Their Type
The policy basis of group sentiments
Scott Clifford, Elizabeth Simas & JeongKyu Suh
Political Science Research and Methods, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although influential models of public opinion hold that group sentiments play an important role in shaping political beliefs, they often assume that group attitudes stem from socialization and are thus exogenous to politics. We challenge this assumption, arguing that group attitudes may themselves be the consequence of political views. Across three survey experiments that each uses a unique social group–issue pair, we consistently demonstrate that attitudes toward groups are influenced by information about the groups' policy views. These findings persist even when accounting for potential partisan signaling. Altogether, these results show that group sentiments should not be regarded as wholly exogenous to policy concerns and suggest that the use of group-based heuristics can be consistent with instrumental models of public opinion.
Looking White But Feeling Asian: The Role of Perceived Membership Permeability and Perceived Discrimination in Multiracial-Monoracial Alliances
Wilson Merrell et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Relatively little is known about the extent to which multiracial people stand in solidarity with their parent groups. Here, we draw from social identity theory to examine predictors of Asian-White multiracial people’s solidarity with Asian and White people, Asian monoracial people’s meta-perceptions of these solidarity levels, and consequences of these meta-perceptions for intergroup relations. Studies 1a–b show that Asian-White multiracial people stand in solidarity more strongly with Asian people than White people, especially when they perceive high levels of anti-Asian discrimination, and even when they believe they physically look White. Studies 2a–b demonstrate that Asian monoracial people incorrectly believe that physically White-looking Asian-White multiracial people stand in solidarity more strongly with White people, and these pessimistic meta-perceptions are associated with more rejection of multiracial people. Study 3 provides a causal link between meta-perceptions and rejection while providing preliminary evidence that correcting these solidarity meta-perceptions can improve intergroup attitudes.
Is gender primacy universal?
Ashley Martin et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 27 August 2024
Abstract:
Emerging evidence suggests that gender is a defining feature of personhood. Studies show that gender is the primary social category individuals use to perceive humanness and the social category most strongly related to seeing someone -- or something -- as human. However, the universality of gender’s primacy in social perception and its precedence over other social categories like race and age have been debated. We examined the primacy of gender perception in the Mayangna community of Nicaragua, a population with minimal exposure to Western influences, to test whether the primacy of gender categorization in humanization is more likely to be a culturally specific construct or a cross-cultural and potentially universal phenomenon. Consistent with findings from North American populations [A. E. Martin, M. F. Mason, J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 123, 292–315 (2022)], the Mayangna ascribed gender to nonhuman objects more strongly than any other social category -- including age, race, sexual orientation, disability, and religion -- and gender was the only social category that uniquely predicted perceived humanness (i.e., the extent to which a nonhuman entity was seen as “human”). This pattern persisted even in the most isolated subgroup of the sample, who had no exposure to Western culture or media. The present results thus suggest that gender’s primacy in social cognition is a widely generalizable, and potentially universal, phenomenon.
Children’s social preference for peers engaged in brilliance-required activities: The impact of gender and race
Vanessa Lazaro & Lin Bian
Developmental Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Women’s underrepresentation in academic fields and professions emphasizing high intellectual talents persists as a prominent societal issue. To explore early antecedents of this gender imbalance, the present study investigated the developmental changes in children’s social preference of boys and girls who pursue brilliance-required (vs. effort-required) activities. Importantly, we took an intersectional perspective to explore whether children consider target race in their social preference. Five- to 9-year-old U.S. children (N = 207; Mage = 7.53; 104 girls and 103 boys; 48% White) were presented with pairs of Asian, Black, and White characters matched in gender. One character was depicted as enjoying a game requiring high intellectual talents and the other enjoyed a game requiring effort. Participants were then asked to choose the character that they liked more, as an indicator of their social preference. With age, children became increasingly likely to prefer White boys and girls of color (i.e., Black and Asian girls) pursuing activities requiring brilliance (vs. activities requiring effort). In contrast, children did not develop increasing social preference for White girls or boys of color who opt in for brilliance-required activities. Our data suggest that, as early as elementary school years, children’s social preference in contexts valuing sheer brilliance becomes both gendered and racialized. These findings highlight the importance of using an intersectional approach to identify the specific developmental processes that contribute to social disparities in brilliance-required contexts.
Recent Increases in Vegetarianism May Be Limited to Women: A 15-Year Study of Young Adults at an American University
John Nezlek & Catherine Forestell
Sex Roles, September 2024, Pages 1234–1243
Abstract:
The present study examined changes in the rates of vegetarianism among a sample of young American adults. Over 15 years, students at an American university (N = 12,704) described their dietary habits. Multilevel modeling analyses (participants nested within semesters) found that overall, the percentage of vegetarians increased over time, whereas the percentage of omnivores decreased over time; however, these changes occurred only for women. The dietary habits of men did not change over time. In a second study, in a sample of 363 adult vegetarians from the US, we found that women were more likely than men to become vegetarians due to concerns about the ethics of raising animals for food and eating them, suggesting that increased societal concern about animal rights may be responsible in part for the gender differences over time in vegetarianism. These results extend existing research on gender differences and suggest that if current trends continue, gender differences in vegetarianism may be more pronounced in the future.
