Mixed Race Studies

“Mixed” Results: Multiracial Research and Identity Explorations

Current Directions in Psychological Science
Volume 24, Number 2 (April 2015)
pages 114-119
DOI: 10.1177/0963721414558115

Sarah E. Gaither
Department of Psychology and Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture
University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

Multiracial individuals report that the social pressure of having to “choose” one of their racial groups is a primary source of psychological conflict. Yet because of their ability to maneuver among their multiple identities, multiracials also adopt flexible cognitive strategies in dealing with their social environments—demonstrating a benefit to having multiple racial identities. The current article reviews recent research involving multiracial participants to examine the behavioral and cognitive outcomes linked to being multiracial and pinpoints possible moderators that may affect these outcomes. Limitations in applying monoracial identity frameworks to multiracial populations are also discussed.

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Thinking Outside the Box: Multiple Identity Mind-Sets Affect Creative Problem Solving

Social Psychological and Personality Science
Published online before print: 2015-01-27
DOI: 10.1177/1948550614568866

Sarah E. Gaither, Provost’s Career Enhancement Postdoctoral Scholar
University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

Jessica D. Remedios, Assistant Professor of Psychology
Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts

Diana T. Sanchez, Associate Professor of Psychology
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Samuel R. Sommers, Associate Professor of Psychology
Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts

Rigid thinking is associated with less creativity, suggesting that priming a flexible mind-set should boost creative thought. In three studies, we investigate whether priming multiple social identities predicts more creativity in domains unrelated to social identity. Study 1 asked monoracial and multiracial participants to write about their racial identities before assessing creativity. Priming a multiracial’s racial identity led to greater creativity compared to a no-prime control. Priming a monoracial’s racial identity did not affect creativity. Study 2 showed that reminding monoracials that they, too, have multiple identities increased creativity. Study 3 replicated this effect and demonstrated that priming a multiracial identity for monoracials did not affect creativity. These results are the first to investigate the association between flexible identities and flexible thinking, highlighting the potential for identity versatility to predict cognitive differences between individuals who have singular versus multifaceted views of their social selves.

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Caught in the Middle: Defensive Responses to IAT Feedback Among Whites, Blacks, and Biracial Black/Whites

Social Psychological and Personality Science
Published online before print: 2014-12-15
DOI: 10.1177/1948550614561127

Jennifer L. Howell
Department of Psychology
University of Florida

Sarah E. Gaither, Provost’s Career Enhancement Postdoctoral Scholar
Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture
University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

Kate A. Ratliff, Assistant Professor of Psychology
University of Florida

This study used archival data to examine how White, Black, and biracial Black/White people respond to implicit attitude feedback suggesting that they harbor racial bias that does not align with their self-reported attitudes. The results suggested that people are generally defensive in response to feedback indicating that their implicit attitudes differ from their explicit attitudes. Among monoracial White and Black individuals, this effect was particularly strong when they learned that they were implicitly more pro-White than they indicated explicitly. By contrast, biracial Black/White individuals were defensive about large discrepancies in either direction (more pro-Black or more pro-White implicit attitudes). These results pinpoint one distinct difference between monoracial and biracial populations and pave the way for future research to further explore how monoracial majority, minority, and biracial populations compare in other types of attitudes and responses to personal feedback.

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Collaboration is Key to Psychology Professor Sam Sommers’ Research on Race and Ethnicity

Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts
School of Arts And Sciences
August 2013

Anna Burgess

Doctoral Student Sarah Gaither and a Team of Undergraduates Focus on Biracial Perceptions and Identity Flexibility

“As a society, the way we think about questions of race and ethnicity tends to be over-simplified,” Professor Sam Sommers explains. “We like to be able to put people into categories. But what about the people who don’t fit into these categories?”

For Sommers, a Tufts professor and social psychologist, and director of  Tufts’ Diversity & Intergroup Relations Lab, this is not a rhetorical question–it’s a research question. He and 5th-year Ph.D. candidate Sarah Gaither, along with an undergraduate student research team, are trying to find some answers within this topic. Sommers has been studying diversity and its effect on group interactions for ten years, and he started working with Gaither a few years ago. “She’s interested in these same kinds of issues,” he says, “but from the perspective of multiracial people.”

