Racial Cues Research Articles

Racial Cues and Racial Identity

Previous research suggests racial identity and racial cues, such as the extent to which an event is blatantly or ambiguously race-related, individually shape African American (AA) individuals’ experiences with racial discrimination (RD). However, scant attention has been paid to the interactive or transactional influences of these factors. The present study examined the direct effects of racial cues and the interactive effects of racial cues and racial identity—specifically, the extent to which AAs believe others view AAs negatively—on 78 AAs’ interpretations of and affective responses to lab-based RD. Findings revealed a direct effect of racial cues on participants’ perceptions of the event as being race-relevant and on participants’ affect. Moreover, racial identity moderated the associations between racial cues and participants’ perceptions and affective responses. These findings suggest that AAs’ experiences with RD are not homogeneous and that the interplay or transaction between racial cues and racial identity is vital in such experiences.

Race as a Bundle of Sticks: Designs that Estimate Effects of Seemingly Immutable Characteristics

Although understanding the role of race, ethnicity, and identity is central to political science, methodological debates persist about whether it is possible to estimate the effect of something immutable. At the heart of the debate is an older theoretical question: Is race best understood under an essentialist or constructivist framework? In contrast to the “immutable characteristics” or essentialist approach, we argue that race should be operationalized as a “bundle of sticks” that can be disaggregated into elements. With elements of race, causal claims may be possible using two designs: (a) studies that measure the effect of exposure to a racial cue and (b) studies that exploit within-group variation to measure the effect of some manipulable element. These designs can reconcile scholarship on race and causation and offer a clear framework for future research.

Conditioned by Race: How Race and Religion Intersect to Affect Candidate Evaluations

AbstractWhile it is becoming increasingly clear that religious cues influence voter evaluations in the United States, work examining religious cues has largely overlooked the conditioning role of race. We employed a 2 × 2 (White candidate vs. Black candidate) × (racial cues vs. no racial cues) online experiment with a national sample (N= 397; 56% white, 46% black) where participants were exposed to a fictitious congressional candidate's webpage. Results show that White participants expected the religious candidate to be more conservative, regardless of race, while Black participants did not perceive a difference in ideology between the religious and non-religious Black candidates. Additionally, when it comes to candidate favorability, religious cues matter more to White participants, while racial cues are most important to Black participants. These findings provide evidence that religious and racial cues activate different assumptions among White and Black citizens.

Colored Perceptions

Scholars are increasingly employing skin color measures to investigate racial stratification beyond the dimensions of self- or other-classification. Current understandings of the relationship between phenotypic traits, like skin color, and racial classification are incomplete. Scholars agree that perceptions of phenotypic traits shape how people classify others; it remains to be seen, however, whether racial classification in turn shapes people’s perceptions of phenotypic traits. The present study is based on an original survey experiment that tests whether assessments of others’ skin color are affected by a subtle racial cue, a name. Results indicate that skin color ratings are affected by the presence of a racially distinctive name: A significant share of people will rate the same face darker when that face is assigned a distinctively Hispanic name as opposed to a non-Hispanic name. In addition, ratings of male faces are more sensitive to racially distinctive names. The findings bear important lessons for our understanding of the social construction of race and its role in producing inequalities.

Priming Implicit Racism in Television News: Visual and Verbal Limitations on Diversity

We highlight an understudied aspect of racism in television news, implicit racial cues found in the contradictions between visual and verbal messages. We compare three television news broadcasts from the first week after Hurricane Katrina to reexamine race and representation during the disaster. Drawing together insights from interdisciplinary studies of cognition and sociological theories of race and racism, we examine how different combinations of the race of reporters and news sources relate to the priming of implicit racism. We find racial cues that are consistent with stereotypes and myths about African Americans—even in broadcasts featuring black reporters—but which appear only in the context of color‐blind verbal narration. We conclude by drawing attention to the unexpected and seemingly unintended reproduction of racial ideology.

