Racial Cues Research Articles

Individuating and categorizing faces: The other-race effect is reduced by attending to racial but not identity cues

ABSTRACT According to social-cognitive accounts, the other-race effect in face recognition is driven by our tendency to attend to identity cues when encoding own-race faces (“individuation”) and racial cues when encoding other-race faces (“categorization”). This study employed novel one-back tasks to ensure that participants processed identity (individuation) or racial cues (categorization) when learning faces in an old/new recognition task. Categorization encoding eliminated the other-race effect in recognition sensitivity when list length was short (Experiment 2) but not when list length was long (Experiment 1B). Importantly, this elimination was driven by weaker performance for own-race faces, rather than stronger performance for other-race faces. Individuation encoding failed to reduce the other-race effect, regardless of list length (Experiment 1A and Experiment 2). We compare these findings with previous studies and propose several methodological features (e.g., presentation duration, task difficulty) that might influence the observed impacts of individuation and categorization encoding on the other-race effect.

The neural mechanisms of race priming in American politics

Abstract What are the psychological mechanisms of racial “dog whistles” in American politics? Literature on race priming in American politics argues when race is primed implicitly, racial biases influence political evaluations, but when race is made salient, individuals can use controlled processing to inhibit automatic biases and abide by egalitarian norms. However, the neural mechanisms underlying these processes have yet to be examined directly. In a 2 × 2 within-groups experiment using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we examine these neural mechanisms. We find brain areas associated with conflict detection, evaluative processing, and controlled processing are more active when race is primed explicitly rather than implicitly, as expected, although we do not find substantial brain activation associated with automatic responses to be more active during implicit than explicit primes. Results are discussed in terms of understanding how racial cues influence political evaluations while considering America’s ever-changing racial norms.

Supplemental Material for Communicating Nonviolence Messages: Effects of Racial Cues and Message Format on Black Parents’ Message Credibility Perceptions and Behavioral Change

Supplemental Material for Communicating Nonviolence Messages: Effects of Racial Cues and Message Format on Black Parents’ Message Credibility Perceptions and Behavioral Change

Interactive effects of participant and stimulus race on cognitive performance in youth: Insights from the ABCD study

An extensive literature shows that race information can impact cognitive performance. Two key findings include an attentional bias to Black racial cues in U.S. samples and diminished recognition of other-race faces compared to same-race faces in predominantly White adult samples. Yet face stimuli are increasingly used in psychological research often unrelated to race (Conley et al., 2018) or without consideration for how race information may influence cognitive performance, especially among developmental participants from different racial groups. In the current study we used open-access data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive DevelopmentSM (ABCD) Study® 4.0.1 release to test for developmentally similar other- and same-race effects of Black and White face stimuli on attention, working memory, and recognition memory in 9- and 10-year-old Black and White children (n=5,659) living in the U.S. Black and White children showed better performance when attending to Black versus White faces. We also show an advantage in recognition memory of same-race compared to other-race faces in White children that did not generalize to Black children. Together the findings highlight how race information, even when irrelevant to an experiment, may indirectly lead to misinterpretation of group differences in cognitive performance in children of different racial backgrounds.

Audit Experiments of Racial Discrimination and the Importance of Symmetry in Exposure to Cues

Abstract Researchers are often interested in whether discrimination on the basis of racial cues persists above and beyond discrimination on the basis of nonracial attributes that decision makers—e.g., employers and legislators—infer from such cues. We show that existing audit experiments may be unable to parse these mechanisms because of an asymmetry in when decision makers are exposed to cues of race and additional signals intended to rule out discrimination due to other attributes. For example, email audit experiments typically cue race via the name in the email address, at which point legislators can choose to open the email, but cue other attributes in the body of the email, which decision makers can be exposed to only after opening the email. We derive the bias resulting from this asymmetry and then propose two distinct solutions for email audit experiments. The first exposes decision makers to all cues before the decision to open. The second crafts the email to ensure no discrimination in opening and then exposes decision makers to all cues in the body of the email after opening. This second solution works without measures of opening, but can be improved when researchers do measure opening, even if with error.

