Essentialist thinking predicts decrements in children's memory for racially ambiguous faces

Hypodescent or ingroup overexclusion?: Children's and adults' racial categorization of ambiguous black/white biracial faces

Two processes describe racially ambiguous Black/White Biracial categorization-the one-drop rule, or hypodescent, whereby racially ambiguous people are categorized as members of their socially subordinated racial group (i.e., Black/White Biracial faces categorized as Black) and the ingroup overexclusion effect, whereby racially ambiguous people are categorized as members of a salient outgroup, regardless of the group's status. Without developmental research with racially diverse samples, it is unclear when these categorization patterns emerge. Study 1 included White, Black, and racially diverse Biracial children (aged 3- to 7-years) and their parents to test how racial group membership and social context influence face categorization biases. To provide the clearest test of hypodescent and ingroup overexclusion, White participants came from majority White neighborhoods and Black participants from majority Black neighborhoods (with Biracial participants from more racially diverse neighborhoods)-two samples with prominent racial ingroups. Study 2 aimed to replicate the parent findings with a separate sample of White, Black, Black/White Biracial, and Asian adults. Results suggest the ingroup overexclusion effect is present across populations early in development and persists into adulthood. Additionally, categorization was meaningfully related to parental context, pinpointing a pathway that potentially contributes to ingroup overexclusion. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: White, Black, and racially diverse Biracial children and adults tended to categorize racially ambiguous Black/White Biracial faces as racial outgroup members, even if the outgroup was White. This contradicts most work arguing Black/White Biracial racially ambiguous people are more often seen as Black. Children and parents' categorizations were related, though children's categorizations were not related to socialization above and beyond parents' categorizations. Children showed similar categorization patterns across dichotomous and continuous measures.

Putting Oneself Ahead of the Group: The Liability of Narcissistic Leadership

Integrating insights from interdependence theory with the narcissistic admiration and rivalry concept, we propose that a pivotal obstacle for narcissistic leaders is their inability to sustain benevolent perceptions over time. As people strive to interpret social behavior in terms of self- or other-interest, the narcissistic tendency of prioritizing self-interests over the collective may become apparent and eventually taint their reputation as a leader. We examined how interpersonal motive perceptions-based on attributions of self- and other-interest-would clarify the leadership paradox of narcissism. We tracked 472 participants in 119 teams across four time-points. Narcissistic rivalry (but not admiration) corresponded to increasingly negative leader effectiveness ratings. The extent to which individuals were perceived as self-maximizing and lacking concern for other interests was tightly connected to declines in leader effectiveness across time. Altogether, these results offer insight into how perceived interpersonal motives may explain the downfall of narcissistic leadership.

Perceptions of racial essentialism and social identity threat

While past research documents essentialist beliefs’ (i.e., believing social groups have inherent, unchangeable traits) impact on prejudice, no research has explored if stigmatized groups perceive essentialism as indicative of bias. With a sample of participants diverse in race and sexual orientation, we document that endorsers of racial essentialism were perceived as more likely to be racist and also as more likely to be sexist and heterosexist, relative to nonendorsers (Studies 1–2). As some essentialist beliefs about sexual orientation are associated with progay attitudes, another experiment parsed out dimensions of racial essentialism (i.e., natural kind and entitative beliefs) and examined differences in White sexual minorities’ expectations of bias from this race-based cue. Findings indicate that both essentialism dimensions elicited identity threat with potential consequences for sexual minorities’ desire to conceal their sexual orientation; thus, we broaden conceptualizations of cues that elicit identity threat while exploring nuances of the impact of perceiver identity and essentialism type.

