Framing interethnic ideology: effects of multicultural and color-blind perspectives on judgments of groups and individuals.
In 3 experiments, White American college students received a message advocating either a color-blind or a multicultural ideological approach to improving interethnic relations and then made judgments about various ethnic groups and individuals. Relative to a color-blind perspective, the multicultural perspective led to stronger stereotypes, greater accuracy in these stereotypes, and greater use of category information in judgments of individuals. This increase in between-category differentiation occurred both for attributes that favored the in-group and for attributes that favored the out-group and was also paired in some cases with greater overall positivity toward the out-group. The findings lead us to question the implicit assumption driving the majority of social psychological efforts at prejudice reduction: that the categorization process leads to prejudice, and that the relevance of social categories must therefore be de-emphasized.
Wolsko
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Department of Psychology, University of Colorado at Boulder, 80309-0345, USA. cwolsko@psycho.colorado.edu
Park
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Judd
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CM
Wittenbrink
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B
D000328:Adult; D001741:Black or African American / Q000523:psychology; D003120:Colorado; D018864:Cultural Diversity; D005260:Female; D006630:Hispanic or Latino / Q000523:psychology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011287:Prejudice; D012938:Social Perception; D013240:Stereotyping; D044465:White People / Q000523:psychology