Clinicians’ perspectives on race-specific guidelines for hypertensive treatment

Despite the general consensus that there is no biological basis to race, racial categorization is still used by clinicians to guide diagnosis and treatment plans for certain diseases. In medicine, race is commonly used as a rough proxy for unmeasured social, environmental, and genetic factors. The American College of Cardiology's Eighth Joint National Committee's (JNC 8) guidelines for the treatment of hypertension provide race-specific medication recommendations for Black versus non-Black patients, without strong evidence for race-specific physiological differences in drug response. Clinicians practicing family or geriatric medicine (n = 21) were shown a video of a mock hypertensive patient with genetic ancestry test results that could be viewed as discordant with their phenotype and self-identified race. After viewing the videos, we conducted in-depth interviews to examine how clinicians value and prioritize different cues about race -- namely genetic ancestry data, phenotypic appearance, and self-identified racial classifications – when making treatment decisions in the context of race-specific guidelines, particularly in situations when patients claim mixed-race or complex racial identities. Results indicate that clinicians inconsistently follow the race-specific guidelines for patients whose genetic ancestry test results do not match neatly with their self-identified race or phenotypic features. However, many clinicians also emphasized the importance of clinical experience, side effects, and other factors in their decision making. Clinicians' definitions of race, categorization of the patient's race, and prioritization of racial cues greatly varied. The existence of the race-specific guidelines clearly influences treatment decisions, even as clinicians' express uncertainty about how to incorporate consideration of a patient's genetic ancestry. In light of widespread debate about removal of race from medical diagnostics, researchers should revisit the clinical justification for maintaining these race-specific guidelines. Based on our findings and prior studies indicating a lack of convincing evidence for biological differences by race in medication response, we suggest removing race from the JNC 8 guidelines to avoid risk of perpetuating or exacerbating health disparities in hypertension.

38 Impacts of Racial Discrimination on Cognitive and Affective Processes and Drug-Cue Reactivity

OBJECTIVES/GOALS: Our overarching aim is to examine, in an African American population, cognitive, affective, and neurophysiological processes, as well as risk-taking behavior, in response to racial stigma cues. While accounting for individual differences, we aim to see how these processes and drug-cue reactivity are impacted or altered by exposure to racial cues. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: Participants will be African Americans between 18 and 25 years of age, equally distributed across genders. We will recruit 75 participants in order to have adequate power to conduct our intended analyses—particularly pertaining to individual differences in risk behavior outcomes. Participants will be asked to complete demographic and self-report questionnaires. Participants will also be asked to complete computerized tasks while their physiological responses (heart rate, skin conductance, and electroencephalographic (EEG) data) are recorded. The tasks are as follow: resting, gambling, go/no-go, picture viewing (positive, negative, and neutral images), and a drug cue image set. These tasks will be repeated after the participant views a racial stigma image set to evaluate the impact of discrimination. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: Data from 18 participants has been collected. Data will be periodically preprocessed and validated (e.g., 1 participant was removed due to data recording errors, so the current valid Nis 17). Generally, we anticipate that behaviors and neural activity will be modulated across all tasks after viewing the racial stigma image set. Specifically, (a) cognitive and affective processing of singular events of racial stigma may indicate a stress response, (b) modulation from chronic experiences of racial stigma render neural systems increasingly sensitive to stigma cues, and thereby less equipped to regulate stress response, (c) the impact of these processes on altering risk behavior (may increase such behaviors), and (d) the impact of these modulations on altering drug-cue reactivity (may amplify reactivity). DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE: The study will identify factors that contribute to stress and risk behavior among African Americans. A substantial gap continues to exist regarding the nature of risk behavior among African Americans, despite the fact that African Americans represent a health disparity population with unique vulnerabilities to health-relevant risk behavior.

Biracial Faces Offer Visual Cues of Successful Intergroup Contact: Genetic Admixture and Coalition Detection.