Broadening the stimulus set: Introducing the American Multiracial Faces Database

Face-based perceptions form the basis for how people behave towards each other and, hence, are central to understanding human interaction. Studying face perception requires a large and diverse set of stimuli in order to make ecologically valid, generalizable conclusions. To date, there are no publicly available databases with a substantial number of Multiracial or racially ambiguous faces. Our systematic review of the literature on Multiracial person perception documented that published studies have relied on computer-generated faces (84% of stimuli), Black-White faces (74%), and male faces (63%). We sought to address these issues, and to broaden the diversity of available face stimuli, by creating the American Multiracial Faces Database (AMFD). The AMFD is a novel collection of 110 faces with mixed-race heritage and accompanying ratings of those faces by naive observers that are freely available to academic researchers. The faces (smiling and neutral expression poses) were rated on attractiveness, emotional expression, racial ambiguity, masculinity, racial group membership(s), gender group membership(s), warmth, competence, dominance, and trustworthiness. The large majority of the AMFD faces are racially ambiguous and can pass into at least two different racial categories. These faces will be useful to researchers seeking to study Multiracial person perception as well as those looking for racially ambiguous faces in order to study categorization processes in general. Consequently, the AMFD will be useful to a broad group of researchers who are studying face perception.

Are Morphs a Valid Substitute for Real Multiracial Faces in Race Categorization Research?

The rise of the multiracial population has been met with a growing body of research examining multiracial face perception. A common method for creating multiracial face stimuli in past research has been mathematically averaging two monoracial "parent" faces of different races to create computer-generated multiracial morphs, but conclusions from research using morphs will only be accurate to the extent that morphs yield perceptual decisions similar to those that would be made with real multiracial faces. The current studies compared race classifications of real and morphed multiracial face stimuli. We found that oval-masked morphed faces were classified as multiracial significantly more often than oval-masked real multiracial faces (Studies 1 and 2), but at comparable levels to unmasked real multiracial faces (Study 2). Study 3 examined factors that could explain differences in how morphs and real multiracial faces are categorized and pointed to the potential role that unusualness/distinctiveness might play.

Does It Matter How We Speak About Social Kinds? A Large, Preregistered, Online Experimental Study of How Language Shapes the Development of Essentialist Beliefs

A problematic way to think about social categories is to essentialize them-to treat particular differences between people as marking fundamentally distinct social kinds. From where do these beliefs arise? Language that expresses generic claims about categories elicits some aspects of essentialism, but the scope of these effects remains unclear. This study (N = 204, ages 4.5-8 years, 73% White; recruited predominantly from the United States and the United Kingdom to participate online in 2019) found that generic language increases two critical aspects of essentialist thought: Beliefs that (a) category-related properties arise from intrinsic causal mechanisms and (b) category boundaries are inflexible. These findings have implications for understanding the spread of essentialist beliefs across communities and the development of intergroup behavior.

A Lifespan Model of Ethnic-Racial Identity

The current paper presents a lifespan model of ethnic-racial identity (ERI) from infancy into adulthood. We conceptualize that ethnic-racial priming during infancy prompts nascent awareness of ethnicity/race that becomes differentiated across childhood and through adulthood. We propose that the components of ERI that have been tested to date fall within five dimensions across the lifespan: ethnic-racial awareness, affiliation, attitudes, behaviors, and knowledge. Further, ERI evolves in a bidirectional process informed by an interplay of influencers (i.e., contextual, individual, and developmental factors, as well as meaning-making and identity-relevant experiences). It is our goal that the lifespan model of ERI will provide important future direction to theory, research, and interventions.

Race, Gender, and the Development of Cross-Race Egalitarianism

Over the course of development, children acquire adult-like thinking about social categories such as race, which in turn informs their perceptions, attitudes, and behavior. However, children's developing perceptions of race have been understudied particularly with respect to their potential influence on cross-race egalitarianism. Specifically, the acquisition of racial constancy, defined as the perception that race is a concrete and stable category, has been associated with increased awareness of racial stereotypes and group status differences. Yet, little work has investigated behavioral outcomes stemming from the acquisition of racial constancy beliefs. Here, we investigate whether the presence or absence of racial constancy beliefs differentially predicts inequality aversion with racial ingroup versus outgroup members for young children. White children (N = 202; ages 3-8) completed three sticker resource-allocation games with either a White or a Black partner shown in a photograph, after which racial constancy was measured. Results revealed that the acquisition of racial constancy interacted with partner race to predict inequality aversion outcomes in one game; however, age and gender also exerted strong effects.

