aggregate these categories in two supracategories: one is Victims that expresses the positive stereotypes about immigrants and the other is Threat that expresses the negative stereotype. We carried out two preliminary experiments: first, to evaluate the automatic detection of stereotypes; and second, to distinguish between the two supracategories of immigrants’ stereotypes. In these experiments, we employed state-of-the-art transformer models (monolingual and multilingual) and four classical machine learning classifiers. We achieve above 0.83 of accuracy with the BETO model in both experiments, showing that transformers can capture stereotypes about immigrants with a high level of accuracy.

Stereotypes of Social Groups in Mainland China in Terms of Warmth and Competence: Evidence from a Large Undergraduate Sample

The Stereotype Content Model (SCM) has been validated in multiple countries and regions. However, previous validation studies in China have been limited by small sample size. The current research increased the sample size (n = 184 in the pilot study; n₁ = 1315 and n₂ = 268 in the formal study) to validate the SCM in mainland China in study 1. Supporting the SCM, 41 social groups were clustered into four quadrants based on warmth and competence dimensions. 35 of the 41 target groups (85.37%) receive ambivalent stereotype. Perceived warmth and competence were positively correlated (r = 0.585, p < 0.001). Status and competence were positively related (r = 0.81, p < 0.001), and competition and warmth were negatively related (r = −0.77, p < 0.001). In addition, 24 typical social groups were selected and a list of stereotype words for these groups was developed in study 2 (n₁ = 48, n₂ = 52). The implications of the emerging social groups and the applications of this stereotype word list are discussed.

Direct and indirect dimensional compensation: Is there a difference between observers and group members?

Dimensional compensation takes place when perceivers judge one of two social targets higher on one of the two fundamental dimensions while judging the other target higher on the second dimension. Interestingly, the majority of studies on the dimensional compensation effect focused on direct measures, with almost no attempt to rely on more indirect measures. We tested whether dimensional compensation also takes place at a more indirect level (Brief-IAT). In Experiment 1, observers presented with unknown groups dimensionally compensated both directly and indirectly. Experiment 2 had participants assigned to one of two novel groups. Whereas low-competence group members dimensionally compensated on both direct and indirect measures, high-competence group members dimensionally compensated at the direct level but did not conceed any advantage to the low-competence group at the indirect level. As a set, our findings shed new light on direct and indirect dimensionally compensatory judgments as a function of perceivers’ vantage points as observers and group members.

Egalitarian men: stereotypes and discrimination in the labor market

This article aimed to analyze the stereotypes attributed to "egalitarian men", understood here as men who support gender equality in relation to domestic and family responsibilities as well as inclusion in the workforce. To do so, two studies were carried out. The first study investigated the attribution of stereotypes to egalitarian men through a single open question. A total of 250 university students participated in this study, of which 51.1% were male, and their average age was 21.5 years (SD = 4.39). The second study analyzed the attribution of stereotypes to egalitarian or traditional men and women in a work context considered masculine. Participants included 221 university students with a mean age of 21.9 years (SD = 4.19), the majority (54.3%) being male. Taken together, the results of the two studies indicate that the egalitarian man is perceived as fragile and possibly homosexual. On the other hand, he is also seen as being more competent than traditional men.

Stereotypes as Historical Accidents: Images of Social Class in Postcommunist Versus Capitalist Societies

Stereotypes are ideological and justify the existing social structure. Although stereotypes persist, they can change when the context changes. Communism's rise in Eastern Europe and Asia in the 20th century provides a natural experiment examining social-structural effects on social class stereotypes. Nine samples from postcommunist countries (N = 2,241), compared with 38 capitalist countries (N = 4,344), support the historical, sociocultural rootedness of stereotypes. More positive stereotypes of the working class appear in postcommunist countries, both compared with other social groups in the country and compared with working-class stereotypes in capitalist countries; postcommunist countries also show more negative stereotypes of the upper class. We further explore whether communism's ideological legacy reflects how societies infer groups' stereotypic competence and warmth from structural status and competition. Postcommunist societies show weaker status-competence relations and stronger (negative) competition-warmth relations; respectively, the lower meritocratic beliefs and higher priority of embeddedness as ideological legacies may shape these relationships.