This research explores how biracial facial cues affect racial perception and social judgment. We tested a coalition-signaling hypothesis of biracial cues in two studies conducted in the United States (n = 227) and China (n = 116). From the perspective of intergroup and interpersonal relations theories in social psychology, biracial features would likely be perceived as cues of threat or resource competition. In contrast, we propose an evolutionary hypothesis that biracial facial cues reveal the ancestral history of intergroup alliances between members of two races or ethnic groups. When racial cues are mixed, we predict that biracial individuals may be viewed more positively than other-race or even own-race members who often compete for limited ingroup resources. The participants observed facial images that ranged from 100% Asian to 100% Caucasian, including morphed biracial composites of 30%, 40%, 50%, 60%, and 70% Caucasian or Asian. The participants evaluated each image regarding perceived Caucasianness (Asianness), attractiveness, trustworthiness, health, intelligence, and career prospects. The US and Chinese samples yielded a similar pattern of own-race bias in racial perception and biracial favoritism in social judgment. The social judgment ratings were not correlated with the racial perception scores and were independent of the sex of the participants or biracial images, indicating a coalitional motive, instead of a mating motive, underlying social perception of biracial individuals. Overall, the results suggest that biracial facial features signal a successful genetic admixture and coalition in parental generations and thus increase the trustworthiness and cooperative potential of a biracial person.

Racializing Accents: The Impact of Language and Racial Cues on Intergroup Communicative Outcomes

This study reports the results of an experiment ( N = 502) investigating how speakers are socially categorized based on accent (Standard American English [SAE] or Nigerian) and race (White or Black) separately and concurrently, as well as the intergroup outcomes of such categorizations as mediated by language attitudes (status, solidary, and dynamism). Findings revealed that SAE-accented speakers were evaluated more favorably than Nigerian-accented speakers on status. Status also mediated the relationship between accent and (a) symbolic threat and (b) social distance. Additionally, Black males were rated higher on solidarity and dynamism than White males. Finally, status mediated the combined effect of the speaker’s race and accent on symbolic threat, intergroup anxiety, and social distance. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Strength in diversity: How incongruent racial cues enhance consumer preferences toward conservative brands

A growing number of brands utilize political stances and ideological beliefs to communicate their image to customers. In examining how a brand’s ideological stance might impact consumer preferences, the current research examines how a persuasive appeal can be more effective when it provides cues which are incongruent with a brand’s perceived political ideology. Five studies show that conservative brands can enhance consumer attitudes, purchase intentions, and brand choice by using dark brown (versus pale white or yellow) skin-toned messaging cues such as emojis in their social media messages. These racial cues, which are incongruent with the in-group preferences associated with conservativism, increase a consumer’s willingness to advocate for the brand. Furthermore, this effect is mitigated if the social media message includes excessive cues or if the message is a paid promotion. Practical implications for marketing and social media strategies are provided.

The Black Lives Matter movement and African American entrepreneurs’ crowdfunding success

This paper examines two aspects of African American restauranteurs—their crowdfunding performance and how such performance has been impacted by the Black Lives Matter movement. More than any other racial group, African American entrepreneurs face challenges securing funds from conventional financial institutions. A welcome addition to the pool of fundraising sources is crowdfunding, a new fintech option. Using binomial logistic regression, we analyzed all of the restaurant crowdfunding projects on Kickstarter.com, dating from 2010 to 2020. Drawing on aversive racism theory and value-belief-norm theory, we uncovered the finding that restaurant crowdfunding projects with African American racial cues were significantly less successful getting funded than their non-African American counterparts. However, the Black Lives Matter movement and the Kickstarter’s endorsement of the movement have significantly increased African American restauranteurs’ crowdfunding success.

Racial and gender stereotypes in immigration attitudes: evidence from China

ABSTRACT How do racial and gender stereotypes affect immigration attitudes? Studies on this topic have focused primarily on developed rather than developing countries. To close the gap, we explore the phenomenon in China, a developing economy that is evolving from a source of emigration to a destination of immigration with its citizens having little direct experience with immigrants. Via two waves of survey experiments with over 4,000 respondents, we find that gender cues of female immigrants increase public approval of immigration and liberal immigration policies, while racial cues of Black immigrants discourage them. Further analysis reveals that gender bias is likely the product of sociopsychological concerns over cultural threats and that racial bias stems from concerns over public safety. Our findings contribute to the literature on the racial stratification and discrimination of immigrants in the context of developing countries.

