Until somewhat recently, consideration of target-level differences among category members figured surprisingly little into theorizing about stereotyping. Rather, social psychologists have focused almost solely on category membership as the basis for stereotyping, essentially disregarding within-category differences. Over the past decade, however, researchers have begun to examine how differences in physical features (e.g., skin tone, nose shape, etc.) among people who share a category membership may contribute to our understanding of stereotyping -- a form of stereotyping that has been referred to as feature-based stereotyping. The effect of feature-based stereotyping is nontrivial; researchers have evidenced that features may unduly influence prison sentence lengths, capital punishment decisions, and police officers' decision to shoot over and above the influence of categories.
The goal of the proposed research is to study whether and how differences in facial physiognomy predict our judgments of others over and above category membership alone. The current research project consists of 3 phases. In Phase 1, the researchers will build a database of over 500 faces, each rated on a number of dimensions (stereotypic, threatening, masculine, feminine, baby-faced, attractive, trustworthy, happy, angry, sad, disgusted, surprised, fearful/afraid, and unusual). This database will be made freely available to any investigator interested in using these stimuli for research purposes and will afford significant time and resource savings to others. In Phase 2, the researchers will test the robustness of feature-based stereotyping by testing whether or not more typical features activate stereotypes more readily, across different social groups, different features, and different stereotyped characteristics. Finally, Phase 3 will investigate the process by which features influence trait judgments. The researchers will test whether the influence of features is mediated through categorization -- a supposition that is has been central to decades of stereotyping research -- or, whether features can bypass categorization and directly activate stereotypes, as some have recently proposed.
The research will both enhance scientific infrastructure by developing an important set of facial stimuli for researchers and also advance the current understanding of the processes that govern stereotyping. Moreover, the research will facilitate the training of undergraduate and graduate students at a predominantly undergraduate and Hispanic-serving institution.
