the role of lay theories of race

8/16/2019 The Role of Lay Theories of Race

1/28

Dynamic Interracial/Intercultural Processes:The Role of Lay Theories of Race

Ying-yi Hong, 1 Melody Manchi Chao, 2 and Sun No 31 Nanyang Technological University, Singapore/University of

Illinois at Urbana-Champaign2 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

3 Macalester College

ABSTRACT This paper explores how the lay theory approach pro-vides a framework beyond previous stereotype/prejudice research to un-derstand dynamic personality processes in interracial/ethnic contexts. Theauthors conceptualize theory of race within the Cognitive–Affective Per-sonality System (CAPS), in which lay people’s beliefs regarding the es-sential nature of race sets up a mind-set through which individualsconstrue and interpret their social experiences. The research ndings il-lustrate that endorsement of the essentialist theory (i.e., that race reectsdeep-seated, inalterable essence and is indicative of traits and ability)versus the social constructionist theory (i.e., that race is socially con-structed, malleable, and arbitrary) are associated with different encodingand representation of social information, which in turn affect feelings,motivation, and competence in navigating between racial and culturalboundaries. These ndings shed light on dynamic interracial/interculturalprocesses. Relations of this approach to CAPS are discussed.

Anti-Semitism during the Nazi era has inspired psychologists to un-derstand why some people harbored extreme prejudice and intensehatred against people from certain social groups. Early research fo-cused on identifying underlying personality traits that cause a stable

This article was partially supported by a grant from the Campus Research Board of theUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) awarded to Ying-yi Hong andwas prepared during Ying-yi Hong’s tenure as Associate of the Center for AdvancedStudy at UIUC.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ying-yi Hong,Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 639798.E-mail: [email protected].

Journal of Personality 77:5, October 2009r 2009, Copyright the AuthorsJournal compilation r 2009, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6494.2009.00582.x

http://i/Bwus/jopy/591/[email protected]://i/Bwus/jopy/591/[email protected]


2/28

tendency toward prejudice against outgroups. Most of these early re-searchers adopted a psychodynamic approach, among which areAdorno, Frenkel-Brunswick, Levinson, and Sanford’s (1950) research

on authoritarian personality and Allport’s (1954) notion of a ‘‘crippled’’ego. However, these attempts were not successful in nding a coherentpersonality structure that predicted prejudice consistently; therefore psy-chodynamic approaches to understanding prejudice waned in the 1960s.

Recent research has focused on identifying the cognitive under-pinnings of prejudice, such as Need for Cognition (Cacioppo &Petty, 1982), Need for Structure (e.g., Neuberg & Newsom, 1993),and Need for Cognitive Closure (Kruglanski, 1990; Kruglanski &Webster, 1996). These approaches focus on individuals’ general in-formation processing styles, such as their tendency to be cognitivemisers or faulty processors. These works have linked individuals’cognitive processing styles with their tendency toward stereotypingand prejudice against maligned groups.

In the present paper, we seek to go beyond stereotyping and prej-udice to understand intergroup relations. Specically, we look forbackground assumptions or lay theories that would guide people’sunderstanding of racial/ethnic information and, in turn, channel

their responses in interracial/ethnic settings. This approach followsKelly’s (1955) and Heider’s (1958) argument that lay people arenaı v̈e scientists who generate and use theories about the social world,and Medin and colleagues’ (Medin, 1989; Murphy & Medin, 1985)ndings that, indeed, people’s reasoning in a domain is guided bytheir lay theory of that domain. In our case, we argue that how reg-ular people’s understanding about the nature of race—which wehave termed lay theory of race —creates a lens through which they

understand racial differences and conceptualize racial reality, which,in turn, leads to particular ways of encoding, representing, and or-ganizing information related to race. These processes then underliethe personality dynamics in interracial/ethnic settings.

Our arguments relate closely to the central tenants of the Cogni-tive–Affective Personality System (CAPS; Mischel & Shoda, 1995,1999). According to the CAPS model, personality stability can befound in the situation-behavior patterns, or if . . . then . . . signatures(if situation A, then she or he does X, but if situation B, then she orhe does Y). Underlying the if . . . then . . . signatures is how individ-uals encode and represent social contexts, which in turn invokes re-sponses that match their representations. That is, even when facing

1284 Hong, Chao, & No


3/28

the same situations, individuals who have encoded the social contextsdifferently may have different affective experiences and generate differ-ent responses. For example, in the classic studies of delay of gratica-

tion (Mischel & Baker, 1975; Moore, Mischel, & Zeiss, 1976), childrenwho focused on the abstract representations of the temptation (e.g.,imagining that the temptation—marshmallows—are clouds in the sky)were able to delay longer than did children who thought about thegratifying aspects of the temptation (e.g., thinking how tasty themarshmallows are). Encoding the temptation in abstract ways allowsthe ‘‘cool’’ system to kick in to regulate and deliberately control ac-tions, whereas encoding the temptation in terms of its gratifying aspectsevokes the ‘‘hot’’ system that complies with impulsivity (Metcalfe &Mischel, 1999). According to the CAPS model, the ‘‘cool’’ and ‘‘hot’’systems are different networks of some basic psychological units—theCognitive–Affective Units (CAUs)—which include encoding and cons-trual, expectations and beliefs, feelings and emotions, goals and values,and competencies and self-regulatory abilities. Increased activation of aunit in a network would result in increased activation of other units inthe network, thereby resulting in a specic course of action.

