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Intergroup Context Moderates the Impact of White Americans' Identification on Racial Categorization of Ambiguous
Jacqueline M Chen1, Chanel Meyers2, Kristin Pauker3
1The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, USA.
Abstract:
We examined how the number of groups in a categorization task influences how White Americans categorize ambiguous faces. We investigated the strength of identity-driven ingroup overexclusion-wherein highly identified perceivers overexclude ambiguous members from the ingroup-proposing that, compared with dichotomous tasks (with only the ingroup and one outgroup), tasks with more outgroups attenuate identity-driven ingroup overexclusion (a dilution effect). Fourteen studies (n = 4,001) measured White Americans' racial identification and their categorizations of ambiguous faces and manipulated the categorization task to have two groups, three groups, or an unspecified number of groups (open-ended). In all three conditions, participants overexcluded faces from the White category on average. There was limited support for the dilution effect: identity-driven ingroup overexclusion was absent in the three-group task and only weakly supported in the open-ended task. The presence of multiple outgroups may dampen the impact of racial identity on race perceptions among White Americans.
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