Fluency of visual processing explains prejudiced evaluations following categorization of concealable identities

Gender-Ambiguous Voices and Social Disfluency

Recently, gender-ambiguous (nonbinary) voices have been added to voice assistants to combat gender stereotypes and foster inclusion. However, if people react negatively to such voices, these laudable efforts may be counterproductive. In five preregistered studies (N = 3,684 adult participants) we found that people do react negatively, rating products described by narrators with gender-ambiguous voices less favorably than when they are described by clearly male or female narrators. The voices create a feeling of unease, or social disfluency, that affects evaluations of the products being described. These effects are best explained by low familiarity with voices that sound ambiguous. Thus, initial negative reactions can be overcome with more exposure.

Feminist Social Vision: Seeing Through the Lens of Marginalized Perceivers

Social vision research, which examines, in part, how humans visually perceive social stimuli, is well-positioned to improve understandings of social inequality. However, social vision research has rarely prioritized the perspectives of marginalized group members. We offer a theoretical argument for diversifying understandings of social perceptual processes by centering marginalized perspectives. We examine (a) how social vision researchers frame their research questions and who these framings prioritize and (b) how perceptual processes (person perception; people perception; perception of social objects) are linked to group membership and thus comprehensively understanding these processes necessitates attention to marginalized perceivers. We discuss how social vision research translates into theoretical advances and to action for reducing negative intergroup consequences (e.g., prejudice). The purpose of this article is to delineate how prioritizing marginalized perspectives in social vision research could develop novel questions, bridge theoretical gaps, and elevate social vision's translational impact to improve outcomes for marginalized groups.

One Fee, Two Fees; Red Fee, Blue Fee: People Use the Valence of Others’ Speech in Social Relational Judgments

We present an empirical demonstration that people rely on linguistic valence as a direct cue to a speaker’s group membership. Members of the U.S. voting public judge positive words as more likely to be spoken by members of their political in-group, and negative words as more likely to be spoken by members of their political out-group (three studies with 655 participants). We further find that participants perceive pluralized forms of nouns as more extremely valenced than singular forms (one study with 280 participants). This allowed us to control for the semantic content of words while eliciting systematic differences in the source attributions made by partisans. Our work contributes to both theory and methodology used to understand the linguistic cues people use to make social relational judgments.

Folk theories of gender and anti-transgender attitudes: Gender differences and policy preferences

Transgender rights and discrimination against transgender people are growing public policy issues. Theorizing from social, cognitive, and evolutionary psychology suggests that beyond attitudes, discrimination against transgender people may derive from folk theories about what gender is and where it comes from. Transgender identity is met with hostility, in part, because it poses a challenge to the lay view that gender is determined at birth, and based on observable physical and behavioral characteristics. Here, in two pre-registered studies (N = 1323), we asked American adults to indicate the gender of a transgender target who either altered their biology through surgical interventions or altered their outward appearance: to what extent is it their birth-assigned gender or their self-identified gender? Responses correlate strongly with affect toward transgender people, measured by feeling thermometers, yet predict views on transgender people’s right to use their preferred bathrooms above and beyond feelings. Compared to male participants, female participants judge the person’s gender more in line with the self-identified gender than the birth-assigned gender. This is consistent with social and psychological theories that posit high status (e.g., men) and low status (e.g., women) members of social classification systems view group hierarchies in more and less essentialist ways respectively. Gender differences in gender category beliefs decrease with religiosity and conservatism, and are smaller in higher age groups. These results suggest that folk theories of gender, or beliefs about what gender is and how it is determined have a unique role in how transgender people are viewed and treated. Moreover, as evident by the demographic variability of gender category beliefs, folk theories are shaped by social and cultural forces and are amenable to interventions. They offer an alternative pathway to measure policy support and possibly change attitude toward transgender people.

Physical Androgyny and Categorization Difficulty Shape Political Conservatives’ Attitudes Toward Transgender People

Researchers have recently begun to examine how categorization processes impact social evaluations. In two studies, we examined how sex categorization influences attitudes toward transgender individuals. We found that people evaluated transgender individuals more negatively if they possessed physically androgynous (vs. sex-typical) characteristics because they struggled to identify their sex. These relationships were stronger among political conservatives compared to individuals with more liberal political views. These findings provide new insights for research on attitudes toward gender minorities and for the role of political ideology in social judgments.

