Abstract
Multiracial individuals represent a growing segment of the population and have been increasingly the focus of empirical study. Much of this research centers on the perception and racial categorization of multiracial individuals. The current paper reviews some of this research and describes the different types of stimuli that have been used in these paradigms. We describe the strengths and weaknesses associated with different operationalizations of multiracialism and highlight the dearth of research using faces of real multiracial individuals, which we posit may be due to the lack of available stimuli. Our research seeks to satisfy this need by providing a free set of high-resolution, standardized images featuring 88 real multiracial individuals along with extensive norming data and objective physical measures of these faces. These data are offered as an extension of the widely used Chicago Face Database and are available for download at www.chicagofaces.org for use in research.
Highlights
The prevalence of individuals who identify as multiracial in the United States has risen steadily over the past several decades
The U.S Census Bureau reports that individuals indicating more than one race rose from 6.8 million in 2000 to 9 million in 2010; by 2050, 1 in 5 Americans is expected to identify as multiracial (Farley, 2001)
Studying multiracials raises important and novel theoretical questions for social psychologists interested in social categorization, trait ascription, and evaluation, as well as for cognitive psychologists, who have had a longstanding interest in the mental representation of categories and category learning
Summary
The prevalence of individuals who identify as multiracial in the United States has risen steadily over the past several decades. Even though researchers traditionally use average faces (e.g., 50% Black, 50% White) for biracial stimuli, the researcher could select a target anywhere along the morphed continuum (e.g., 16% Asian, 84% Black) This degree of control has obvious value to experimenters seeking to maximize internal validity by manipulating stimulus features with precision. Researchers have used computer-generated faces to study racial categorization and stereotyping of both monoracial (Gaither et al, 2019; Hugenberg & Bodenhausen, 2003) and biracial targets (e.g., Gaither et al, 2019; Pauker et al, 2009) These stimuli could conceivably be produced in any number of ways, but FaceGen Modeller (Singular Inversions, 2003) appears to be the most widely adopted software application used in the literature. We plan to examine the physical measurement and norming data to uncover the physical features that describe the natural variation among multiracial faces through factor analysis and explore associations between perceived multiracialism and subjective ratings of the faces using correlational analyses
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