Bald and Bad?

According to (a) the beauty ideal of a full head of hair and (b) the physical attractiveness stereotype (PAS; "what is beautiful is good"), bald men should appear less attractive than nonbald men, not only physically but also socially. To explain inconsistent results on this prediction in previous research, we suggest two antagonistic processes: the automatic activation of the PAS at the implicit level and its suppression at the explicit level, the latter process selectively triggered by individuating information about the target person. In line with this account, we only found negative social attractiveness ratings for bald men by same-aged women when individuating target information was lacking (Experiment 1). In contrast, irrespective of whether individuating information was available or not, we reliably found evidence for the PAS in different implicit paradigms (the implicit association test in Experiment 2 and a source monitoring task in Experiment 3). We conclude that individuating information about bald men suppresses PAS application, but not PAS activation.

Mapping Ethnic Stereotypes and Their Antecedents in Russia: The Stereotype Content Model

The stereotype content model (SCM), originating in the United States and generalized across nearly 50 countries, has yet to address ethnic relations in one of the world's most influential nations. Russia and the United States are somewhat alike (large, powerful, immigrant-receiving), but differ in other ways relevant to intergroup images (culture, religions, ideology, and history). Russian ethnic stereotypes are understudied, but significant for theoretical breadth and practical politics. This research tested the SCM on ethnic stereotypes in a Russian sample (N = 1115). Study 1 (N = 438) produced an SCM map of the sixty most numerous domestic ethnic groups (both ethnic minorities and immigrants). Four clusters occupied the SCM warmth-by-competence space. Study 2 (N = 677) compared approaches to ethnic stereotypes in terms of status and competition, cultural distance, perceived region, and four intergroup threats. Using the same Study 1 groups, the Russian SCM map showed correlated warmth and competence, with few ambivalent stereotypes. As the SCM predicts, status predicted competence, and competition negatively predicted warmth. Beyond the SCM, status and property threat both were robust antecedents for both competence and warmth for all groups. Besides competition, cultural distance also negatively predicted warmth for all groups. The role of the other antecedents, as expected, varied from group to group. To examine relative impact, a network analysis demonstrated that status, competition, and property threat centrally influence many other variables in the networks. The SCM, along with antecedents from other models, describes Russian ethnic-group images. This research contributes: (1) a comparison of established approaches to ethnic stereotypes (from acculturation and intergroup relations) showing the stability of the main SCM predictions; (2) network structures of the multivariate dependencies of the considered variables; (3) systematically cataloged images of ethnic groups in Russia for further comparisons, illuminating the Russian historical, societal, and interethnic context.

Public stigmatisation of people with intellectual disabilities: a mixed-method population survey into stereotypes and their relationship with familiarity and discrimination

PURPOSE

Stigmatisation can negatively affect opportunities for people with intellectual disabilities to participate in society. Stereotyping, a first step in the process of stigmatisation, has been insufficiently explored for people with intellectual disabilities. This study examined the general public's set of stereotypes that is saliently attributed to people with intellectual disabilities as well as the relationship of these stereotypes with discriminatory intentions and familiarity.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

A mixed-method cross-sectional survey within a representative sample of the Dutch population (n = 892) was used. Stereotypes were analysed with factor analysis of a trait-rating scale, and qualitative analysis of an open-ended question. The relationship between stereotypes and discrimination as well as familiarity with people with intellectual disabilities was explored through multivariate analyses.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS

