
Intergroup Context Moderates the Impact of White Americans' Identification on Racial Categorization of Ambiguous Faces.
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.
Duke Scholars
Altmetric Attention Stats
Dimensions Citation Stats
Published In
DOI
EISSN
ISSN
Publication Date
Volume
Issue
Start / End Page
Related Subject Headings
- Young Adult
- White People
- United States
- Social Psychology
- Social Perception
- Social Identification
- Male
- Humans
- Group Processes
- Female
Citation

Published In
DOI
EISSN
ISSN
Publication Date
Volume
Issue
Start / End Page
Related Subject Headings
- Young Adult
- White People
- United States
- Social Psychology
- Social Perception
- Social Identification
- Male
- Humans
- Group Processes
- Female