Racializing Gender: Public Opinion at the Intersection

Efforts to understand the political implications of categorical prejudices—like racism and sexism—are complicated by the intersectional nature of social groups. Evaluating attitudes toward members of a single social category (e.g., African-Americans) in isolation can produce misleading conclusions, as racial cues commonly coincide with gender cues and create meaningful subgroups (McConnaughy and White 2014). The idea that different subgroups of women experience distinctive forms of discrimination is reflected in the concept of “double jeopardy.” Double jeopardy suggests that black and Hispanic women experience discrimination differently from white women or men of color because they simultaneously belong to a low-status gender group and a low-status racial/ethnic group (King 1988; Levin et al. 2002; cf. Sidanius and Veniegas 2000). As a result, women who are racial or ethnic minorities face a cumulative discrimination that extends beyond racism or sexism alone (King 1988; Purdie-Vaughns and Eibach 2008).

Call to (In)Action: The Effects of Racial Priming on Grassroots Mobilization

Previous work on the effects of race on the political behaviors of white Americans is beset with two problems. First, much of the work on the effect of race has looked primarily at attitudes as opposed to political action around a policy. Second, studies of the relationship between race and policy have revolved around issues for which it is inherently difficult to separate the effects of racial prejudice from conservative ideology. To address these problems, we examine the willingness of individuals to write their member of Congress in support of a non-racial political cause, which we experimentally treat with racial cues. We also experimentally present a comparison with a non-racial but similar ‘specialized’ group, which allows us to distinguish concerns about race from concerns about specialized benefits objectionable to conservatives. We show that whites with higher levels of racial resentment are less likely to act politically in support of a policy perceived as benefiting ethnic and racial minorities.

Does Race Matter? Implicit and Explicit Measures of the Effect of the PR Spokesman's Race on Evaluations of Spokesman Source Credibility and Perceptions of a PR Crisis' Severity

One rationale offered for why there are fewer people of color in public relations is that publics would respond less positively if racial minorities represented the public face of an organization. To determine the plausibility of this rationale, this study employed a 2 (race: Black vs. White spokesman) × 2 (performance history: with prior crisis vs. no prior crisis) × 2 (crisis type: sports vs. product recall) within-subjects experiment (N = 64), using both implicit (reaction time) and explicit (self-report) measures. Contrary to expectations, participants rated Black spokesmen as significantly more credible than White spokesmen using explicit measures. Most significantly, implicit tests, using response time measures, revealed that heuristic cues, such as the spokesman's race, have an influence on perceptions in the absence of a performance history, i.e., when no other information must be cognitively processed. But in cases where there is a crisis history, i.e., when there is more pertinent information, racial cues play less of a role.

Looking Black or looking back? Using phenotype and ancestry to make racial categorizations

When it comes to the racial categorization of biracial individuals, do people look at phenotypicality (i.e., a race consistent appearance) for clues, or do they look back at racial ancestry? We manipulated racial ancestry and racial phenotypicality (using morphed photos) to investigate their influence on race categorizations. Results indicated that while ancestry and phenotypicality information both influenced deliberate racial categorization, phenotypicality had a substantially larger effect. We also investigated how these factors influenced perceptions of warmth and competence, and racial discrimination. We found that Black–White biracials with low Black phenotypicality were perceived as warmer and more competent than biracial targets with moderate and high Black phenotypicality. Moreover, given identical instances of racially discriminatory treatment, low Black racial phenotypicality targets were significantly less likely to be perceived as victims of racial discrimination. Our findings shed light on how ancestry and phenotype influence perceptions of race and real world social judgments such as perceptions of discrimination. Previous studies have shown that low minority ancestry biracials are presumed to have experienced less discrimination; our findings indicate that racial cues impact perceptions of discrimination even in incidences of known racial discrimination.

‘I also Melayu ok’ – Malay-Chinese Women Negotiating the Ambivalence of Biraciality for Agentic Autonomy

‘I also Melayu ok’ – Malay-Chinese Women Negotiating the Ambivalence of Biraciality for Agentic Autonomy

Implicit Cue-Taking in Elections

Can implicit racial cues change voters’ perceptions about a candidate’s race, and even change their support for a candidate? The results from a recent local election, in which a white conservative man defeated a well-established African American incumbent with Democratic endorsements in a predominantly non-white and Democratic district, suggest that is can be done. In this paper we run an experiment to test whether the anecdotal explanation for this outcome, that a white Dave Wilson implied that he was black by including photos of only African Americans in his campaign mailers, holds true. We not only find that the racial composition of campaign photos affects perceptions about a candidate’s race, it also translates into increased electoral support: Black respondents were more likely to vote for a candidate whose campaign flyer used black images relative to the same flyer that used photos of white people. We also explore whether this electoral boost comes from voters wanting an elected official who looks like them, or whether voters use the candidate’s race as a way to infer other politically-relevant information, like ideology and policy stances. While we find that black respondents who viewed campaign materials with black images perceived the candidate as more liberal and more Democratic, the effects do not persist at the level of individual policy positions or personal characteristics. Taken together, our results highlight how voters gather and use information in low-salience elections and demonstrate that a campaign strategy of implicit racial cuing seems to be an effective one.