Four stereotype-factors appeared: "friendly", "in need of help", "unintelligent", and "nuisance". Stereotypes in the "nuisance" factor seemed unimportant due to their infrequent report in the open-ended question. "Friendly", "in need of help", "unintelligent" were found to be salient stereotypes of people with intellectual disabilities due to their frequent report. The stereotypes did not relate to high levels of explicit discrimination. Yet due to the both positive and negative valence of the stereotypes, subtle forms of discrimination may be expected such as limited opportunities for choice and self-determination. This may affect opportunities for rehabilitation and might be challenged by protest-components within anti-stigma efforts.IMPLICATIONS FOR REHABILITATIONThere is currently sparse input for anti-stigma campaigns regarding people with intellectual disabilities.Anti-stigma interventions may benefit from adopting protest elements: education of the general public about inequalities that are experienced by people with intellectual disabilities.Especially support staff should be informed about the experienced and/or anticipated stigma of people with intellectual disabilities.As a way of opposing stigma, support staff should empower people for example by conducting strategies to disclose their (intellectual) disabilities.People with intellectual disabilities can challenge stigma by learning to tell a positive narrative on the lives they lead, using their strengths and coping with their limitations.

The Psychology of Cultural Dynamics: What Is It, What Do We Know, and What Is Yet to Be Known?

The psychology of cultural dynamics is the psychological investigation of the formation, maintenance, and transformation of culture over time. This article maps out the terrain, reviews the existing literature, and points out potential future directions of this research. It is divided into three parts. The first part focuses on micro-cultural dynamics, which refers to the social and psychological processes that contribute to the dissemination and retention of cultural information. The second part, on micro-macro dynamics, investigates how micro-level processes give rise to macro-cultural dynamics. The third part focuses on macro-cultural dynamics, referring to the distribution and long-term trends involving cultural information in a population, which in turn enable and constrain the micro-level processes. We conclude the review with a consideration of future directions, suggesting behavior change research as translational research on cultural dynamics.

White Allyship of Afro-Diasporic Women in the Workplace: A Transformative Strategy for Organizational Change

Given the underrepresentation of Afro-Diasporic women in senior leadership roles, this conceptual article points to the transformative potential of antiracist, feminist White allyship to serve as a missing piece in organizations that may propel the career development and leadership advancement of Afro-Diasporic women. We define White allyship as a continuous, reflexive practice of proactively interrogating Whiteness from an intersectionality framework, leveraging one’s position of power and privilege and courageously interrupting the status quo by engaging in prosocial behaviors that foster growth-in-connection and have both the intention and impact of creating mutuality, solidarity, and support of Afro-Diasporic women’s career development and leadership advancement. We describe the behaviors, outcomes, motivations, and detractors of White allyship and offer suggestions for future research. White allyship of Afro-Diasporic women holds important opportunities for meaningful relationships to develop in organizations, for which would-be allies need support, coaching, and training to increase their allyship competence and self-efficacy.

The relationship between implicit intergroup attitudes and beliefs

Intergroup attitudes (evaluations) are generalized valence attributions to social groups (e.g., white-bad/Asian-good), whereas intergroup beliefs (stereotypes) are specific trait attributions to social groups (e.g., white-dumb/Asian-smart). When explicit (self-report) measures are used, attitudes toward and beliefs about the same social group are often related to each other but can also be dissociated. The present work used three approaches (correlational, experimental, and archival) to conduct a systematic investigation of the relationship between implicit (indirectly revealed) intergroup attitudes and beliefs. In study 1 (n = 1,942), we found significant correlations and, in some cases, evidence for redundancy, between Implicit Association Tests (IATs) measuring attitudes toward and beliefs about the same social groups (mean r = 0.31, 95% confidence interval: [0.24; 0.39]). In study 2 (n = 383), manipulating attitudes via evaluative conditioning produced parallel changes in belief IATs, demonstrating that implicit attitudes can causally drive implicit beliefs when information about the specific semantic trait is absent. In study 3, we used word embeddings derived from a large corpus of online text to show that the relative distance of 22 social groups from positive vs. negative words (reflecting generalized attitudes) was highly correlated with their distance from warm vs. cold, and even competent vs. incompetent, words (reflecting specific beliefs). Overall, these studies provide convergent evidence for tight connections between implicit attitudes and beliefs, suggesting that the dissociations observed using explicit measures may arise uniquely from deliberate judgment processes.