Resonating with CAPS, our lay theory approach focuses on how

common people’s understanding about the nature of race sets upmeaning systems within which they interpret and understand socialinformation as racially keyed and, in turn, invokes a specic course of action. Specically, we have identied two lay theories of race, one inwhich race reects xed core essence and the other in which race doesnot. When either of these theories comes to the fore of the mind, itwould activate different networks of CAUs—encoding and construalof social information and feelings, motivation, and competence in

navigating between racial categories and their associated culturalboundaries. Before we delineate the processes, we rst discuss thedenitions of the two lay theories of race and their theoretical roots.

Lay Theories of Race: Essentialist Theory Versus SocialConstructionist Theory

There are obvious social disparities in many societies around theglobe based on outer physical characteristics such as skin tone, hairtexture, nose shape, body type, and so forth. There are also indi-vidual differences in abilities and personality traits. Lay theories of race are beliefs that individuals hold that allow them to make sense

Lay Theories of Race 1285


4/28


5/28


6/28

logical essentialism, which emphasizes the discreteness of racialgroups and a biological basis of race. In other words, the essential-ist theory parallels beliefs associated with natural kind categories

such as ‘‘tiger’’ and ‘‘gold’’ (cf. Rothbart & Taylor, 1992) and rep-resents the notion that categories possess core underlying propertiesthat are independent of human perceivers (Tate & Audette, 2001). Incontrast, the social constructionist theory of race parallels beliefsassociated with human artifacts such as ‘‘chair’’ and ‘‘table’’ andposits that categories do not possess inalterable, inherent properties(e.g., an overturned crate can be considered a chair) but are catego-rized by human perceivers nonetheless due to their motives to sim-plify and group by function.

Lay Theory Approach and the CAPS Model

Given that the two theories are based on opposing assumptionsabout the nature of race, we posit that they would elicit differentencoding and organization of social information, which would, inturn, inuence individuals’ motivation and competence in navigatingbetween racial categories and their associated cultural boundaries.These processes concur with the CAPS model that personality can bemanifested in the organization and coactivation pattern of theCAUs. That is, the lay theories of race may activate differential sen-sitivities in associating various physical features with the construct of race in encoding, which would then be used by the perceiver to or-ganize further information about targets and targets’ group mem-berships. Specically, an essentialist theory would activate moredifferentiated, distinctive sensitivity in encoding physical features(because race would provide diagnostic information to those who

hold an essentialist theory) than would the social constructionisttheory. Aside from greater sensitivity in encoding, an essentialisttheory would also be associated with representing different racialgroups as discrete entities, whereas a social constructionist theorywould construe more overlapping characteristics or attributes of different racial groups and thus would represent the groups as lessdiscrete.

Encoding Racial DifferencesTo test these ideas, in one study we examined Asian American par-ticipants’ perceptions toward Asian Americans and White Ameri-



7/28

cans (No et al., 2008, Study 1). Asian Americans who believe in anessentialist lay theory of race were hypothesized to be more likely toperceive other Asian Americans (racial ingroup) and White Amer-

icans (racial outgroup) as characterized by distinct and different at-tributes compared with their counterparts who believe in a socialconstructionist theory of race. Participants were presented with theTen-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI; Gosling, Rentfrow, & Swann,2003) and were asked to rate the extent to which the 10 personalitytraits described a typical Asian American and a typical White Amer-ican. Results showed that the more strongly Asian American par-ticipants endorsed the essentialist theory of race (vs. socialconstructionist theory), the more dissimilar they perceived a typicalAsian American and a typical White American to be. This ndingsuggests that the Asian Americans who endorse the essentialist the-ory more perceive greater dissimilarity between racial ingroup andoutgroup members, viewing the two groups as having less overlap-ping personalities, than do those who endorse the social construc-tionist theory.

Furthermore, in her dissertation research, Chao (2009) investi-gated individuals’ tendency and readiness to categorize people as

racially distinct. She hypothesized that higher endorsement of theessentialist theory of race would be associated with heightened sen-sitivity toward subtle phenotypic differences and readiness to cate-gorize people as being members of two distinct racial groups.