How racial cues affect support for American racial hierarchy among African Americans and Whites

Though racial hierarchy has been critical to American political development and continues to color much of American politics, little is known about the extent to which political factors mitigate or exacerbate support for the racial status quo. Using insights gained from research on system justification and racial priming, this paper examines how the use of negative racial cues by political elites affects support for American racial hierarchy among African Americans and Whites, where racial hierarchy is assessed both explicitly (with survey items) and implicitly (with the Implicit Association Test). Results from two original experiments suggest that the effect of elite racial cues on support for racial hierarchy is moderated by political ideology, and the strength and direction of the effects varies by racial group and the type of support for racial hierarchy – explicit or implicit – being examined.

On the flexibility of attention to race

Research on the flexibility of race-based processing offers divergent results. Some studies find that race affects processing in an obligatory fashion. Other studies suggest dramatic flexibility. The current study attempts to clarify this divergence by examining a process that may mediate flexibility in race-based processing: the engagement of visual attention. In this study, White participants completed an exogenous cuing task designed to measure attention to White and Black faces. Participants in the control condition showed a pronounced bias to attend to Black faces. Critically, participants in a goal condition were asked to process a feature of the stimulus that was unrelated to race. The induction of this goal eliminated differential attention to Black faces, suggesting that attentional engagement responds flexibly to top-down goals, rather than obligatorily to bottom-up racial cues.

Innocent until Primed: Mock Jurors' Racially Biased Response to the Presumption of Innocence

BackgroundResearch has shown that crime concepts can activate attentional bias to Black faces. This study investigates the possibility that some legal concepts hold similar implicit racial cues. Presumption of innocence instructions, a core legal principle specifically designed to eliminate bias, may instead serve as an implicit racial cue resulting in attentional bias.Methodology/Principal findingsThe experiment was conducted in a courtroom with participants seated in the jury box. Participants first watched a video of a federal judge reading jury instructions that contained presumption of innocence instructions, or matched length alternative instructions. Immediately following this video a dot-probe task was administered to assess the priming effect of the jury instructions. Presumption of innocence instructions, but not the alternative instructions, led to significantly faster response times to Black faces when compared with White faces.Conclusions/SignificanceThese findings suggest that the core principle designed to ensure fairness in the legal system actually primes attention for Black faces, indicating that this supposedly fundamental protection could trigger racial stereotypes.

The Impact of Hispanic and White Group Cues on Attitudes Towards the Violation of Generic Norms

While much work in political science has examined the impact of racial cues on individual perceptions, we know little about how individuals evaluate members of minority outgroups on issues that are not linked to stereotypes. We measure the impacts of Hispanic and White cues on individual assessments related to a stereotype-independent norm violation: alcoholism. We test three competing theories – cognition, intergroup emotions, and social identity – using a population-based vignette experiment included in the General Social Survey. Our results contradict much of the literature, but keep with social identity theory's predictions. Hispanic alcoholics, when Hispanics constitute the outgroup, are assessed less negatively than White alcoholics in the ingroup, the latter experiencing what is called the black sheep effect. The black sheep effect occurs when ingroup members are more punitive towards members of the ingroup than the outgroup. However, the black sheep effect does not extend to measures that are more consistent with outgroup stereotypes, such as violence or money mismanagement; Hispanic alcoholics are evaluated more negatively than Whites on these measures. The implication is that the effect of racial cues depends strongly on issue linkages to group stereotypes.