Gaither explains that the projects she and Sommers are working on right now all focus on biracial perceptions and identity flexibility. “Growing up in a biracial family has made me extremely interested in interracial and intergroup relations more generally,” she says, “but in particular it has made me want to learn more about how biracial individuals are perceived and treated by others.” Gaither, who is the recipient of a prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, is working with Sommers on several different studies, some focusing on biracial children and others on biracial college students. In terms of how student researchers factor in, Gaither says, “All of these studies involve training undergraduate research assistants on how to run the studies, since without them, I would not be able to be nearly as productive as I am.”…

Read the entire article here.

Monoracial and Biracial Children: Effects of Racial Identity Saliency on Social Learning and Social Preferences

Child Development
Published Online: 2014-07-14
DOI: 10.1111/cdev.12266

Sarah E. Gaither
Department of Psychology
Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts

Eva E. Chen, Assistant Professor of Social Science
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Kathleen H. Corriveau, Assistant Professor of Human Development
Boston University

Paul L. Harris, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Education
Harvard University

Nalini Ambady (1959-2013), Professor of Psychology
Stanford University

Samuel R. Sommers, Professor of Psychology
Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts

Children prefer learning from, and affiliating with, their racial in-group but those preferences may vary for biracial children. Monoracial (White, Black, Asian) and biracial (Black/White, Asian/White) children (N = 246, 3–8 years) had their racial identity primed. In a learning preferences task, participants determined the function of a novel object after watching adults (White, Black, and Asian) demonstrate its uses. In the social preferences task, participants saw pairs of children (White, Black, and Asian) and chose with whom they most wanted to socially affiliate. Biracial children showed flexibility in racial identification during learning and social tasks. However, minority-primed biracial children were not more likely than monoracial minorities to socially affiliate with primed racial in-group members, indicating their in-group preferences are contextually based.

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Motivation to Control Prejudice Predicts Categorization of Multiracials

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
Volume 40, Number 5 (May 2014)
pages 590-603
DOI: 10.1177/0146167213520457

Jacqueline M. Chen, Post-doctoral Scholar
University of California, Davis

Wesley G. Moons, Assistant Professor of Psychology
University of California, Davis

Sarah E. Gaither
Department of Psychology
Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts

David L. Hamilton, Research Professor of Social Psychology
University of California, Santa Barbara

Jeffrey W. Sherman, Professor of Psychology
University of California, Davis

Multiracial individuals often do not easily fit into existing racial categories. Perceivers may adopt a novel racial category to categorize multiracial targets, but their willingness to do so may depend on their motivations. We investigated whether perceivers’ levels of internal motivation to control prejudice (IMS) and external motivation to control prejudice (EMS) predicted their likelihood of categorizing Black–White multiracial faces as Multiracial. Across four studies, IMS positively predicted perceivers’ categorizations of multiracial faces as Multiracial. The association between IMS and Multiracial categorizations was strongest when faces were most racially ambiguous. Explicit prejudice, implicit prejudice, and interracial contact were ruled out as explanations for the relationship between IMS and Multiracial categorizations. EMS may be negatively associated with the use of the Multiracial category. Therefore, perceivers’ motivations to control prejudice have important implications for racial categorization processes.

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Call for Biracial/Racial Ambiguity Person Perception Data

The Stigma, Health, and Close Relationships Lab
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
2014-01-15

The The Stigma, Health, and Close Relationships Lab is currently conducting a systematic review of research on person construal and evaluation of biracial/mixed-race and/or racially ambiguous targets. We would like to include unpublished, in press, and published data produced since 2000 in this review. If you have any results that a) manipulate a target’s biracial/multiracial or ambiguous status through any means (visual presentation, racial label, ancestry, etc.) and b) include categorization (such as deliberate or automatic racial categorization or data that reflect categorization such as memory data) or evaluation (stereotyping, hiring decisions, liking, interaction outcomes or other person perception data), we would be grateful if you would forward your work to us. If the data is unpublished, please include a brief summary of the methodology and findings and/or send a clearly marked dataset.

All papers and questions can be forwarded to: biracialreview@gmail.com

Thanks for your assistance.