Contextualizing the development of social essentialism

Given the critical role that psychological essentialism is theorized to play in the development of stereotyping and prejudice, researchers have increasingly examined the extent to which and when children essentialize different social categories. We review and integrate the types of contextual and cultural variation that have emerged in the literature on social essentialism. We review variability in the development of social essentialism depending on experimental tasks, participant social group membership, language use, psychological salience of category kinds, exposure to diversity, and cultural norms. We also discuss future directions for research that would help to identify the contexts in which social essentialism is less likely to develop in order to inform interventions that could reduce social essentialism and possible negative consequences for intergroup relations.

The Nature and Consequences of Essentialist Beliefs About Race in Early Childhood

It is widely believed that race divides the world into biologically distinct kinds of people-an essentialist belief inconsistent with reality. Essentialist views of race have been described as early emerging, but this study found that young children (n = 203, Mage  = 5.45) hold only the more limited belief that the physical feature of skin color is inherited and stable. Overall, children rejected the causal essentialist view that behavioral and psychological characteristics are constrained by an inherited racial essence. Although average levels of children's causal essentialist beliefs about race were low, variation in these beliefs was related to children's own group membership, exposure to diversity, as well as children's own social attitudes.

At face value: Psychological outcomes differ for real vs. computer-generated multiracial faces

Multiracial research emphasizes hypodescent categorizations and relies on computer-generated stimuli. Four experiments showed that real biracial faces in a 2-Choice categorization task (White, Black) elicited hypodescent more than computer-generated faces. Additionally, Experiment 2 showed a 2-Choice categorization task with real biracial faces increased racial essentialism more than a 3-Choice categorization task. Experiment 3 showed that mere exposure to real biracial faces did not increase essentialism. Finally, Experiments 4a and 4b replicated hypodescent outcomes when comparing real biracial faces to computer-generated versions of those same faces. In sum, these findings initiate a discussion surrounding the methodology of multiracial categorizations.

Construals of self and group: How racial nominalism can promote adaptive intergroup outcomes for interdependent selves

Previous research has found that interdependent self-construals are related to poorer intergroup outcomes. Here we examine interdependent self-construal specifically in relation to comfort in contexts in which people are a numeric minority (i.e., outgroup comfort), and also examine the moderating roles of racial nominalism and racial essentialism. Among a racially diverse sample ( N = 577), interdependent self-construals were related to more outgroup comfort. Two dimensions of racial nominalism—humanist and sociopolitical—were established with exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Humanist, sociopolitical, and essentialist beliefs about race were examined as moderators of the interdependent self-construal and outgroup comfort relationship. Among participants of color with higher sociopolitical beliefs, and unexpectedly among participants with higher essentialist beliefs, interdependent self-construal was more positively related to outgroup comfort. Findings are discussed in relation to theory on self- and group-level construals, and in relation to the role of multicultural education for fostering sociopolitical beliefs about race.

A Chip Off the Old Block: Parents' Subtle Ethnic Prejudice Predicts Children's Implicit Prejudice

The increasing flow of immigrants in many European countries and the growing presence of children from immigrant families in schools makes it relevant to study the development of prejudice in children. Parents play an important role in shaping children’s values and their attitudes toward members of other ethnic groups; an intergenerational transmission of prejudice has been found in a number of studies targeting adolescents. The present study aims to investigate the intergenerational transmission of ethnic prejudice in 3- to 9- year-old children and its relations to parenting styles. Parents’ blatant and subtle ethnic prejudice and parenting style are measured together with children’s explicit and implicit ethnic prejudice in pupils and parents of preschool and primary schools in the region of Rome, Italy (N = 318). Results show that parents’ subtle prejudice predicts children’s implicit prejudice regardless of the parenting style. Findings indicate that children might acquire prejudice by means of the parents’ implicit cognition and automatic behavior and educational actions. Implications for future studies and insights for possible applied interventions are discussed.

