Social Belonging Motivates Categorization of Racially Ambiguous Faces

Abstract

Categorizing racially ambiguous individuals is multifaceted, and the current work proposes social-motivational factors also exert considerable influence on how racial ambiguity is perceived, directing the resolution of ambiguity in a manner that is functionally beneficial to the perceiver. Four studies tested two motivations related to social belonging: belonging needs and racial identification. Greater need to belong and racial identification (Study 1), and two types of social belonging threats-social exclusion (Studies 2a and 2b) and racial identity threat (Study 3)-predicted more categorizations of racially ambiguous Black/White faces as Black, with White participants more likely to categorize ambiguous faces as outgroup members (i.e., Black; Studies 1, 2a, 2b, and 3) and Black participants more likely to categorize ambiguous faces as ingroup members (Study 2b). Results also demonstrated that self-affirmation mitigated this motivated categorization for Whites (Study 3), illustrating the malleability of social categorization and its dependency on serving self-relevant goals.

Bridging Group Divides: A Theoretical Overview of the “What” and “How” of Gateway Groups

“…Another potential gateway group are individuals with mixed ethnic or racial parentage. Although they are a fast‐growing part of the population in many globalized societies—in England and Wales, for example, the number of people identifying as multiethnic has almost doubled between 2001 and 2011 (Jivraj, )—research continues to focus on how multiracials identify and how they are perceived by monoracial majority and minority group members (Gaither, Pauker, Slepian, & Sommers, ), but rarely on how they could affect relations between majority and minority monoracial communities.…”

An integrative review of impression formation processes for multiracial individuals

“…With respect to perceivers, research has yet to focus on how non‐White individuals perceive multiracials (see Chen et al, in press; Chen & Ratliff, ; Gaither, Pauker, Slepian, & Sommers, ; Ho et al, ; Pauker & Ambady, , for a few exceptions). Yet research on non‐White perceivers has generated novel insights, such as Black Americans' perception of linked fate with Black‐White biracials (Ho et al, ) and Asian Americans' rejection of Asian‐White biracials because they are skeptical of biracials' allegiances (Chen et al, in press).…”

Black + White = Not White: A minority bias in categorizations of Black-White multiracials

“…Hypodescent served as a legal mechanism to deny part-Black multiracial persons the rights and privileges that were exclusively afforded to monoracial Whites (see Davis, 1991). Many recent studies have shown that perceivers engage in hypodescent when categorizing Black-White multiracial individuals in that they categorize them as Black more often than as White (Cooley, Brown-Iannuzzi, Brown, & Polikoff, 2017;Freeman, Pauker, & Sanchez, 2016;Gaither, Pauker, Slepian, & Sommers, 2016;Ho, Sidanius, Levin, & Banaji, 2011;Ho, Sidanius, Cuddy, & Banaji, 2013;Krosch & Amodio, 2014;Krosch, Bernsen, Amodio, Jost, & Van Bavel, 2013;Peery & Bodenhausen, 2008, Experiment 1;. Thus, from the existing social psychological literature, one could conclude that multiracial individuals are categorized according to the rule of hypodescent.…”