Diana T. Sanchez, Associate Professor of Psychology
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Danielle Young, Postdoctoral Scholar
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Kristin Pauker, Assistant Professor of Psychology
University of Hawaii, Manoa

Sarah E. Gaither
Department of Psychology
Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts

Perceiving a Presidency in Black (and White): Four Years Later

Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy
First published online: 2013-06-25
DOI: 10.1111/asap.12018

Sarah E. Gaither
Tufts University

Leigh S. Wilton
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Danielle M. Young
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

When Barack Obama became the “first Black President” of the United States in 2008, researchers examined how his election impacted Americans’ views of racial progress. When he was reelected in 2012, the minority status of the president had become less novel. In the present study, we investigated whether perceptions concerning racial progress varied: (1) before and after President Obama’s reelection; (2) by whether President Obama was labeled as biracial or Black; and (3) among White and Black individuals. We replicated past findings to demonstrate that after Obama’s reelection, White participants reported that our country had made racial progress and decreased their support for equality programs (e.g., affirmative action). Our results also revealed that labeling President Obama as either biracial or Black did not affect views of racial progress. Additionally, Black participants categorized President Obama as Black more than White participants, while White participants categorized President Obama as White more than Black participants. We discuss these results in terms of the impacts of racial beliefs that stem from exposure to a minority leader.

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When the Half Affects the Whole: Priming Identity for Biracial Individuals in Social Interactions

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
Available online: 2013-01-07
DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2012.12.012

Sarah E. Gaither
Department of Psychology
Tufts University

Samuel R. Sommers, Associate Professor of Psychology
Tufts University

Nalini Ambady, Professor of Psychology
Stanford University

In two studies we investigate how the fluid identities of biracial individuals interact with contextual factors to shape behavior in interracial settings. In Study 1, Biracial Black/White participants (n=22) were primed with either their Black or White identity before having a race-related discussion with a Black confederate. Study 2 (n=34) assessed the influence of our prime on racial self-identification and examined interactions with a White confederate. Self-reports and nonverbal behavior indicated that when the primed racial ingroup matched that of an interaction partner, biracial participants behaved much like participants in same-race interactions in previous studies, exhibiting lower levels of anxiety. Priming the opposite racial identity, however, led to greater signs of anxiety, mimicking past interracial interaction findings. These results extend previous findings regarding the influence of contextual factors on racial identification for biracial individuals, and are the first to demonstrate the implications of these effects for behavioral tendencies.

Highlights

• Here we prime one half of a biracial Black/White individuals’ racial identity.
• Behavioral changes in interactions with Black or White confederates are measured.
• We show priming biracial’s racial identity significantly affects social behavior.
• Interactions were more positive when priming the same identity as the confederate.

Biracial and monoracial infant own-race face perception: an eye tracking study

Developmental Science
Published online: 2012-09-07
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2012.01170.x

Sarah E. Gaither
Department of Psychology
Tufts University

Kristin Pauker, Assistant Professor of Psychology
University of Hawaii

Scott P. Johnson, Professor of Psychology
University of California, Los Angeles

We know that early experience plays a crucial role in the development of face processing, but we know little about how infants learn to distinguish faces from different races, especially for non-Caucasian populations. Moreover, it is unknown whether differential processing of different race faces observed in typically studied monoracial infants extends to biracial infants as well. Thus, we investigated 3-month-old Caucasian, Asian and biracial (Caucasian-Asian) infants’ ability to distinguish Caucasian and Asian faces. Infants completed two within-subject, infant-controlled habituation sequences and test trials as an eye tracker recorded looking times and scanning patterns. Examination of individual differences revealed significant positive correlations between own-race novelty preference and scanning frequency between eye and mouth regions of own-race habituation stimuli for Caucasian and Asian infants, suggesting that facility in own-race face discrimination stems from active inspection of internal facial features in these groups. Biracial infants, however, showed the opposite effect: An ‘own-race’ novelty preference was associated with reduced scanning between eye and mouth regions of ‘own-race’ habituation stimuli, suggesting that biracial infants use a distinct approach to processing frequently encountered faces. Future directions for investigating face processing development in biracial populations are discussed.

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