Race Essentialism and Social Contextual Differences in Children's Racial Stereotyping

The authors explored the differential emergence and correlates of racial stereotyping in 136 children ages 4-11 years across two broad social contexts: Hawai'i and Massachusetts. Children completed measures assessing race salience, race essentialism, and in-group and out-group stereotyping. Results indicated that the type of racial stereotypes emerging with age was context dependent. In both contexts in-group stereotyping increased with age. In contrast, there was only an age-related increase in out-group stereotyping in Massachusetts. Older children in Massachusetts reported more essentialist thinking (i.e., believing that race cannot change) than their counterparts in Hawai'i, which explained their higher out-group stereotyping. These results provide insight into the factors that may shape contextual differences in racial stereotyping.

How language shapes the cultural inheritance of categories

It is widely recognized that language plays a key role in the transmission of human culture, but relatively little is known about the mechanisms by which language simultaneously encourages both cultural stability and cultural innovation. This paper examines this issue by focusing on the use of language to transmit categories, focusing on two universal devices: labels (e.g., shark, woman) and generics (e.g., "sharks attack swimmers"; "women are nurturing"). We propose that labels and generics each assume two key principles: norms and essentialism. The normative assumption permits transmission of category information with great fidelity, whereas essentialism invites innovation by means of an open-ended, placeholder structure. Additionally, we sketch out how labels and generics aid in conceptual alignment and the progressive "looping" between categories and cultural practices. In this way, human language is a technology that enhances and expands the categorization capacities that we share with other animals.

The Origins of Social Categorization

Forming conceptually-rich social categories helps people to navigate the complex social world by allowing them to reason about the likely thoughts, beliefs, actions, and interactions of others, as guided by group membership. Nevertheless, social categorization often has nefarious consequences. We suggest that the foundation of the human ability to form useful social categories is in place in infancy: social categories guide the inferences infants make about the shared characteristics and social relationships of other people. We also suggest that the ability to form abstract social categories may be separable from the eventual negative downstream consequences of social categorization, including prejudice, discrimination, and stereotyping. Although a tendency to form inductively-rich social categories appears early in ontogeny, prejudice based on each particular category dimension may not be inevitable.

The development and developmental consequences of social essentialism

People often view certain ways of classifying people (e.g., by gender, race, or ethnicity) as reflecting real distinctions found in nature. Such categories are viewed as marking meaningful, fundamental, and informative differences between distinct kinds of people. This article examines the development of these essentialist intuitive theories of how the social world is structured, along with the developmental consequences of these beliefs. We first examine the processes that give rise to social essentialism, arguing that essentialism emerges as children actively attempt to make sense of their environment by relying on several basic representational and explanatory biases. These developmental processes give rise to the widespread emergence of social essentialist views in early childhood, but allow for vast variability across development and cultural contexts in the precise nature of these beliefs. We then examine what is known and still to be discovered about the implications of essentialism for stereotyping, inter-group interaction, and the development of social prejudice. We conclude with directions for future research, particularly on the theoretical payoff that could be gained by including more diverse samples of children in future developmental investigations. WIREs Cogn Sci 2017, 8:e1437. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1437 This article is categorized under: Psychology > Development and Aging Philosophy > Knowledge and Belief.

How does social essentialism affect the development of inter-group relations?

Psychological essentialism is a pervasive conceptual bias to view categories as reflecting something deep, stable, and informative about their members. Scholars from diverse disciplines have long theorized that psychological essentialism has negative ramifications for inter-group relations, yet little previous empirical work has experimentally tested the social implications of essentialist beliefs. Three studies (N = 127, ages 4.5-6) found that experimentally inducing essentialist beliefs about a novel social category led children to share fewer resources with category members, but did not lead to the out-group dislike that defines social prejudice. These findings indicate that essentialism negatively influences some key components of inter-group relations, but does not lead directly to the development of prejudice.