In her rst study, she presented racially ambiguous faces to theparticipants in a judgment task. The faces were constructed by mo-rphing the Black and White faces that were rated as racially unam-biguous in a pilot test. In each trial, participants were presented with

pictures of two faces side by side: an original Black or White face anda face generated by morphing one original Black face with one orig-inal White face. The Black–White composition of the morphed facevaried in each trial (e.g., 90% Black–10% White, 80% Black–20%White . . . 20% Black–80% White, 10% Black–90% White, as shownin Figure 1). For trials that included an original White face, theparticipants were asked, ‘‘Which one of the two faces is more likelyto be White?’’ For trials that included an original Black face, theparticipants were asked, ‘‘Which one of the two faces is more likelyto be Black?’’ Across both sets of trials, if those who believe in racialessentialism are sensitive in detecting subtle phenotypic features as-sociated with racial difference, they should be more able to select the



8/28

original photos of the White and Black faces. Indeed, we found thatthe more participants endorsed the essentialist theory of race (vs.social constructionist theory), the more likely they were to choosethe original, unmorphed picture, suggesting that belief in racial es-sentialism is linked to more sensitivity and accuracy in detecting

subtle phenotypic differences of Black and White faces—an accuracythat is above chance level. Interestingly, this encoding effect wasfound for Black, White, and Asian American participants, suggest-ing that the effects of racial essentialism can be generalized from theracial majority group to at least two racial minority groups withinthe United States.

In her second study, Chao (2009) examined whether individualswho endorse essentialist theory tend to rely on race as an organizing

principle to categorize individuals even when the categories appearedto be arbitrarily dened. The study adapted the implicit categorylearning paradigm (Markman, Baldwin, & Maddox, 2005), in whichtwo novel groups of targets were created by sampling morphed pho-tos of Black and White faces at different graduations, such that theaverage morphing graduation of Group A was on average moreBlack (or less White) than Group B. Participants were told that thestudy examined how people categorize individuals into groups andwere asked to decide to which group each target person belonged;they were instructed to obtain as many correct categorizations aspossible and were given feedback after each trial as to whether theyhad categorized a target correctly. Importantly, participants were

Morphed Degree: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

Morphed Degree: (6) (7) (8) (9) (10)

Figure1Samples of morphed faces used in Chao’s (2009) studies: Faces of (2)to (9) are the morphed images of faces (1) and (10).



9/28

not informed regarding how the two groups differed. They had tolearn to differentiate the two groups through trial and error them-selves across four blocks of trials. It was expected that the partici-

pants would show a category learning effect, such that theirsensitivity in detecting the membership of the two groups would in-crease over time from the rst block to the last one. More impor-tantly, if the essentialist theory is linked to greater sensitivity towardfeatures associated with racial difference, the more likely race wouldbe invoked as an organizing principle for categorizing individualsbased on phenotypic differences that underlie the two novel catego-ries. Thus, the more participants endorse the essentialist theory of race (vs. the social constructionist theory), the better they wouldperform on the task. Indeed, this was found, suggesting again that theessentialist theory of race was associated with greater sensitivity indetecting subtle differences in phenotypic features between Black andWhite faces and readiness in using these differences to make category judgments. Like the rst study, interestingly, this encoding effect wasagain found among Black, White, and Asian American participants.

Construing Social Characteristics as Racial Differences

Given that individuals who endorse the essentialist theory tend torepresent racial groups as discrete, nonoverlapping categories, wouldthey be more likely to generalize both the positive and negative per-ceived characteristics of individual members to the racial group?Also, would the facial features of the individual members matter?That is, because essentialist theorists are sensitive toward featuresassociated with racial difference, would the effects of generalization

be stronger when the positive or negative behaviors are committedby members with racially unambiguous features than by those withambiguous features? To test this idea, Chao (2009, Study 3) con-ducted an impression formation experiment to examine racial per-ception in which some behavioral descriptions were paired up withphotos of original and morphed Black and White faces. The behav-ior descriptions were pretested, and descriptions with different de-grees of trusting were selected (e.g., ‘‘He shares an apartment withsome other people, and always keeps the door of his own bedroomlocked when he is not at home.’’ ‘‘When his friends ask him about hispersonal information [student number, account balance, etc.], hedoes not hesitate to tell them.’’). The trusting dimension was selected



10/28

because it is not stereotypically associated with either Blacks orWhites ( Judd, Park, Ryan, Brauer, & Kraus, 1995; Lin, Kwan,Cheung, & Fiske, 2005). Each behavioral description was paired

with a photo of its actor and presented one at a time to the partic-ipants. The participants were told that the pictures and behaviorswere sampled from the male members of an oratorio society oncampus and that we were interested in examining how individualsform impressions of people. In some conditions, the behaviors thatpaired up with the Black (original or morphed) faces were moretrusting than those paired up with the White (original or morphed)faces. In other conditions, the pairing was reversed. The participantswere given 5 s to read through each picture-behavioral descriptionpair and form an overall impression of the group. After they com-pleted a ller task, the participants were asked to rate how trustingthe Black members and the White members of the oratorio societywere based on their impression. As a stronger essentialist race belief is associated with more sensitivity toward features associated withracial difference and higher likelihood to engage in race-based cat-egorization, we expected that participants endorsing essentialist racetheory would be more likely to make inferences about the Black and

White members of the society based on the behaviors of the raciallyunambiguous members of the groups than did those endorsing thetheory less. The ndings provided support to this prediction. Also,Black, White, and Asian American participants showed a similarpattern of results.