Public opinion, prejudice and the racialization of welfare in Canada

Drawing on a unique survey experiment in the 2011 Canadian Election Study data set, this paper examines the ways in which racial cues influence attitudes towards redistributive policy. While work in the USA points to a strong racialization of welfare attitudes, little research explores the ways in which racial cues may structure attitudes about welfare elsewhere. In the Canadian context, Aboriginal peoples have faced both historic persecution and continue to face severe discrimination. They also experience much higher levels of poverty than other groups in Canada. Our results examine the effect that (hypothetical) Aboriginal recipients have on public support for social assistance. Results suggest that respondents' support for redistribution is lower when recipients are Aboriginal rather than white. As we have seen in the USA, then, support for welfare is related to racialized perceptions about those who benefit from social assistance.

The effect of racial cues on the reader's response to advertisements

Purpose – Given that global advertising often originates in the West, this study aimed to investigate whether the same racial cues in advertising had different effects on US and Chinese readers who belonged to the majority group in their own country but occupied varied positions in the global racial hierarchy. Design/methodology/approach – The study included two experiments that used US and Chinese college students as participants to test the effect of model race on model likeability, ad attitude, and brand attitude. Findings – The experiments confirmed that model race affected the effectiveness of advertising, though the nature and extent of its effects were mediated by factors such as country and product category. The effects of model race were much more pronounced for the Chinese data than for the US data, and for computer than for beer. Practical implications – The findings illustrate the inadequacy of the center-periphery approach to global advertising planning, expose the limitations of the social identity theory in predicting racial attitudes in international settings, and outline the ethical challenge for global advertisers to develop effective multicultural advertising. Originality/value – To date, most studies on racial cues in advertising have focused on the USA, and very few have explored the topic in the context of other markets. As an initial cross-country comparative investigation, this study suggests that multicultural advertising does not have the same effect in international markets.

Call to (In)Action: The Effects of Racial Priming on Grassroots Mobilization

Previous work on the effects of race on the political behaviors of white Americans is beset with two problems. First, much of the work on the effect of race has looked primarily at attitudes as opposed to political action around a policy. Second, studies of the relationship between race and policy have revolved around issues for which it is inherently difficult to separate the effects of racial prejudice from conservative ideology. To address these problems, we examine the willingness of individuals to write their member of Congress in support of a non-racial political cause, which we experimentally treat with racial cues. We also experimentally present a comparison with a non-racial but similar ‘specialized’ group, which allows us to distinguish concerns about race from concerns about specialized benefits objectionable to conservatives. We show that whites with higher levels of racial resentment are less likely to act politically in support of a policy perceived as benefiting ethnic and racial minorities.

Understanding police and expert performance: when training attenuates (vs. exacerbates) stereotypic bias in the decision to shoot.

In three studies, we examined how training may attenuate (or exacerbate) racial bias in the decision to shoot. In Experiment 1, when novices read a newspaper article about Black criminals, they showed pronounced racial bias in a first-person-shooter task (FPST); when they read about White criminals, bias was eliminated. Experts (who practiced the FPST) and police officers were unaffected by the same stereotype-accessibility manipulation. However, when training itself (base rates of armed vs. unarmed targets in the FPST, Experiment 2a; or special unit officers who routinely deal with minority gang members, Experiment 2b) reinforced the association between Blacks and danger, training did not attenuate bias. When race is unrelated to the presence/absence of a weapon, training may eliminate bias as participants learn to focus on diagnostic object information (gun vs. no gun). But when training actually promotes the utility of racial cues, it may sustain the heuristic use of stereotypes.

Attributions, Emotions, and Health Care Reform: President Obama & Political Cognition about the Affordable Care Act

Existing research has demonstrated that associating health care reform with President Obama was tantamount to racial priming, causing people to connect racial attitudes to attitudes toward health policies. Research on racial priming in other policy domains has demonstrated that racial cues also work by triggering emotional reactions that mediate the effect of these cues on attitudes and behaviors. With this in mind, we examine whether associating the 2010 health care reform law with President Obama triggers an aversive emotional response that then affects attitudes and behaviors associated with the law. To examine this, we are conducting an original experiment where respondents are primed either to associate the law with President Obama, the U.S. Congress, or no particular political figure or institution, and then asked their opinions about the law, including their emotional reactions and willingness to take action regarding the law. The results of this experiment stand to broaden our understanding of the mechanisms through which racial cues work to affect public attitudes toward health care reform.