Diana T. Sanchez, Ph.D. - US grants

By the year 2050, census based projections suggest that 1 in 5 people will identify as biracial. Despite the rapid growth of biracial people, very little is known about how biracial people are perceived and placed into social or racial groups by others. The goal of this research is to test a racial categorization model that addresses the complexities inherent in classifying racially ambiguous targets -- such as those who are biracial and bicultural. This project will identify the central attributes that guide racial categorization by identifying the social psychological processes that influence how racially ambiguous people are categorized. Across several experiments, the proposed research will (1) identify which attributes, singly or together, guide racial categorization (e.g., physical appearance, cultural practice, racial ancestry), (2) clarify the inferences drawn from such attributes (e.g., inferences of disadvantage and perceived self-identification of targets), (3) establish the unique consequences of minority categorization for diversity-related entitlements (e.g., whether people believe a biracial target should benefit from an affirmative action policies) and expectations (e.g., whether people believe a biracial target will contribute to the diversity of opinion that would enhance group performance), and (4) assess the characteristics of perceivers that moderate responses to attributes (e.g., belief in biological essentialism, perceiver gender, perceiver race).

This research will reveal how, why, and when racially ambiguous individuals are categorized as ethnic minorities. Moreover, the research will examine the important but often ignored outcomes of minority categorization. Such outcomes include not only drawbacks (such as being stereotyped) but also benefits (e.g., entitlements to resources via affirmative action policies) or perceptions that individuals are valuable to groups (i.e., diversity contributions). In doing so, this project will inform public policies such as institutional commitments to diversity and affirmative action regarding how best to structure those policies to address a broad array of ethnic minorities of diverse, often mixed, backgrounds.

The number of Americans who self-identify as belonging to more than one race has grown to over 9 million, emerging as one of the fastest growing demographic groups in the United States. There has been much discussion, in both academic disciplines and public forums, about the impact of mixed-race population growth on peoples' stereotypes and prejudices about racial groups, and particularly how biracially-identified individuals may challenge underlying beliefs about racial categories themselves.

This project will examine the impact of exposure to biracial identified, racially ambiguous individuals on White perceivers' beliefs about social categories. Using a naturalistic longitudinal study of recent arrivals to Hawaii (a largely multiracial context) and a series of laboratory experiments in the U.S. mainland, this project tests whether Whites' exposure to biracially identified individuals causes Whites to believe that society is moving away from biological, discrete views of racial categories and to subsequently decrease their personal endorsement of essentialism. Moreover, this proposal tests two seemingly contradictory consequences of essentialist belief change. On the one hand, essentialism reduction should lead to more favorable attitudes towards racial minorities and less use of social categories in judgment. On the other hand, recognizing that society has become less essentialist may increase perceptions of racial equity and racial progress and lower support for diversity policies (e.g., affirmative action).

By identifying the positive and negative consequences of reduced essentialism and the conditions under which reductions occur, this project will aid in identifying potential intergroup interventions that involve naturally occurring challenges to essentialism (e.g., biracial exposure) and help us understand how they operate (e.g., through changing beliefs about societal norms and expanding individuals' cognitive flexibility).