title: Lost in the categorical shuffle: evidence for the social non-prototypicality of black women.
abstract: The white male norm hypothesis (Zárate & Smith, 1990) posits that White men's race and gender go overlooked as a result of their prototypical social statuses. In contrast, the intersectional invisibility hypothesis (Purdie-Vaughns & Eibach, 2008) posits that people with membership in multiple subordinate social groups experience social invisibility as a result of their non-prototypical social statuses. The present research reconciles these contradictory theories and provides empirical support for the core assumption of the intersectional invisibility hypothesis-that intersectional targets are non-prototypical within their race and gender ingroups. In a speeded categorization task, participants were slower to associate Black women versus Black men with the category "Black" and slower to associate Black women versus White women with the category "woman." We discuss the implications of this work for social categorical theory development and future intersectionality research.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Yale University.
authors.forename: Erin L
authors.initials: EL
authors.lastname: Thomas
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Yale University.
authors.forename: John F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Dovidio
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, New York University.
authors.forename: Tessa V
authors.initials: TV
authors.lastname: West
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001741:Black or African American / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012938:Social Perception; D014930:Women / Q000523:psychology*; D055815:Young Adult