Can White children grow up to be Black? Children's reasoning about the stability of emotion and race

Recent research questions whether children conceptualize race as stable. We examined participants' beliefs about the relative stability of race and emotion, a temporary feature. Participants were White adults and children ages 5-6 and 9-10 (Study 1) and racial minority children ages 5-6 (Study 2). Participants were presented with target children who were happy or angry and Black or White and were asked to indicate which of 2 adults (a race but not emotion match or an emotion but not race match) each child would grow up to be. White adults, White 9- to 10-year-olds, and racial minority 5- to 6-year-olds selected race matches, whereas White 5- to 6-year-olds selected race and emotion matches equally. These data suggest that beliefs about racial stability vary by age and social group. (PsycINFO Database Record

Can White children grow up to be Black? Children's reasoning about the stability of emotion and race

Recent research questions whether children conceptualize race as stable. We examined participants' beliefs about the relative stability of race and emotion, a temporary feature. Participants were White adults and children ages 5-6 and 9-10 (Study 1) and racial minority children ages 5-6 (Study 2). Participants were presented with target children who were happy or angry and Black or White and were asked to indicate which of 2 adults (a race but not emotion match or an emotion but not race match) each child would grow up to be. White adults, White 9- to 10-year-olds, and racial minority 5- to 6-year-olds selected race matches, whereas White 5- to 6-year-olds selected race and emotion matches equally. These data suggest that beliefs about racial stability vary by age and social group. (PsycINFO Database Record

Children's Racial Categorization in Context

The ability to discriminate visually based on race emerges early in infancy: 3-month-olds can perceptually differentiate faces by race and 6-month-olds can perceptually categorize faces by race. Between ages 6 and 8 years, children can sort others into racial groups. But to what extent are these abilities influenced by context? In this article, we review studies on children's racial categorization and discuss how our conclusions are affected by how we ask the questions (i.e., our methods and stimuli), where we ask them (i.e., the diversity of the child's surrounding environment), and whom we ask (i.e., the diversity of the children we study). Taken together, we suggest that despite a developmental readiness to categorize others by race, the use of race as a psychologically salient basis for categorization is far from inevitable and is shaped largely by the experimental setting and the greater cultural context.

Do Children See in Black and White? Children's and Adults' Categorizations of Multiracial Individuals

Categorizations of multiracial individuals provide insight into the development of racial concepts. Children's (4-13 years) and adults', both White (Study 1) and Black (Study 2; N = 387), categorizations of multiracial individuals were examined. White children (unlike Black children) more often categorized multiracial individuals as Black than as White in the absence of parentage information. White and Black adults (unlike children) more often categorized multiracial individuals as Black than as White, even when knowing the individuals' parentage. Children's rates of in-group contact predicted their categorizations. These data suggest that a tendency to categorize multiracial individuals as Black relative to White emerges early in development and results from perceptual biases in White children but ideological motives in White and Black adults.

Monoracial and biracial children: effects of racial identity saliency on social learning and social preferences

Children prefer learning from, and affiliating with, their racial in-group but those preferences may vary for biracial children. Monoracial (White, Black, Asian) and biracial (Black/White, Asian/White) children (N = 246, 3-8 years) had their racial identity primed. In a learning preferences task, participants determined the function of a novel object after watching adults (White, Black, and Asian) demonstrate its uses. In the social preferences task, participants saw pairs of children (White, Black, and Asian) and chose with whom they most wanted to socially affiliate. Biracial children showed flexibility in racial identification during learning and social tasks. However, minority-primed biracial children were not more likely than monoracial minorities to socially affiliate with primed racial in-group members, indicating their in-group preferences are contextually based.

The development of race-based perceptual categorization: skin color dominates early category judgments

Prior research on the development of race-based categorization has concluded that children understand the perceptual basis of race categories from as early as age 4 (e.g. Aboud, 1988). However, such work has rarely separated the influence of skin color from other physiognomic features considered by adults to be diagnostic of race categories. In two studies focusing on Black-White race categorization judgments in children between the ages of 4 and 9, as well as in adults, we find that categorization decisions in early childhood are determined almost entirely by attention to skin color, with attention to other physiognomic features exerting only a small influence on judgments as late as middle childhood. We further find that when skin color cues are largely eliminated from the stimuli, adults readily shift almost entirely to focus on other physiognomic features. However, 6- and 8-year-old children show only a limited ability to shift attention to facial physiognomy and so perform poorly on the task. These results demonstrate that attention to 'race' in younger children is better conceptualized as attention to skin color, inviting a reinterpretation of past work focusing on children's race-related cognition.