It is important to note that participants who endorsed the essen-tialist theory did not only show negative attitudes toward the racialminority; rather, they drew both positive (trusting) and negative

(nontrusting) inferences toward both racial minority and majoritygroups, depending on whether the Black or White faces were pairedup with trusting versus nontrusting behaviors. Importantly, the gen-eralization effect was stronger when the trusting/nontrusting behav-iors were paired up with racially unambiguous faces than withracially ambiguous faces, suggesting that the sensitivity in encodingfacial features can cascade down to inferences and generalization of social characteristics to racial groups

These ndings suggest that the encoding processes set up by theessentialist race theory can channel people toward making positiveor negative inferences of social groups, depending on contextual in-formation. That is, the essentialist race theory is not necessarily as-



11/28


12/28

ily frame switch into the majority cultural perspective. In contrast,racial minority members who subscribe to the social constructionisttheory may be inclined to understand their identity in terms of the

shifting meanings of various other pertinent social categories otherthan race in changing intergroup contexts. That is, because theseindividuals believe that racial categories are arbitrary and racial at-tributes are overlapping, they would not view racial membership as ameaningful difference that prevents them from behaving in align-ment or identifying with the majority culture. We will review em-pirical evidence pertaining to these hypotheses next.

Identication With the Majority CultureResearch has shown that there is a widespread tendency to associateAmericans with being White (‘‘American 5 White,’’ shown by Devos& Banaji, 2005). If Asian Americans who hold racial essentialist be-liefs view their racial group as distinct from White Americans, theywould be less likely to identify with American culture in comparisonto Asian Americans who hold social constructionist beliefs. To testthis idea, we (No et al., 2008, Study 2) manipulated Asian Ameri-

cans’ lay theories using the mock article methodology developed byChiu, Hong, and Dweck (1997). As noted, at the outset, we con-tended that the essentialist race theory and the social constructionisttheory are common folk theories coexisting in our culture. Also, weargued that, depending on individuals’ prior experience and socialenvironment, an essentialist race theory or the social constructionisttheory may become more chronically accessible. However, it is alsopossible to increase the temporary accessibility of one of the theories

by presenting participants with convincing evidence supporting oneof the theories. Indeed, this method has been shown to prime thecorresponding theory in previous research on implicit theories of morality (Hong et al., 2003) and gender (Coleman & Hong, 2008).To the extent that the essentialist race theory would orient AsianAmerican participants to perceive greater racial differences, we pre-dicted that Asian American participants who were primed with theessentialist theory of race would also show less identication withAmerican culture than would those who were primed with a socialconstructionist theory of race. To test these predictions, we ran-domly presented Asian American participants with one of two bogusarticles ostensibly from Time magazine: In the essentialist theory



13/28


14/28


15/28

onto generalized others among European Canadians and foreign-born Asian Canadians. Consistent with previous cross-cultural re-search ndings on independent and interdependent self-construal

(e.g., Markus & Kitayama, 1991), European Canadians displayed apattern of egocentric projection , where emotions felt by the self wereprojected onto others (e.g., feeling ‘‘anger’’ and projecting ‘‘anger’’onto others), whereas Asian Canadians showed a pattern of relational projection and perceived others as experiencing the complementaryemotion felt by the self (e.g., feeling ‘‘anger’’ and projecting ‘‘fear’’onto others).

Accordingly, we predicted that Asian Americans would showmore egocentric projection and less relational projection whenprimed with American cultural icons and show more relational projection and less egocentric projection when primed with Asian cul-tural icons. We argued that this pattern would be moderated byparticipants’ endorsement of essentialist race theory such that thosewho more strongly endorse an essentialist race theory would be lesslikely to display assimilation effects toward the American primes.This is because the American primes would elicit intergroup com-parison processes, reminding the Asian Americans who hold the es-

sentialist theory of their essential, inalterable differences from theWhite majority group. This study was conducted with KoreanAmericans, and the ndings were consistent with our predictions.Specically, whereas participants who endorsed the social construc-tionist theory assimilated toward the American cultural primes (i.e.,responding with more egocentric projection and less relational projection), those who endorsed the essentialist theory did not showsuch assimilation. Rather, the essentialists showed a contrastive pat-

tern of responding when primed with the American cultural icons(responding with less egocentric projection and more relational projection). This lack of assimilation toward American cultural primesamong participants who more strongly endorsed the essentialist the-ory raises the question of whether individuals are unwilling versusunable to switch cultural frames. To the extent that the cultural iconswere effective in activating the corresponding cultural knowledge,the lack of assimilation found in this study may be indicative of amotivational reluctance to frame switch among those who endorseessentialist race beliefs.

