Evaluative race–class stereotypes by race and perceived class of subjects.

Abstract

The subjects (80 black and 74 white college students) assigned traits, from a list of 80, to the black lower class, black middle class, white lower class, and white middle class. Each subject rated the 5 or fewer traits that he or she had chosen as being most typical of the respective race-class groups from -5 (unfavorable) to + S (favorable) for the given groups. Subjects also assigned themselves to one of the following classes: lower class, working class, middle class, or upper class. On the basis of these judgments, the subjects within each racial group were classified as perceiving themselves to be above or below the median of their own race's distribution. White subjects assigned more favorable characteristics to the middle than to the lower class and did not rate blacks lower than whites. Black subjects made a similar, but smaller, social class distinction and, in addition, generally perceived blacks more favorably than whites.The general purpose of this research was to determine the race-class stereotypes of black and white college students in 1976 and to compare the results with those obtained in earlier years. The current stereotypes were investigated in terms of class of blacks and whites being stereotyped and the race and perceived class of the subjects.The early research by Katz and Braly (1933), Bayton (1941), and Meenes (1943 found that both blacks and whites tended to assign one set of similar attributes to whites (intelligent, industrious, progressive, ambitious) and a different set of similar attributes to blacks (very religious, happy-go-lucky, musical, loud, lazy). Bayton, McAlister, and Hamer (1956) questioned the generalization present in research on racial stereotypes that instructed the subjects to respond at the level of white Americans or "Negroes." They raised the issue of whether subjects might actually have stereotypic differentiations within racial groups that the usual instructions did

Gender and social influence: A social psychological analysis.

“…For example, it has been argued that beliefs about racial differences may be based on observations that racial groups differ in social class (Feldman, 1972;Smedley & Bayton, 1978;Triandis, 1977). In general, then, viewing gender in terms of distributions into role hierarchies illustrates a type of analysis based on distributions of people into social roles and societal groups.…”

Inferring speakers’ physical attributes from their voices

“…Judgments of SES based on hearing speakers read a brief standard passage are highly correlated with measured SES, and even so minimal a speech sample as counting from 1 to 10 yields reasonably accurate judgments (Ellis, 1967). Lower (and working) class speakers tend to be judged less favorably than middle-class speakers (Smedley & Bayton, 1978;Triandis & Triandis, 1960), and middleclass judges perceive themselves to be more similar to middle-class speakers than to lower class speakers (Dienstbier, 1972).…”

Gender stereotypes stem from the distribution of women and men into social roles.

“…Furthermore, certain stereotypes may reflect the distribution of groups into broader aspects of social structure such as social class. For example, beliefs about racial differences may be based at least in part on observations that racial groups differ in social class (Feldman, 1972;Smedley & Bayton, 1978;Triandis, 1977).…”