Political cognition helps explain social class divides: Two dimensions of candidate impressions, group stereotypes, and meritocracy beliefs

Political cognitions-particularly impressions and stereotypes along two fundamental dimensions of social evaluations-play some role in explaining social class divides and accompanying resentments. First, the Big Two dimensions (warmth/communion and competence/agency) describe candidate perception, person perception, and group stereotypes. In particular, the stereotype content model and related perspectives show social-class stereotypes depicting elites as competent but cold and lower-income groups as incompetent but warm. This trade-off justifies the system as meritocractic, because elites' stereotypic competence supports their status based on deservingness. Nevertheless, varied evidence (from social psychology, political science, and sociology) indicates common beliefs that support cross-class resentments: In particular, many citizens express political resentment both downward (toward cheats) and upward (toward elites). In this context, backlash against the system results. Anticipated by systematic theories, these political cognitions (impressions, stereotypes, beliefs) help explain the populist and nativist resentments in current political discourse; all support polarized, dysfunctional politics.

Warmth and competence predict overoptimistic beliefs for out-group but not in-group members

People can be overly optimistic not only about their own future but also for the people with whom they identify. Furthermore, interpersonal perception generally forms along two universal dimensions, i.e. warmth and competence. In this study, we created four fictional characters that would map onto each quadrant of the two-dimensional space of warmth and competence, i.e. one in-group member (high on both warmth and competence) and three out-group members (high warmth, low competence; high competence, low warmth; low on both warmth and competence). We then asked respondents to assess the likelihood of each character experiencing a series of identical desirable and undesirable events in order to uncover potential optimistic biases. Our study had two goals. First, we wanted to balance the target desirable and undesirable events on four key characteristics, i.e. event frequency, controllability, emotional intensity and personal experience with the event. Second, we wanted to investigate whether stereotypes of warmth and competence could influence the respondents' likelihood estimates for each character. We show that respondents manifested a strong desirability bias, expecting more desirable than undesirable events for the in-group member and the reverse pattern for the extreme out-group member. More important, we show that, within desirable and undesirable events, respondents anchored their judgments for the in-group member on their personal experience with the target events, further revealing an egocentric bias, but turned to stereotypical knowledge in the form of warmth and competence to judge out-group members. Implications for both social perception and optimism research are discussed.

Invisible middle-class Black space: Asymmetrical person and space stereotyping at the race–class nexus

In addition to racial stereotypes about people (e.g., Black people are poor), perceivers hold parallel racial stereotypes about physical spaces (e.g., Black spaces are impoverished; Bonam, Bergsieker, & Eberhardt, 2016). Three studies extend these findings, showing that (a) Whites describe Black space as impoverished and undesirable, but describe White space as affluent and desirable, and (b) this racially polarized stereotype content is heightened for spaces compared to people (Studies 1 & 2). Perceivers are accordingly more likely to racially stereotype spaces than people (Study 3). This asymmetry in racial stereotype application is exacerbated when targets are objectively middle class versus lower class, likely because Whites have more difficulty incorporating counterstereotypic information into perceptions of Black spaces—compared to perceptions of Black people, White people, and White spaces (Study 3). Finally, we provide and discuss evidence for potential consequences of invisible middle-class Black space, relating to residential segregation and the racial wealth gap.

Prejudices in Cultural Contexts: Shared Stereotypes (Gender, Age) Versus Variable Stereotypes (Race, Ethnicity, Religion)

Some prejudices share cross-cultural patterns, but others are more variable and culture specific. Those sharing cross-cultural patterns (sexism, ageism) each combine societal status differences and intimate interdependence. For example, in stereotypes of sex and age, lower status groups-women and elders-gain stereotypic warmth (from their cooperative interdependence) but lose stereotypic competence (from their lower status); men and middle-aged adults show the opposite trade-off, stereotypically more competent than warm. Meta-analyses support these widespread ambivalent (mixed) stereotypes for gender and age across cultures. Social class stereotypes often share some similarities (cold but competent rich vs. warm but incompetent poor). These compensatory warmth versus competence stereotypes may function to manage common human dilemmas of interacting across societal and personal positions. However, other stereotypes are more variable and culture specific (ethnicity, race, religion). Case studies of specific race/ethnicities and religions reveal much more cultural variation in their stereotype content, supporting their being responses to particular cultural contexts, apparent accidents of history. To change stereotypes requires understanding their commonalities and differences, their origins and patterns across cultures.