In short, these two cultural frame switching studies suggest thatracial essentialism, in comparison to social constructionism, is asso-



16/28

ciated with a more discrete representation of cultures, thereby mak-ing it harder for the minority members to switch rapidly betweencultural frames; it also dampens their tendency to assimilate toward

the majority cultural frames.

Psychological Stress in Navigating Between Cultures

For racial minority members who endorse the essentialist theory,discrete representations of cultures might further signify the imper-meability of cultural boundaries; thus, discussing personal experi-ences within the two cultures may be highly stressful and lead toincreased vigilance because such recollection requires integrating thetwo apparently discrete cultures and reconciling some seeminglycompeting cultural attributes (e.g., cultural values). As a result, Chi-nese American participants who believe in racial essentialism wereexpected to show heightened skin conductance (but not heightenedheart rate) when discussing their bicultural experiences. (Researchhas shown that a heightened skin conductance with the absence of heightened heart rate is a signature for stress and effortful respond-ing; Roisman, Tsai, & Chiang, 2004.) To test this hypothesis, we in-

terviewed 60 Chinese Americans individually (Chao et al., 2007,Study 2). During these interviews, participants were asked to discusstheir personal experiences with both the Chinese and American cul-tures (e.g., ‘‘Please generate 5 words to characterize your experienceswith Chinese culture and substantiate each word with your personalstories.’’ ‘‘Please generate 5 words to characterize your experienceswith American culture and substantiate each word with your per-sonal stories’’). These prompts set up a context within which the

participants were guided to explore their personal experiences withthe two cultures in some detail, thereby allowing us to obtain a re-liable skin conductance reading. As predicted, endorsement of theessentialist race theory was associated with a signicant increase inskin conductance level (but not an increase in heart rate) when theparticipants talked about their bicultural experiences, showing thatpeople who endorsed essentialist race theory more were morestressful when discussing their bicultural experience than did peoplewho endorsed essentialist race theory less. Moreover, the changein skin conductance level was not correlated with the participants’English prociency, ruling out the possibility that the participants’ability to understand and speak English confounded the results. Fur-



17/28

thermore, the effect of essentialist theory held regardless of the pos-itivity or negativity of the experiences disclosed. In short, these nd-ings suggested that endorsing a stronger essentialist belief is linked to

greater stress and vigilance-related responses when integrating cul-tural experiences between the two apparently discrete cultures.

Summary

Taken together, consistent with the CAPS model, the lay theory thatindividuals hold about race set up different if . . . then . . . behavioralproles and shape individuals’ cognitive and affective responses in aracially and culturally diverse society. Specically, the theories of raceactivate different networks of encoding and construal and feelings andmotivation when navigating in diverse racial/ethnic social settings.The research ndings illustrated that endorsement of the essentialisttheory of race, in comparison to endorsement of the social construc-tionist theory of race, promoted the tendency to group the self andothers into discrete racial categories and to perceive ‘‘race’’ as a salientand meaningful social dimension. It links how individuals encodedracial differences to race-based categorization and inferences.

Extending from the racial domain to the cultural domain, essen-tialist theory of race was found to be associated with perceiving cul-tures as being discrete and possessing rigid boundaries and inalterablecultural essence. When negotiating between two cultures, endorsementof the essentialist theory of race among racial minority individualsinuenced their psychological processes in the face of two apparentlydiscrete cultures. For those who endorse the essentialist theory ratherthan the social constructionist theory, discussing personal experiences

about the two cultures may have been relatively more stressful, leadingto increased vigilance in integrating and reconciling the seeminglydiscrete cultural attributes. Furthermore, lay theory of race also in-uences individuals’ ease of switching into the American culturalmind-set and their identication toward American culture.

The Cultural Meaning of Lay Theories of Race

The lay theories of race do not exist in a social vacuum. It is shapedby the intergroup relations in a society and may reect the sharedconsensus in the society. This perspective gives rise to several inter-esting points of discussion.



18/28

First, it is obvious that the mass media are important in creatingconsensus in a society. Less obvious, however, are the processes in-volved. Our research suggests two possible ways that mass media

affect people’s views and perceptions in the racial domain. On theone hand, as noted above, we found that presenting participantswith an article allegedly taken from a reputable media source primedthe participants to subscribe to the lay theory supported in the article(No et al., 2008, Study 2). To the extent that recent discoveries inhuman genomics have often been portrayed as evidence for geneticmarkers of racial groups and human attributes in the media (Con-rad, 1997, 2002; Nelkin & Lindee, 1995), the public could be swayedtoward the essentialist theory of race.