Looking the part (to me): effects of racial prototypicality on race perception vary by prejudice

Less racially prototypic faces elicit more category competition during race categorization. Top-down factors (e.g. stereotypes), however, affect categorizations, suggesting racial prototypicality may enhance category competition in certain perceivers. Here, we examined how prejudice affects race category competition and stabilization when perceiving faces varying in racial prototypicality. Prototypically low vs high Black relative to White faces elicited more category competition and slower response latencies during categorization (Experiment 1), suggesting a pronounced racial prototypicality effect on minority race categorization. However, prejudice predicted the extent of category competition between prototypically low vs high Black faces. Suggesting more response conflict toward less prototypic Black vs White faces, anterior cingulate cortex activity increased toward Black vs White faces as they decreased in racial prototypicality, with prejudice positively predicting this difference (Experiment 2). These findings extend the literature on racial prototypicality and categorization by showing that relative prejudice tempers the extent of category competition and response conflict engaged when initially perceiving faces.

O Sotaque Estadunidense Representa uma Vantagem em Decisões de Emprego no Brasil?

Resumo O objetivo deste estudo foi examinar a relação entre o sotaque de um candidato a uma vaga de trabalho hipotética, bem como suas características pessoais (competência percebida e cordialidade), e os julgamentos relacionados ao desempenho deste no trabalho pretendido (adequação ao cargo, probabilidade de promoção e de contratação). Para tal, foi realizado um experimento com uma amostra de 304 alunos e ex-alunos de um curso de MBA em Gestão de Pessoas, de uma instituição de ensino superior sediada na cidade de São Paulo. Os resultados mostraram que, comparados a um candidato a uma vaga de trabalho brasileiro, o profissional com um sotaque estadunidense no idioma português foi mais bem avaliado em termos de adequação ao cargo, probabilidade de contratação e competência percebida. O candidato brasileiro, por sua vez, recebeu avaliações mais favoráveis em termos de probabilidade de promoção e cordialidade percebida. Uma vez que foram identificados vieses nos julgamentos relacionados ao trabalho realizados pelos participantes da pesquisa, sugere-se que as empresas busquem contratar selecionadores menos propensos a julgamentos estereotipados de candidatos a vagas de trabalho.

Homosexuality and Pro-Gay Ideology as Pathogens? Implications of a Disease-Spread Lay Model for Understanding Anti-Gay Behaviors

Negative behaviors targeting gay men and lesbians range from violent physical assault to casting a vote against gay marriage, with very different implications for those targeted. Existing accounts of such actions, however, are unable to differentially predict specific anti-gay behaviors, leaving a large theoretical hole in the literature and hindering the design of effective interventions. We propose (a) that many sexually prejudiced laypersons conceptualize homosexuality and pro-gay ideology as “contaminants” analogous to infectious pathogens and (b) that anti-gay behaviors can thus be viewed as strategic attempts to prevent, contain, treat, or eradicate the “pathogens” of homosexuality and pro-gay ideology. By considering analogues to disease-spread processes (e.g., susceptibility of specific subpopulations, inoculation procedures, prevalence in the local environment, interconnections among community members), we derive novel predictions regarding the incidence and nature of anti-gay behaviors and provide leverage for creating more tailored interventions to reduce such discrimination.

More Than Meets the Eye: Split-Second Social Perception

Recent research suggests that visual perception of social categories is shaped not only by facial features but also by higher-order social cognitive processes (e.g., stereotypes, attitudes, goals). Building on neural computational models of social perception, we outline a perspective of how multiple bottom-up visual cues are flexibly integrated with a range of top-down processes to form perceptions, and we identify a set of key brain regions involved. During this integration, 'hidden' social category activations are often triggered which temporarily impact perception without manifesting in explicit perceptual judgments. Importantly, these hidden impacts and other aspects of the perceptual process predict downstream social consequences - from politicians' electoral success to several evaluative biases - independently of the outcomes of that process.