Word embeddings quantify 100 years of gender and ethnic stereotypes

Word embeddings are a powerful machine-learning framework that represents each English word by a vector. The geometric relationship between these vectors captures meaningful semantic relationships between the corresponding words. In this paper, we develop a framework to demonstrate how the temporal dynamics of the embedding helps to quantify changes in stereotypes and attitudes toward women and ethnic minorities in the 20th and 21st centuries in the United States. We integrate word embeddings trained on 100 y of text data with the US Census to show that changes in the embedding track closely with demographic and occupation shifts over time. The embedding captures societal shifts-e.g., the women's movement in the 1960s and Asian immigration into the United States-and also illuminates how specific adjectives and occupations became more closely associated with certain populations over time. Our framework for temporal analysis of word embedding opens up a fruitful intersection between machine learning and quantitative social science.

“But that was meant to be a compliment!”: Evaluative costs of confronting positive racial stereotypes

Past research on confronting racial prejudice has largely examined negative racial stereotypes. In the present work, we investigate perceiver and target perspectives associated with the evaluative costs of confronting positive racial stereotypes. We demonstrate that, in general, Asian Americans and African Americans who confront positive racial stereotypes suffer higher evaluative costs compared to targets who confront negative racial stereotypes and those who do not confront due, in part, to the lower perceived offensiveness of positive stereotypes (Studies 1 and 2). Moreover, Asian American and African American participants report lower confrontation intentions and higher anticipated evaluative costs for confronting positive, compared to negative, stereotypes. Furthermore, higher perceived offensiveness and lower anticipated favorable evaluations serially mediate the relationship between stereotype valence and confrontation intentions (Study 3). Overall, this research extends our understanding of the evaluative costs associated with confronting prejudice, with important downstream consequences regarding the continued prevalence of positive racial stereotypes.

The Illusion of Political Tolerance: Social Desirability and Self-Reported Voting Preferences

Tolerance for diversity in America is often indexed by direct measures, such as self-reported “willingness to vote” polls. However, pressures to be or appear unprejudiced may bias such estimates, yielding misleading and overly optimistic inferences about tolerance in America. The current research investigated the degree to which direct and indirect measures of political candidate preferences converge and diverge across six target groups varying in acceptability of stigmatization (atheists, African Americans, Catholics, gay men and lesbians, Muslims, and women) and across relevant participant demographics. Overall, participants ( N = 3,000, nationally representative) reported less willingness to vote for target groups when measured indirectly, relative to directly. Additionally, the divergence between the direct and indirect measures was especially evident for social groups for which overt stigmatization is normatively inappropriate. This research provides a vital benchmark that quantifies the gulf between the direct and indirect measures of tolerance for various oft-stigmatized groups in America.

Stereotype Content: Warmth and Competence Endure

Two dimensions persist in social cognition, whether people are making sense of individuals or groups. The Stereotype Content Model terms the basic dimensions perceived warmth (trustworthiness, friendliness) and competence (capability, assertiveness). Measured reliably and validly, these Big Two dimensions converge across methods: survey, cultural, laboratory, and biobehavioral approaches. Generality across place, levels, and time further support the framework. Parallel pairs have emerged repeatedly over the history of psychology and in current theories. The SCM proposes and tests a comprehensive causal theory: perceived social structure (cooperation, status) → stereotypes (warmth, competence) → emotional prejudices (pride, pity, contempt, envy) → discrimination (active and passive help and harm). The SCM uncovers systematic content and dynamics of stereotypes, with practical implications.

