The effect of skin tone and Latine phenotypic prototypicality on perceived inferiority and foreignness

Latine Americans are stereotyped as socially inferior and culturally foreign, with darker skinned Latine individuals typically experiencing greater stereotyping than their lighter skinned counterparts. However, lighter skinned Latine individuals can also appear highly prototypical of the Latine category, raising the question of whether they experience similar stereotyping as dark-skinned Latine individuals. This research reports three preregistered experiments testing this possibility.

In Studies 1 and 2, participants were randomly assigned to evaluate the image of a gender-matched Latine individual who was (a) light-skinned and low in Latine prototypicality, (b) light-skinned and high in Latine prototypicality, or (c) dark-skinned and high in Latine prototypicality. Study 3 employed a repeated-measures design with multiple faces per category to capture greater facial variability and enhance external validity.

Across all studies (N = 723), prototypically appearing Latine individuals-regardless of skin tone-were perceived as more foreign and socially inferior than low-prototypically appearing Latine individuals. Self-identified White (n = 230) and Latine (n = 171) participants showed similar judgment patterns (Study 2). Differences in perceptions of highly prototypical light- versus dark-skinned Latine individuals were few and inconsistent; when differences did emerge, neither group was systematically perceived as more stereotyped than the other.

These findings suggest that light-skinned Latine individuals perceived as highly prototypical may experience explicit cultural stereotyping to a greater extent than less prototypical light-skinned Latine individuals and at levels comparable to those experienced by dark-skinned Latine individuals. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).