On the other hand, we also found that people holding the essen-tialist race theory can form positive as well as negative stereotypes of certain racial groups, depending on whether positive or negative be-haviors of the groups were portrayed. This implies that how themedia portray racial minority groups would have much inuence onwhether the essentialist race theory is linked to negative stereotyping,prejudice, and discrimination of minority groups. Taken as a whole,promoting the perception of a genetic reality of racial difference,

together with frequent reports of negative behaviors of racial mi-nority individuals in the media, would arguably lead to widespreadprejudice and discrimination against racial minorities in the society.This combination would also lead to negative self-views of a racialminority group (cf. Sinclair, Pappas, & Lun, this issue).

Second, to the extent that White Americans have been the majority and dominant group in the United States, individuals whoendorse essentialist beliefs may generalize the assumed dispositions

of the White racial group to the American national group (such asthe American ‘‘creed’’ espoused by Huntington, 2004). In this frame-work, Americans who belong to other racial groups may be seen asless ‘‘American’’ because they do not possess the core essence of thenational group. For members of racial minority groups, this wouldmean that they could never become full-edged members of theAmerican national group. Therefore, those individuals may contrastthemselves from the American culture and show a low level of American identication. For members of the majority group (WhiteAmericans), those who hold the essentialist race theory may alsoendorse attitudes that reinforce White Americans as being an excep-tional group. Specically, they might (a) agree that the White racial



19/28

group and White values dene true Americans, (b) disapprove of immigration because immigrant groups do not possess ‘‘American’’dispositions, and (c) endorse nationalism as they generalize the dom-

inance of their racial group (White) to the national group. Theseideas could be tested in future research.The essentialist race belief may also be useful in predicting the

majority group members’ navigation of cultural experiences. WouldWhite Americans holding an essentialist race belief also show dif-culty in navigating between their own culture and other major ethniccultures? This seems to be the case. In a recent study (Hong &Zhang, 2006), we found that White American expatriates working inBeijing, China, are signicantly less likely to engage in Chinese cul-tural practices and activities when they hold a stronger (vs. weaker)essentialist race belief. This association remained signicant evenwhen prociency in Chinese language and length of residence inChina were statistically controlled. Based on this result, we thereforereason that a belief in racial essentialism may also affect WhiteAmericans’ exibility in navigating between cultures when they be-long to a minority racial group.

Third, the endorsement of the essentialist theory or social con-

structionist theory could be affected by the cultural consensus as well.In societies where the racial composition is considered to be relativelyhomogenous (e.g., Japan, Mainland China 2 ), the racial dimensionsmay not be salient within the countries. When interacting with peopleof different races from foreign countries, race is likely to be conceivedas an essence because it is a convenient explanation to account for thenumerous differences found between the groups. Indeed, we haveobtained preliminary data that showed that the Chinese college stu-

dents in Beijing endorsed signicantly greater essentialist race theorythan did White American college students in the United States. Withthe recent internationalization of mainland China, the Chinese peo-ple are having more contacts with people from different racial back-grounds, and it would be interesting to track how people from thesecountries will change their lay theories of race.

Within a country, the endorsement of essentialism versus socialconstructionism should also depend on the social dominance orien-

2. Although in terms of ethnicity there are over 55 ethnic groups in mainlandChina, the Han group is an overwhelming majority. Thus, the ethnic compositionin China is arguably relatively homogeneous as well.



20/28


21/28

people make in their daily lives are based on others’ phenotypes.However, genetic coding of different phenotypic traits (e.g., eyecolor, hair texture) assorts independently of one another, one reason

why self-reported race often does not match genetic ancestry. Forexample, genetic coding for eye color segregates from that for hairtexture and so forth—genes do not collate together and make up a‘‘racial type.’’ In any case, of greater interest to social psychologiststhan whether or not race is identiable through genetic analysis isthat simply endorsing the essentialist or social constructionist belief by itself has far-reaching implications on individuals’ conceptions of others and their own identity.

Future Direction and Concluding Remarks

In this paper, using CAPS as a framework, we discussed how laytheories of race affect people’s encoding and construal of social in-formation and their motivation and competence in navigating be-tween the cultural frames of different racial or ethnic groups. Morerecently, Williams and Eberhardt (2008) have shown how belief inthe biological basis of race increases acceptance of racial inequalities

and reduces interest in interacting with racial outgroup members.Importantly, Williams and Eberhardt’s ndings parallel our ownargument that beliefs regarding the nature of race do not necessarilyresult in racial prejudice. That is, their research showed that belief inthe biological basis of race still predicted the outcome variables afterprior level of racial prejudice was statistically controlled. Their re-sults, along with our own research ndings, shed light on how pos-sessing a view of reality in which racial groups are divided by distinct

and irreconcilable differences versus a view of reality in which racialoutgroups are related not only to the self but to all humanity leads toparticular ways of encoding, representing, and organizing informa-tion related to race.