Making the Invisible Visible: Acts of Commission and Omission

Social psychological theorizing on prejudice and discrimination, which largely focuses on tangible or verifiable content of people’s thoughts, feelings, and actions toward a group (what we term commissions), falls short in capturing the nature of prejudice and discrimination directed toward Native Americans. Utilizing the literature on the prevalence, content, and consequences of representations of Native Americans, we argue that aspects of the world that are invisible or intentionally left out of the public conscious, what we refer to as omissions, hold important meaning for both Native and non-Native individuals. We propose that a framework of bias that incorporates both omissions and commissions will enrich our understanding of bias, prejudice, and discrimination and better elucidate the experiences of groups that are historically underrepresented and underserved by social science.

Prejudice Masquerading as Praise: The Negative Echo of Positive Stereotypes

Five studies demonstrate the powerful connection between being the target of a positive stereotype and expecting that one is also being ascribed negative stereotypes. In Study 1, women who heard a man state a positive stereotype were more likely to believe that he held negative stereotypes of them than women who heard no stereotype. Beliefs about being negatively stereotyped mediated the relationship between hearing a positive stereotype and believing that the stereotyper was prejudiced. Studies 2 to 4 extended these results to Asian Americans and accounted for alternative explanations (e.g., categorization threat). In Study 5, the same positive stereotype (e.g., good at math) was directed to Asian American men's racial or gender identity. Their perceptions about whether negative racial or gender stereotypes were being applied to them depended on the identity referenced by the positive stereotype. Positive stereotypes signal a latent negativity about one's group, thereby explaining why they can feel like prejudice.

Ambivalent stereotypes link to peace, conflict, and inequality across 38 nations

A cross-national study, 49 samples in 38 nations (n = 4,344), investigates whether national peace and conflict reflect ambivalent warmth and competence stereotypes: High-conflict societies (Pakistan) may need clearcut, unambivalent group images distinguishing friends from foes. Highly peaceful countries (Denmark) also may need less ambivalence because most groups occupy the shared national identity, with only a few outcasts. Finally, nations with intermediate conflict (United States) may need ambivalence to justify more complex intergroup-system stability. Using the Global Peace Index to measure conflict, a curvilinear (quadratic) relationship between ambivalence and conflict highlights how both extremely peaceful and extremely conflictual countries display lower stereotype ambivalence, whereas countries intermediate on peace-conflict present higher ambivalence. These data also replicated a linear inequality-ambivalence relationship.

Facets of the Fundamental Content Dimensions: Agency with Competence and Assertiveness-Communion with Warmth and Morality

Agency (A) and communion (C) are fundamental content dimensions. We propose a facet-model that differentiates A into assertiveness (AA) and competence (AC) and C into warmth (CW) and morality (CM). We tested the model in a cross-cultural study by comparing data from Asia, Australia, Europe, and the USA (overall N = 1.808). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported our model. Both the two-factor model and the four-factor model showed good fit indices across countries. Participants answered additional measures intended to demonstrate the fruitfulness of distinguishing the facets. The findings support the model's construct validity by positioning the fundamental dimensions and their facets within a network of self-construal, values, impression management, and the Big Five personality factors: In all countries, A was related to independent self-construal and to agentic values, C was related to interdependent self-construal and to communal values. Regarding the facets, AA was always related to A values, but the association of AC with A values fell below our effect size criterion in four of the five countries. A (both AA and AC) was related to agentic impression management. However, C (both CW and CM) was neither related to communal nor to agentic impression management. Regarding the Big Five personality factors, A was related to emotional stability, to extraversion, and to conscientiousness. C was related to agreeableness and to extraversion. AA was more strongly related to emotional stability and extraversion than AC. CW was more strongly related to extraversion and agreeableness than CM. We could also show that self-esteem was more related to AA than AC; and that it was related to CM, but not to CW. Our research shows that (a) the fundamental dimensions of A and C are stable across cultures; and (b) that the here proposed distinction of facets of A and C is fruitful in analyzing self-perception. The here proposed measure, the AC-IN, may be a useful tool in this research area. Applications of the facet model in social perception research are discussed.

