Not So Black and White: Memory for Ambiguous Group MembersPosted in Articles, New Media on 2009-10-10 21:10Z by Steven |
Not So Black and White: Memory for Ambiguous Group Members
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Published by The American Psychological Association
2009, Vol. 96, No. 4
795–810 0022-3514/09
DOI: 10.1037/a0013265
Kristin Pauker
Tufts University
Max Weisbuch
Tufts University
Nalini Ambady, Professor and Neubauer Faculty Fellow
Tufts University
Samuel R. Sommers
Tufts University
Reginald B. Adams, Jr., Assistant Professor of Psychology
Pennsylvania State University University Park Campus
Zorana Ivcevic
Tufts University
Exponential increases in multiracial identities, expected over the next century, create a conundrum for perceivers accustomed to classifying people as their own- or other-race. The current research examines how perceivers resolve this dilemma with regard to the own-race bias. The authors hypothesized that perceivers are not motivated to include ambiguous-race individuals in the in-group and therefore have some difficulty remembering these individuals. Both racially ambiguous and other-race faces were misremembered more often than own-race faces (Study 1), though memory for ambiguous faces was improved among perceivers motivated to include biracial individuals in the in-group (Study 2). Racial labels assigned to racially ambiguous faces determined memory for these faces, suggesting that uncertainty provides the motivational context for discounting ambiguous faces in memory (Study 3). Finally, an inclusion motivation fostered cognitive associations between racially ambiguous faces and the in-group. Moreover, the extent to which perceivers associated racially ambiguous faces with the in-group predicted memory for ambiguous faces and accounted for the impact of motivation on memory (Study 4). Thus, memory for biracial individuals seems to involve a flexible person construal process shaped by motivational factors.
Read the entire paper here.