What is still lacking in these research programs, however, is howlay theories of race affect African American participants’ responses.The research we reviewed (including Williams & Eberhardt, 2008)was conducted mainly with White or Asian participants, althoughwe have shown that essentialist race theory predicts racial encodingand categorization among African Americans as well. The effectscould be complicated. On the one hand, African Americans as agroup have been historically disadvantaged and marginalized and



22/28

are often characterized as biologically inferior or primitive (e.g.,Goff, Eberhardt, Williams, & Jackson, 2008). Therefore, it is un-likely that African Americans would be willing to agree with these

negative stereotypes and their implied biological determinations of race. On the other hand, given the continued experience of discrim-ination that African Americans collectively share, they may viewtheir own racial group as uniquely distinct from other racial groups.For some, these shared experiences may form the essence of AfricanAmericans and set them apart from other racial groups in a funda-mental way. That is, the shared experience of oppression and dis-crimination in history may become a form of an essence placeholderand used as a basis for racial essentialism. It is interesting to notethat ‘‘essentialism is not by denition oppressive, just as anti-essen-tialism is not by denition liberating’’ (Verkuyten, 2003, p. 374). Fordisadvantaged racial groups, belief in a racial essence sometimes canserve the purpose of legitimizing their racial identity and grouprights and aid in the celebration of their group’s struggles againstdominant groups. It would be interesting in the future to examine if the experience-based essentialism held by African Americans alsofunctions in a similar manner as biological-based essentialism. That

is, would the experience-based essentialism also activate race-basedencoding and organization, and decrease motivation to identify andafliate with racial outgroups?

CAPS contends that different networks of CAUs can interact togive rise to new types of if–then proles. Inspired by this notion, wehave recently started a program of research to examine how AsiansAmericans’ lay theories of race may interact with race-based rejec-tion sensitivity (cf. Mendoza-Denton & Goldman-Flythe, this issue)

to give rise to different behavior patterns in intergroup settings in theUnited States. First, we found that the essentialist race theory is as-sociated with greater race-based rejection sensitivity than the socialconstructionist theory. This is not surprising because we know thatthe essentialist race is linked to race-based encoding and categori-zation of social information. Importantly, we also found that thesocial constructionist theory of race buffered the detrimental effectsof Asians Americans’ race-based rejection sensitivity. It is arguedthat racial categories and their associated characteristics are seen asmore malleable than inevitable under the social constructionistframework. By contrast, those who hold the essentialist race theorywere likely to believe that the characteristics of their group are real



23/28

and can be used to explain why others reject their racial group. Thisinternal attribution tendency intensied the negative affect one mayexperience in interracial settings. These ndings support CAPS’s

notion that different networks of CAUs can interact to guide dy-namic personality processes.In a similar vein, lay theories of race could also moderate partic-

ipants’ tendency to self-stereotype (cf. Sinclair et al., this issue).Again, individuals who endorse the social constructionist theorymay be less likely than those who endorse the essentialist race theoryto characterize the self in ways that are consistent with racial ste-reotypes (i.e., self-stereotype) even when they are motivated to ac-commodate the ‘‘shared reality’’ of their interactants. It is becauseracial categories and their associated characteristics are seen as moremalleable than inevitable under the social constructionist frame-work. As a result, individuals would be less likely to see the stereo-type-consistent attributes as valid descriptors of themselves.Consistent with this idea, it was found that a belief in malleable in-telligence has protected African American participants from the det-rimental effects of stereotype threat in academic settings (Aronson,Fried, & Good, 2002)

To conclude, with the rapid increases in the mobility of laborforces and globalization, many societies are getting more racially,ethnically, and culturally diverse. Race, ethnicity, and culture willbecome an increasingly salient dimension of social categorization;hence, it becomes ever more pressing to examine how lay peopleunderstand and formulate theories to explain the observed differ-ences across different racial, ethnic, and cultural groups. Our modelinstantiates the CAPS model by showing how the lay theories of race

invoke different networks of CAUs, which, in turn, gives rise to thedynamic processes in interracial contexts. By understanding lay peo-ple’s theorizing about their social reality, the current research hasfar-reaching implications for the building of a successful multicul-tural society.

REFERENCES

Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswick, E., Levinson, D. J., & Sanford, R. N. (1950).The authoritarian personality . New York: Harper.

Allport, G. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice . Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.



24/28

Aronson, J., Fried, C. B., & Good, C. (2002). Reducing the effects of stereotypethreat on African American college students by shaping theories of intelli-gence. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology , 38 , 113–125.

Cacioppo, J. T., & Petty, R. E. (1982). The need for cognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 42 , 116–131.

Celious, A., & Oyserman, D. (2001). Race from the inside: An emerging heter-ogeneous race model. Journal of Social Issues , 57 , 149–165.

Chao, M., Chen, J., Roisman, G., & Hong, Y. (2007). Essentializing race: Impli-cations for bicultural individuals’ cognition and physiological reactivity. Psy-chological Science , 18 , 341–348.