"I'm not being rude, I'd want somebody normal": Adolescents' Perception of their Peers with Tourette's Syndrome: an Exploratory Study

Tourette's syndrome (TS) is a highly stigmatised condition, and typically developing adolescents' motives and reasons for excluding individuals with TS have not been examined. The aim of the study was to understand how TS is conceptualised by adolescents and explore how individuals with TS are perceived by their typically developing peers. Free text writing and focus groups were used to elicit the views of twenty-two year ten students from a secondary school in South East England. Grounded theory was used to develop an analytical framework. Participants' understanding about the condition was construed from misconceptions, unfamiliarity and unanswered questions. Adolescents who conceived TS as a condition beyond the individual's control perceived their peers as being deprived of agency and strength and as straying from the boundaries of normalcy. People with TS were viewed as individuals deserving pity, and in need of support. Although participants maintained they had feelings of social politeness towards those with TS, they would avoid initiating meaningful social relationships with them due to fear of 'social contamination'. Intergroup anxiety would also inhibit a close degree of social contact. Participants that viewed those with TS as responsible for their condition expressed a plenary desire for social distance. However, these behavioural intentions were not limited to adolescents that elicited inferences of responsibility to people with TS, indicating that attributional models of stigmatisation may be of secondary importance in the case of TS. Implications for interventions to improve school belonging among youth with TS are discussed.

Positive Stereotypes Are Pervasive and Powerful

Stereotypes and their associated category-based processes have traditionally been considered largely within the context of the negativity of their content and consequences, both among the general public and the scientific community. This review summarizes and integrates extant research on positive stereotypes, which are subjectively favorable beliefs about social groups, and examines their implications for individuals and groups directly targeted by such stereotypes. Furthermore, we examine the beneficial and adverse implications of positive stereotypes for interpersonal and intergroup relations, as well as the ways in which positive stereotypes, more so than negative stereotypes, may contribute to and perpetuate systemic differences in power and privilege.

Status, Power, and Intergroup Relations: The Personal Is the Societal

Hierarchies in the correlated forms of power (resources) and status (prestige) are constants that organize human societies. This article reviews relevant social psychological literature and identifies several converging results concerning power and status. Whether rank is chronically possessed or temporarily embodied, higher ranks create psychological distance from others, allow agency by the higher ranked, and exact deference from the lower ranked. Beliefs that status entails competence are essentially universal. Interpersonal interactions create warmth-competence compensatory tradeoffs. Along with societal structures (enduring inequality), these tradeoffs reinforce status-competence beliefs. Race, class, and gender further illustrate these dynamics. Although status systems are resilient, they can shift, and understanding those change processes is an important direction for future research, as global demographic changes disrupt existing hierarchies.

Suspicion of Motives Predicts Minorities' Responses to Positive Feedback in Interracial Interactions

Strong social and legal norms in the United States discourage the overt expression of bias against ethnic and racial minorities, increasing the attributional ambiguity of Whites' positive behavior to ethnic minorities. Minorities who suspect that Whites' positive overtures toward minorities are motivated more by their fear of appearing racist than by egalitarian attitudes may regard positive feedback they receive from Whites as disingenuous. This may lead them to react to such feedback with feelings of uncertainty and threat. Three studies examined how suspicion of motives relates to ethnic minorities' responses to receiving positive feedback from a White peer or same-ethnicity peer (Experiment 1), to receiving feedback from a White peer that was positive or negative (Experiment 2), and to receiving positive feedback from a White peer who did or did not know their ethnicity (Experiment 3). As predicted, the more suspicious Latinas were of Whites' motives for behaving positively toward minorities in general, the more they regarded positive feedback from a White peer who knew their ethnicity as disingenuous and the more they reacted with cardiovascular reactivity characteristic of threat/avoidance, increased feelings of stress, heightened uncertainty, and decreased self-esteem. We discuss the implications for intergroup interactions of perceptions of Whites' motives for nonprejudiced behavior.