A Perceptual Pathway to Bias: Interracial Exposure Reduces Abrupt Shifts in Real-Time Race Perception That Predict Mixed-Race Bias

In two national samples, we examined the influence of interracial exposure in one's local environment on the dynamic process underlying race perception and its evaluative consequences. Using a mouse-tracking paradigm, we found in Study 1 that White individuals with low interracial exposure exhibited a unique effect of abrupt, unstable White-Black category shifting during real-time perception of mixed-race faces, consistent with predictions from a neural-dynamic model of social categorization and computational simulations. In Study 2, this shifting effect was replicated and shown to predict a trust bias against mixed-race individuals and to mediate the effect of low interracial exposure on that trust bias. Taken together, the findings demonstrate that interracial exposure shapes the dynamics through which racial categories activate and resolve during real-time perceptions, and these initial perceptual dynamics, in turn, may help drive evaluative biases against mixed-race individuals. Thus, lower-level perceptual aspects of encounters with racial ambiguity may serve as a foundation for mixed-race prejudice.

The Interpersonal Consequences of Processing Ease

Existing theories of prejudice formation focus primarily on the contents of social cognition (stereotypes, emotions) as laying the foundation for interpersonal animus. However, recent studies have revealed that experiential cues associated with the process of social cognition may also fuel prejudice. In particular, fluency—the metacognitive ease or difficulty of processing a stimulus—has emerged as an important factor contributing to prejudice. Across diverse operational definitions and at various levels of analysis, fluent processing is associated with positive social evaluations whereas disfluent processing is associated with negative social evaluations. Here, we review this burgeoning literature and highlight continued knowledge gaps to guide the next wave of research on the social consequences of fluency.

Gendered Facial Cues Influence Race Categorizations

Race and gender categories, although long presumed to be perceived independently, are inextricably tethered in social perception due in part to natural confounding of phenotypic cues. We predicted that target gender would affect race categorizations. Consistent with this hypothesis, feminine faces compelled White categorizations, and masculine faces compelled Asian or Black categorizations of racially ambiguous targets (Study 1), monoracial targets (Study 2), and real facial photographs (Study 3). The efficiency of judgments varied concomitantly. White categorizations were rendered more rapidly for feminine, relative to masculine faces, but the opposite was true for Asian and Black categorizations (Studies 1-3). Moreover, the effect of gender on categorization efficiency was compelled by racial phenotypicality for Black targets (Study 3). Finally, when targets' race prototypicality was held constant, gender still influenced race categorizations (Study 4). These findings indicate that race categorizations are biased by presumably unrelated gender cues.

Perceptual Underpinnings of Antigay Prejudice

Psychologists have amassed robust evidence of antigay prejudice by assessing participants’ global attitudes toward sexual minorities and their reactions to behavioral descriptions of hypothetical targets. In daily interactions, however, perceivers make decisions about others’ sexual orientations based upon visible cues alone. Does antigay prejudice arise on the basis of such visual exposure, and if so, why? Three studies revealed that perceivers evaluated women they categorized as lesbians more negatively than women they categorized as straight. Moreover, prejudice against lesbian women was strongly tethered to gendered aspects of their facial appearance: Women categorized as lesbians tended to appear gender-atypical, and women who appeared gender-atypical were perceived to be unattractive, leading to prejudice. Similar findings did not emerge for men categorized as gay. As such, we argue that gendered appearance cues lay the perceptual foundation for prejudice against women, but not men, who are categorized as sexual minorities.

Why Do They Have to Flaunt it? Perceptions of Communicative Intent Predict Antigay Prejudice Based Upon Brief Exposure to Nonverbal Cues

Perceivers use gender-atypical nonverbal cues to categorize others as lesbian/gay, and the same cues help to explain the occurrence of antigay prejudice. Although these patterns replicate across recent studies, their proximal causes have received little attention. It remains unclear, for example, why the gender-atypical appearances common among sexual minority individuals arouse negative evaluations. Here, we tested whether perceptions of communicative intent—believing that targets’ visible features are deliberately enacted in order to convey aspects of their identities—may help to explain observed links between sexual orientation categorization, gender typicality, and prejudice. In Study 1, gender-atypical body motions were associated with the perception that targets were intentionally trying to communicate their identity, and perceptions of communicative intent predicted expressions of antigay prejudice. Study 2 replicated these effects with static facial images. Collectively, these findings highlight communicative intent as an important factor predicting antigay prejudice in the early moments of social perception.