A 30-nation investigation of lay heritability beliefs
Laura Ferris et al.
Public Understanding of Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Lay beliefs about human trait heritability are consequential for cooperation and social cohesion, yet there has been no global characterisation of these beliefs. Participants from 30 countries (N = 6128) reported heritability beliefs for intelligence, personality, body weight and criminality, and transnational factors that could influence these beliefs were explored using public nation-level data. Globally, mean lay beliefs differ from published heritability (h2) estimated by twin studies, with a worldwide majority overestimating the heritability of personality and intelligence, and underestimating body weight and criminality. Criminality was seen as substantially less attributable to genes than other traits. People from countries with high infant mortality tended to ascribe greater heritability for most traits, relative to people from low infant mortality countries. This study provides the first systematic foray into worldwide lay heritability beliefs. Future research must incorporate diverse global perspectives to further contextualise and extend upon these findings.
AI generates covertly racist decisions about people based on their dialect
Valentin Hofmann et al.
Nature, 5 September 2024, Pages 147–154
Abstract:
Hundreds of millions of people now interact with language models, with uses ranging from help with writing to informing hiring decisions. However, these language models are known to perpetuate systematic racial prejudices, making their judgements biased in problematic ways about groups such as African Americans. Although previous research has focused on overt racism in language models, social scientists have argued that racism with a more subtle character has developed over time, particularly in the United States after the civil rights movement. It is unknown whether this covert racism manifests in language models. Here, we demonstrate that language models embody covert racism in the form of dialect prejudice, exhibiting raciolinguistic stereotypes about speakers of African American English (AAE) that are more negative than any human stereotypes about African Americans ever experimentally recorded. By contrast, the language models’ overt stereotypes about African Americans are more positive. Dialect prejudice has the potential for harmful consequences: language models are more likely to suggest that speakers of AAE be assigned less-prestigious jobs, be convicted of crimes and be sentenced to death. Finally, we show that current practices of alleviating racial bias in language models, such as human preference alignment, exacerbate the discrepancy between covert and overt stereotypes, by superficially obscuring the racism that language models maintain on a deeper level. Our findings have far-reaching implications for the fair and safe use of language technology.
I’ll Take Gender Differences for $400: Using Jeopardy! to Analyze Attitudes Toward Risk
Michael Leeds & Eva Marikova Leeds
Eastern Economic Journal, June 2024, Pages 374–399
Abstract:
Studies have shown that women perform worse than men in winner-take-all competitions and often avoid such settings entirely, which could put women at a significant disadvantage in the labor market. Recent research, however, has challenged this view. One problem with testing for risk averse behavior is the difficulty of finding settings in which people can display it. We find such a setting in the Final Jeopardy segment of the game show Jeopardy! Using data on wagers in Final Jeopardy, we show that women who compete on the show are no more risk averse than men.
Perceiving Others Through a Screen: Are First Impressions of Personality Accurate and Normative via Videoconferencing?
Marie-Catherine Mignault et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
The use of videoconferencing platforms has globally risen to facilitate face-to-face communication since the onset of COVID-19. But how do our first impressions of people we meet on Zoom compare to in-person interactions? Specifically, do we view others’ personalities as accurately (in line with their unique personality) and normatively (in line with the average, desirable personality) as in-person? Across two Zoom first-impression round-robin studies (exploratory study: N = 567, Dyads = 3,053; preregistered replication: N = 371, Dyads = 1,961), which we compared to an in-person round-robin study (N = 306; Dyads = 1,682), people viewed others’ personalities as accurately and as normatively on Zoom as in-person. Moreover, people better liked interaction partners they viewed more accurately and normatively. However, in interactions of poorer audio-video quality, people viewed others less accurately, less normatively, and liked them less. Overall, through a screen, our impressions of others are as accurate and normative as face-to-face, but it depends on the quality of that screen.
Human Male Body Size Predicts Increased Knockout Power, Which Is Accurately Tracked by Conspecific Judgments of Male Dominance
Neil Caton et al.
Human Nature, June 2024, Pages 114–133
Abstract:
Humans have undergone a long evolutionary history of violent agonistic exchanges, which would have placed selective pressures on greater body size and the psychophysical systems that detect them. The present work showed that greater body size in humans predicted increased knockout power during combative contests (Study 1a-1b: total N = 5,866; Study 2: N = 44 openweight fights). In agonistic exchanges reflective of ancestral size asymmetries, heavier combatants were 200% more likely to win against their lighter counterparts because they were 200% more likely to knock them out (Study 2). Human dominance judgments (total N = 500 MTurkers) accurately tracked the frequency with which men (N = 516) knocked out similar-sized adversaries (Study 3). Humans were able to directly perceive a man’s knockout power because they were attending to cues of a man’s body size. Human dominance judgments -- which are important across numerous psychological domains, including attractiveness, leadership, and legal decision-making -- accurately predict the likelihood with which a potential mate, ally, or rival can incapacitate their adversaries.