God as a White man: A psychological barrier to conceptualizing Black people and women as leadership worthy.

Abstract

In the United States, God is commonly conceptualized as the omnipotent and omniscient entity that created the universe, and as a White man. We questioned whether the extent to which God is conceptualized as a White man predicts the extent to which White men are perceived as particularly fit for leadership. We found support for this across 7 studies. In Study 1, we created 2 measures to examine the extent to which U.S. Christians conceptualized God as a White man, and in Study 2 we found that, controlling for multiple covariates (e.g., racist and sexist attitudes, religiosity, political attitudes), responses on these measures predicted perceiving White male job candidates as particularly fit for leadership, among both Black and White, male and female, Christians. In Study 3, we found that U.S. Christian children, both White and racial minority, conceptualized God as more White than Black (and more male than female), which predicted perceiving White people as particularly boss-like. We next found evidence to suggest that this phenomenon is rooted in broader intuitions that extend beyond Christianity. That is, in a novel context with novel groups and a novel god, U.S. Christian adults (Studies 4 and 6), atheist adults (Study 5), and agnostic preschoolers (Study 7), used a god's identity to infer which groups were best fit for leadership. Collectively, our data reveal a clear and consistent pattern: Attributing a social identity to God predicts perceiving individuals who share that identity as more fit for leadership.

Blatant dehumanization in the mind’s eye: Prevalent even among those who explicitly reject it?

“…Of note, some emerging evidence does point to the consequentiality of mental representations in predicting intergroup behavior. For example, the tendency to mentally represent God as a White man-which itself has been captured using reverse-correlation procedures (Jackson, Hester, & Gray, 2018)-is associated with perceiving White individuals as more fit for leadership positions than Black individuals (Roberts et al, 2020), even when researchers control for participant's explicit levels of racism. Similarly, although outside the context of reverse correlation, Goff et al (2014) found that beyond explicit anti-Black attitudes, the implicit mental association between African Americans and apes predicted overestimating the age of juvenile Black defendants and perceiving them as more culpable for their crimes.…”

What shall we call God? An exploration of metaphors coded from descriptions of God from a large U.S. undergraduate sample

“…However, from both a metaphoric [ 33 ] and general [ 34 ] social cognition perspective, the use of “he” likely brings with it a schema-wide network of associations that can impact thoughts, feelings, and even behavior. In fact, recent work found that conceptualizing God as a white male led to racial and gender discrimination in the workplace [ 35 ]. This suggests that the pronoun “he” is consequential.…”

Racial Inequality in Psychological Research: Trends of the Past and Recommendations for the Future

“…One reason might be that developmental psychologists, compared with social psychologists, may be less likely to recruit participants via online platforms (e.g., Amazon’s Mechanical Turk), which have become increasingly popular over time and consist of mostly White samples (Berinsky, Huber, & Lenz, 2012; Buhrmester, Kwang, & Gosline, 2011). If true, a simple solution would be to recruit diverse samples via those platforms (see, e.g., Roberts et al, 2020). Another reason might be that developmental psychologists have been more vocal about the importance of collaborating with racially diverse samples.…”

“…As another example, individuals raised in relatively collectivistic contexts often focus on others, whereas those raised in relatively individualistic contexts often focus on themselves, which can give rise to racial differences in memory construction and recall (Wang, 2019; Wang, Song, & Koh, 2017). During and after a lifetime of such racialized experiences, including those involving access to social resources, experiences with discrimination, interracial contact, social norms, social segregation, and socioeconomic status, it is no surprise that race plays a critical role in psychological phenomena, including but not limited to those involving activism, auditory and visual processing, conformity, emotions, executive functioning, interpersonal relationships, memory, neural activity, parenting, psychological and physiological health, and religious cognition (see Anyiwo, Bañales, Rowley, Watkins, & Richards-Schuster, 2018; Brown, Mistry, & Yip, 2019; Lewis, Goto, & Kong, 2008; Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Mattis & Jagers, 2001; Mays, Cochran, & Barnes, 2007; McLoyd, 1990; Medin, 2017; Neblett & Roberts, 2013; Newheiser & Olson, 2012; Perrachione et al, 2010; Philbrook, Hinnant, Elmore-Staton, Buckhalt, & El-Sheikh, 2017; Quinn et al, 2019; Rhodes & Gelman, 2009; Richeson & Shelton, 2003; Richeson & Sommers, 2016; Roberts et al, 2020; Roberts & Gelman, 2015, 2016, 2017; Roberts, Guo, Ho, & Gelman, 2018; Rogers, 2019; Syed, 2017; Tsai, 2007; Wang, 2019).…”