How Warmth and Competence Stereotypes Predict Political Party Support

People use stereotypes and party affiliation when making voting decisions (Leeper, 1991). Voters are also known to support the political party they view positively (Graham, Nosek, & Haidt, 2012). How do stereotypes influence political party support? Since warmth and competence are used to evaluate social groups (Cuddy et al. 2008), we examined how the warmth and competence stereotypes associated with political parties were related to voter support. We surveyed participants using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (n = 361). Participant’s ages ranged from twenty to seventy-three years old. These participants rated Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and Libertarians on competence, warmth, and support (Buhrmester, Kwang, & Gosling, 2011). We expect to find that competence and warmth for a political party (and their interaction) aids in predicting support for that party. To support our initial hypothesis we would need to find in our regressions that the more extensively a party was rated as warm or competent, the more participants support the party. Future research could take more political parties into account, such as the Green Party, or apply these predictive models to individual candidates. Research could also be expanded to examine using communion and agency towards parties as a predictive measure of elections

Intersecting race and gender stereotypes:Implications for group-level attitudes

Two studies examined the relationship between explicit stereotyping and prejudice by investigating how stereotyping of minority men and women may be differentially related to prejudice. Based on research and theory related to the intersectional invisibility hypothesis (Purdie-Vaughns & Eibach, 2008), we hypothesized that stereotyping of minority men would be more strongly related to prejudice than stereotyping of minority women. Supporting our hypothesis, in both the United Kingdom (Study 1) and the United States (Study 2), when stereotyping of Black men and women were entered into the same regression model, only stereotyping of Black men predicted prejudice. Results were inconsistent in regard to South Asians and East Asians. Results are discussed in terms of the intersectional invisibility hypothesis (Purdie-Vaughns & Eibach, 2008) and the gendered nature of the relationship between stereotyping and attitudes

Measuring cognitive control and reducing racial bias with fNIRS

To investigate factors that could reduce the disproportionate killings of Black Americans by police officials, this research examines if cognitive control moderates the impact of stereotype-reduction training on stereotype activation. Participants in the counter-stereotypic training condition selects cell phones when presented with images of Black individuals and selects guns when presented with images of White individuals, whereas participants in the stereotype-maintenance condition made the opposite selections. The cognitive control is inferred from functional near-infrared spectroscopy (FNIRS) BOLD (blood oxygen level-dependent) responses in the prefrontal cortex during the training and implicit stereotyping tasks. We predicted that stereotype-reduction training would be most effective among participants that exert cognitive control during the training and implicit stereotyping tasks. The present study aims to provide insight into neural activity involved in stereotype-reduction training and further the understanding of individual differences that may moderate effects of bias training

Temporal Stability of Implicit and Explicit Measures: A Longitudinal Analysis

A common assumption about implicit measures is that they reflect early experiences, whereas explicit measures are assumed to reflect recent experiences. This assumption subsumes two distinct hypotheses: (a) Implicit measures are more resistant to situationally induced changes than explicit measures; (b) individual differences on implicit measures are more stable over time than individual differences on explicit measures. Although the first hypothesis has been the subject of numerous studies, the second hypothesis has received relatively little attention. The current research addressed the second hypothesis in two longitudinal studies that compared the temporal stability of individual differences on implicit and explicit measures in three content domains (self-concept, racial attitudes, political attitudes). In both studies, implicit measures showed significantly lower stability over time (weighted average r =.54) than conceptually corresponding explicit measures (weighted average r =.75), despite comparable estimates of internal consistency. Implications for theories of implicit social cognition and interpretations of implicit and explicit measures are discussed

Attitude-goal correspondence and interracial interaction: Implications for executive function and impression formation

• We examined the consequences of emotion regulation during interracial interaction. • Mismatch in implicit attitudes and expressive goals predicted cognitive depletion. • Attitude-regulatory goal mismatch also predicted more negative interracial judgments. • This pattern of effects was found for both high and low-prejudiced Whites. a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f o The present research examined whether mismatches in implicit racial attitudes and regulatory goals may contribute to well-documented cognitive depletion effects after interracial interactions. Consistent with a mismatch account of regulatory demands, both high and low implicitly-biased Whites showed evidence of cognitive depletion after interacting with a Black confederate, but as a function of oppositely-valenced emotion regulation prompts: Whereas high implicitly-biased Whites showed impaired subsequent performance on a Stroop task when instructed to suppress negative (but not positive) emotional expressions during an interracial interaction, low implicitly-biased Whites showed the opposite pattern. Additionally, attitude-regulatory goal mismatch was associated with more negative impressions of a Black confederate, independent of observers' impressions of the confederate. Implications of attitude-goal correspondence for intergroup interaction and the maintenance of intergroup bias are considered

The Bidirectional Causal Relation Between Implicit Stereotypes and Implicit Prejudice

Although stereotypes and prejudice are commonly regarded as conceptually distinct but related constructs, previous research remains silent on the processes underlying their relation. Applying the balance-congruity principle to the concepts (a) group, (b) valence, and (c) attribute, we argue that the valence of attributes contained in a group-stereotype shapes evaluations of the group, while prejudice toward a group influences which attributes are stereotypically associated with the group. Using fictitious (Experiments 1 and 3) and real (Experiments 2 and 4) groups, the current studies demonstrate that (a) experimentally induced changes in the valence of semantic attributes associated with a group (stereotypes) influence implicit prejudice toward that group (Experiments 1 and 2), and (b) experimentally induced changes in the valence of a group (prejudice) influence implicit stereotyping of that group (Experiments 3 and 4). These findings demonstrate a bidirectional causal relation between prejudice and stereotypes

Ain\u27t She a Woman? How Warmth and Competence Stereotypes about Women and Female Politicians Contribute to the Warmth and Competence Traits Ascribed to Individual Female Politicians

Hillary Clinton was the first woman nominated for President by a major political party in the United States. Like most women in politics, she faced negative evaluations, in part, due to the inconsistency between the traits typically associated with leaders (competence) versus women (warmth). Because understanding the categorization of an individual female politician is essential to the development of successful bias interventions, we examined the extent to which Hillary Clinton and a novel female politician were categorized as women versus female politicians. In three studies we investigated how the warmth and competence stereotypes associated with women and female politicians contributed to the warmth and competence traits associated with Hillary Clinton and a novel female political candidate. Consistent with a subtyping account, the warmth and competence stereotypes associated with female politicians, but not women, predicted Hillary Clinton\u27s warmth and competence traits (Studies 1–3). However, consistent with a subgrouping account, the warmth and competence stereotypes associated with both women and female politicians predicted a novel female politician\u27s warmth and competence traits (Study 3). Implications for bias reduction interventions are discussed