Who Are You and What Are You Selling? Creator-Based and Product-Based Racial Cues in Crowdfunding

The display of personal information in crowdfunding campaigns is vital for facilitating trust; however, this information often communicates the racial identity of the fundraiser. We study the relationship between racial cues and crowdfunding success. Using data from more than 100,000 projects gathered from Kickstarter.com, we categorized racial cues as creator-based versus product-based. For each category, we derived racial cues in two different mediums: photo vs. textual. We used propensity score matching to estimate the effects of racial identity across racial groups, categories, and mediums. We found that the category of racial cues is associated with crowdfunding success. Projects with either creator-based or product-based cues of African American identity had lower success rates. In contrast, creator-based cues of Asian identity were associated with lower levels of success whereas product-based cues were associated with increased success. Furthermore, when product-based cues and creator-based cues were misaligned, we found that the outcomes more closely followed those associated with product-based cues, suggesting that backers are more attuned to product attributes. Our results also suggest that racial anonymity correlates with higher success rates, as compared to African American and Asian racial cues. Our study contributes to the understanding of racial identity on digital platforms across multiple contexts, mediums, and racial groups.

A Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Analysis of News Construction of the Flint Water Crisis

<bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Background:</b> News media play a critical role in communicating risks and shaping public perceptions of social issues. Covering a multilayered disaster that grew from a local story to a national one, the ways that news media at different levels construct the Flint water crisis have not been previously explored. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Literature review:</b> Despite the well-established role of journalism as a government watchdog, news media do not neutrally mirror every social event. Instead, news reporting, highly mediated by language, is filled with political interests, values, and attitudes. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Research questions:</b> 1. How did local/regional and national newspapers construct the Flint water crisis? 2. Are there any similarities and/or differences in local/regional and national news construction of the Flint water crisis? 3. What are the practical implications for media coverage of risks, emergencies, or crises? 4. What are the methodological implications of this study for professional communication research? <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Methodology:</b> This study integrates corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis to analyze 1858 news reports about the Flint water crisis published between 2014 and 2018. I use keywords as a core analytical technique to compare the local/regional and national news coverage. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Results:</b> The results show that both local and national news reports overemphasized government activities while downplaying the unofficial voices of Flint residents and community activists. In addition, national newspapers were more likely than local newspapers to use racial cues in describing the Flint community and to associate the crisis with other social problems. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Conclusions:</b> This study suggests that news media should provide wide coverage of the affected community's efforts in risk/crisis communication rather than reproducing official messages. News representations should be cautious of strengthening stereotypes or forming negative conceptual associations of traditionally disenfranchised communities.

Prize or Penalty? Reputational Effects of Diversity Scholarships in the Labor Market

Many universities and companies use diversity scholarships and pipeline programs to achieve recruiting goals and engage in diversity-related impression management. In contrast to more explicitly race-targeted affirmative action measures, these contemporary diversity initiatives tend to emphasize merit and conceptualize “contributions to diversity” in a broad, race-neutral manner. This paper investigates the reputational effects of diversity scholarships for recent college graduates seeking entry-level jobs. Using a national audit study, I compare the rate at which employers call back applicants with diversity scholarships, applicants with other types of merit scholarships, and applicants with no scholarships at all. I also examine how the scholarship signals differ when applicant names have a Black racial cue versus a White racial cue. I find that while diversity scholarships and non-diversity merit scholarships provide similar reputational benefits for putatively White applicants, Black diversity scholarship winners are called back by employers at a similar rate as Black applicants without scholarships. The reputational boost of the non-diversity scholarship is also smaller for Black applicants than it is for White applicants. The findings contribute to our understanding of how organizational diversity policies shape inequality and illustrate the importance of examining individual-level effects of diversity practices in addition to organizational-level outcomes.

