Are Black Women and Girls Associated With Danger? Implicit Racial Bias at the Intersection of Target Age and Gender

Abstract

We investigated whether stereotypes linking Black men and Black boys with violence and criminality generalize to Black women and Black girls. In Experiments 1 and 2, non-Black participants completed sequential-priming tasks wherein they saw faces varying in race, age, and gender before categorizing danger-related objects or words. Experiment 3 compared task performance across non-Black and Black participants. Results revealed that (a) implicit stereotyping of Blacks as more dangerous than Whites emerged across target age, target gender, and perceiver race, with (b) a similar magnitude of racial bias across adult and child targets and (c) a smaller magnitude for female than male targets. Evidence for age bias and gender bias also emerged whereby (d) across race, adult targets were more strongly associated with danger than were child targets, and (e) within Black (but not White) targets, male targets were more strongly associated with danger than were female targets.

Race-Based Sexual Stereotypes Influence Ratings of Child Victims in Sexual Abuse Cases

“…Our results replicate prior work showing harsher attitudes towards Black versus White female CSA victims (e.g., Bottoms et al 2004), and also shed light on how a negative sexual stereotype that is generally associated with Black adult females may be generalized to young Black girls (Thiem et al 2019). Our findings suggest that racial bias and the Jezebel stereotype have potential to taint perceptions of alleged CSA victims and thus adversely affect their rights to an impartial justice system.…”

On Intersectionality: How Complex Patterns of Discrimination Can Emerge From Simple Stereotypes

“…The term intersectional stereotypes refers to the overlap of multiple social identities that may combine in unique ways to contribute to discrimination (Crenshaw, 1989). The stereotype of criminality, for example, may be applied to Black men more strongly than can be explained by the additive effects of race and gender stereotypes (Thiem, Neel, Simpson, & Todd, 2019).…”

Lions, and Tigers, and Implicit Measures, Oh My! Implicit Assessment and the Valence vs. Threat Distinction

“…In the weapons task, Black and White faces precede images of either weapons or innocuous objects, which participants distinguish using a label to describe the threatening object (e.g., "threatening," "gun," "dangerous") or the innocuous object (e.g., "safe," "tool," "toy," "non-dangerous"). Participants are quicker to identify threatening versus innocuous objects after Black vs. White primes (Payne, 2001;Thiem, Neel, Simpson, & Todd, 2019;Todd, Thiem, & Neel, 2016;Valla et al, 2018). Similarly, in a shooter task, participants are faster to "shoot" armed Black than White men and slower to "not shoot" unarmed Black than White men (Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink, 2002;Sadler, Correll, Park, & Judd, 2012).…”