Race and gender on the brain: Electrocortical measures of attention to the race and gender of multiply categorizable individuals.

Abstract

The degree to which perceivers automatically attend to and encode social category information was investigated. Event-related brain potentials were used to assess attentional and working-memory processes on-line as participants were presented with pictures of Black and White males and females. The authors found that attention was preferentially directed to Black targets very early in processing (by about 100 ms after stimulus onset) in both experiments. Attention to gender also emerged early but occurred about 50 ms later than attention to race. Later working-memory processes were sensitive to more complex relations between the group memberships of a target individual and the surrounding social context. These working-memory processes were sensitive to both the explicit categorization task participants were performing as well as more implicit, task-irrelevant categorization dimensions. Results are consistent with models suggesting that information about certain category dimensions is encoded relatively automatically.Categorization is widely viewed as a sensible and efficient way to order and simplify a complex social world (Bodenhausen & Macrae, 1998;Brewer, 1988;Fiske & Neuberg, 1990;Macrae & Bodenhausen, 2000), but when applied to people, the process itself might not be so simple. This is because people can often be classified simultaneously along multiple dimensions. A complete understanding of social categorization must address how such multiply categorizable individuals are assigned to social group membership. Toward this end, some have suggested that all categories relevant to an impression-formation target are activated in parallel when multiply categorizable individuals are perceived (Bodenhausen & Macrae, 1998;Macrae & Bodenhausen, 2000;Macrae, Bodenhausen, & Milne, 1995). Others have suggested that this automatic activation occurs more narrowly for certain wellpracticed dimensions such as race, gender, and age (Brewer, 1988;Bruner, 1957;Fiske & Neuberg, 1990;Stangor, Lynch, Duan, & Glass, 1992). Regardless of the specific categories afforded automatic status, both assumptions have important implications: To the extent that beliefs and affective reactions are associated with social categories, automatic activation of social category judgments would make this information readily available to influence subsequent processing stages.Although much has been learned about the ease with which stereotypes and prejudice are activated, less is known about the categorization process itself and the degree to which it occurs automatically. This may be attributable in part to the difficulty in measuring early attentional processes. It is not obvious, for instance, that perceivers would be able to accurately report when social category information becomes available and the relative importance of different dimensions at very early stages of processing. Consequently, when categorization has been studied, it has sometimes been assessed indirectly through outcomes such as stereotype activation (e.g., Macrae et al., 1995). C...

Multiple cues in social perception: The time course of processing race and facial expression

“…Mean N100 amplitudes at Cz, where the component was the largest, are shown in Table 1. Replicating past findings (Ito & Urland, 2003) =6.53, p<.05). Of interest, N100 amplitudes did not differ for Black happy and White happy faces.…”

“…A similar pattern of results are obtained for drawings of faces, where negative expressions elicit larger amplitudes at the N100 than happy expressions (Vanderploeg, Brown, & Marsh, 1987). Previous research on the P200 has obtained a similar pattern of results, with larger P200s to angry and fearful facial expressions than to neutral facial expressions (Eimer & Holmes, 2002;Eimer, Holmes, & McGlone, 2003), and larger P200s to Blacks than Whites from White participants (Ito & Urland, 2003, 2005.…”

“…At the N100, threatening primes elicit more attention (i.e. larger amplitudes) than positive primes (Weinstein, 1995); in a passive viewing task, angry faces elicit larger amplitudes than neutral faces (Felmingham, Bryant, & Gordon, 2003), and Black faces elicit larger amplitudes than White faces from White participants (Ito & Urland, 2003, 2005. A similar pattern of results are obtained for drawings of faces, where negative expressions elicit larger amplitudes at the N100 than happy expressions (Vanderploeg, Brown, & Marsh, 1987).…”

“…We expect to replicate past effects showing greater attention and larger N100s and P200s to angry as compared to happy and neutral expressions (cf., Eimer & Holmes, 2002;Eimer, Holmes, & McGlone, 2003;Felmingham, Bryant, & Gordon, 2003;Vanderploeg, Brown, & Marsh, 1987); similarly, Black faces should elicit greater attention and therefore larger N100s and P200s than White faces from the largely nonWhite participants in the present sample (Ito & Urland, 2003, 2005. We will also examine whether these cues are processed in parallel, or appear to interact at this point in time in order to examine assumptions that race and expression are processed independently.…”

“…In the case of expression and race, although automatic vigilance mechanisms make it adaptive to initially devote greater attentional resources to angry faces and faces of racial outgroup members (as reflected in the N100 and P200), individuals with positive or neutral expressions, and those who are racial ingroup members are probably more desirable for greater individuation. Consequently, this component is typically larger to neutral than fearful faces (Eimer & Holmes, 2002;Holmes, Vuilleumeir, & Eimer, 2003) and to faces of one's own race than other races (Ito, Thompson, & Cacioppo, 2004;Ito & Urland, 2003;James, Johnstone, & Hayward, 2001;Tanaka, Kiefer, & Bukach, 2004;Walker & Tanaka, 2003). For the N200, individuation and deeper processing predict larger N200s to faces displaying happy, approachable expressions and to Whites (cf., Holmes et al, 2003;Ito & Urland, 2003;James et al, 2001;Tanaka et al, 2004;Walker & Tanaka, 2003).…”