Voter Evaluations of Biracial-Identified Political Candidates

Today, identity expression and acceptance represent an important area of political advocacy and representation. Yet, how responsive are voters to new racial identity cues promoted by political leaders? Using candidates with interracial backgrounds as a case study, we assess whether voters are responsive to candidates who assert a mixed-race identity or if voters primarily rely on other traits, such as the candidate’s family background, in determining their support of that candidate. Using an experimental design, this study presents participants with various hypothetical candidates who vary both in their racial heritages (i.e., candidates with Asian and White interracial parents or Black and White interracial parents) and identity choices (i.e., as single-race minority, single-race White, or biracial). We then compare how the mixed-race, single-race minority, and White participants evaluate the candidate. We expect that the mixed-race participants will be most supportive of candidates who signal a common in-group identity by identifying specifically as “biracial”. On the other hand, the single-race minority and White participants should be more likely to adhere to the one-drop rule or hypodescent in their evaluations, meaning they will provide more positive evaluations of interracial candidates who identify as a single-race minority. Our study finds that the single-race minority and White participants completely overlook racial identity cues and instead focus on the description of the candidate’s family heritage along with their own assumptions about hypodescent. The mixed-race participants, on the other hand, show strong support for biracial-identified, in-group political candidates This study adds to a burgeoning literature on racial perception and on political representation.

Exploring college students’ assessments of racially-coded language

ABSTRACT Political scientists have examined racially-coded language for decades, particularly as such language relates to policies impacting African Americans. This research builds on that foundation, by considering how such language is interpreted by college students. College students represent an important population because their political attitudes are somewhat malleable and colleges and universities are typically somewhat diverse in terms of both instruction and student demographics. We, therefore, use a survey administered via Qualtrics to a convenience sample of college students representing five universities to assess how the college experience influences how students perceive racially-coded language. While we expect those students that are involved on campus and those that have been on campus longer to respond more negatively toward negative racial cues, our analysis provides mixed results and raises questions for further research.

Institutional Racial Representation and Equity Gaps in College Graduation

ABSTRACT College graduation rates for racially minoritized students are adversely affected by structural barriers and hostile campus racial climates, which lead to notable equity gaps within and across institutions. Theory and prior literature suggest that the representation of racially minoritized students and instructors may play a role in shaping these disparities, but the evidence to date is limited and has yielded divergent findings. Therefore, the present study directly explored the link between the representation of several minoritized racial groups and equity gaps in six-year graduation rates. The results indicate that same-race representation and the representation of students and instructors from other racially minoritized groups were associated with greater racial equity in graduation outcomes; in fact, no Black-White and Latinx-White gaps were present when Black or Latinx students, respectively, comprised at least half of undergraduates at that institution. Moreover, these patterns occurred predominantly at institutions with virtually no fully online students, which suggests the importance of face-to-face interactions that facilitate situational racial cues and interpersonal experiences that may foster success for racially minoritized students.

Prize or Penalty? The Reputational Effects of Diversity Scholarships in the Labor Market (WITHDRAWN)

Many universities and companies have used diversity scholarships and pipeline programs to achieve organizational diversity goals. These programs target high-achieving members of underrepresented groups by offering them additional opportunities and resources. At the same time, however, these initiatives publicly identify their recipients as targets of affirmative action efforts, which can be stigmatizing. This paper investigates the reputational effects of diversity scholarships for recent college graduates seeking entry-level jobs. Using a multi-city audit study, I compare the rate at which employers call back applicants with diversity scholarships, applicants with other types of merit scholarships, and applicants with no scholarships at all. I also examine how the scholarship signals differ when applicant names have a Black racial cue versus a white racial cue. I find that while putatively white applicants with diversity scholarships and non-diversity merit scholarships receive more callbacks than white applicants without scholarships, putatively Black applicants do not receive similar benefits from either type of scholarship. Black diversity scholarship winners are treated more similarly to Black applicants without scholarships than Black applicants with non-diversity merit scholarships. The findings illustrate the importance of examining individual-level effects of diversity practices in addition to organizational-level outcomes.

Visual Framing Effects of News Coverage of Police Use of Deadly Force on Intergroup Relationships

The study examines the effects of visual framing in news coverage of law enforcement use of lethal force. In a 2X2 online experiment, participants read one of four versions of a news story that included visual racial cues (images depicting a Black vs. a White victim) and a delinquent/normative frame—depicting the victim wearing attire that signifies either normative or delinquent behavior (regalia vs. a hooded sweatshirt). Both race and delinquency framing influenced the readers’ stereotype endorsement and feelings toward Black Americans. However, judgment of the police officer’s behavior solely depended on the victim’s race. These findings demonstrate the importance of imagery accompanying news reporting on social issues in activating and intensifying White-centered intergroup biases. Implications for responsible journalistic practices are discussed.