Chao, M. M. (2009). Essentializing race: Its implication to social categorizationand racial perception . Doctoral dissertation, Univerity of Illinois at Urbana– Champaign.

Chiu, C., Hong, Y., & Dweck, C. S. (1997). Lay dispositionism and lay theories of personality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 73 , 19–30.

Cohen, D., & Gunz, A. (2002). As seen by the other . . . Perspectives on the self inthe memories and emotion perceptions of Easterners and Westerners. Psycho-logical Science , 13 , 55–59.

Coleman, J., & Hong, Y. (2008). Beyond nature and nurture: The inuence of laygender theories on self-stereotyping. Self and Identity , 7 , 34–53.

Collins, F. S., Green, E. D., Guttmacher, A. E., & Guyer, M. S. (2003). A visionfor the future of genomic research: A blueprint for the genomic era. Nature ,422 , 1–13.

Conrad, P. (1997). Public eyes and private genes: Historical frames, news con-structions, and social problems. Social Problems , 44 , 139–154.

Conrad, P. (2002). Genetics and behavior in the news: Dilemmas of a risingparadigm. In J. S. Alper, C. Ard, A. Asch, J. Beck, P. Conrad, & L. N. Geller(Eds.), The double-edged helix: Social implications of genetics in a diverse so-ciety . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Devos, T., & Banaji, M. R. (2005). American 5 White? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 88 , 447–466.

Dweck, C. S. (1999). Self-theories: Their role in motivation, personality and devel-opment . New York: Psychology Press.

Dweck, C. S., Chiu, C., & Hong, Y. (1995). Implicit theories and their role in judgments and reactions: A world from two perspectives. Psychological In-quiry , 6 , 267–285.

Fairchild, H. H., Yee, A. H., Wyatt, G. E., & Weizmann, F. M. (1995). Read-dressing psychology’s problems with race. American Psychologist , 50 , 46–47.

Gelman, S. A., & Hirschfeld, L. A. (1999). How biological is essentialism? InD. L. Medin & S. Atran (Eds.), Folkbiology (pp. 403–446). Cambridge, MA:MIT Press.

Gil-White, F. (2001). Are ethnic groups biological species to the human brain?Essentialism in human cognition of some social groups. Current Anthropology ,

42 , 515–554.Goff, P. A., Eberhardt, J. L., Williams, M. J., & Jackson, M. C. (2008). Not yet

human: Implicit knowledge, historical dehumanization, and contemporaryconsequences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 94 , 292–306.



25/28

Gosling, S. D., Rentfrow, P. J., & Swann, W. B. (2003). A very brief measure of theBig-Five personality domains. Journal of Research in Personality , 37 , 504–528.

Gossett, T. F. (1997). Race: The history of an idea in America (Rev. ed.). NewYork: Oxford University Press.

Haslam, N., Rothschild, L., & Ernst, D. (2000). Essentialist belief about socialcategories. British Journal of Social Psychology , 39 , 113–127.

Haslam, N., Rothschild, L., & Ernst, D. (2002). Are essentialist beliefs associatedwith prejudice? British Journal of Social Psychology , 41 , 87–100.

Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations . New York: Wiley.Hong, Y., Chan, G., Chiu, C., Wong, R. Y. M., Hansen, I. G., Lee, S., et al.

(2003). How are social identities linked to self-conception and intergroup ori-entation? The moderating effect of implicit theories. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 85 , 1147–1160.

Hong, Y., Coleman, J., Chan, G., Wong, R. Y. M., Chiu, C., Hansen, I. G.,et al. (2004). Predicting intergroup bias: The interactive effects of implicit theoryand social identity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin , 30 , 1035–1047.

Hong, Y., Levy, S. R., & Chiu, C. (2001). The contribution of the lay theoriesapproach to the study of groups. Personality and Social Psychology Review , 5 ,98–106.

Hong, Y., Morris, M. W., Chiu, C., & Benet-Martinez, V. (2000). Multiculturalminds: A dynamic constructivist approach to culture and cognition. AmericanPsychologist , 55 , 709–720.

Hong, Y., & Zhang, X. (2006). Essentialist race belief predicts acculturation amonga Caucasian expatriate sample in Beijing, China . Unpublished data, PekingUniversity.

Huntington, S. P. (2004). Who are we? The challenges to America’s national iden-tity . New York: Simon & Schuster.

Judd, C. M., Park, B., Ryan, C. S., Brauer, M., & Kraus, S. (1995). Stereotypesand ethnocentrism: Diverging interethnic perceptions of African Americanand White American youth. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 69 ,460–481.

Keller, J. (2005). In genes we trust: The biological component of psychologicalessentialism and its relationship to mechanisms of motivated social cognition.

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 88

, 686–702.Kelly, G. A. (1955). The psychology of personal constructs . New York: Norton.Kruglanski, A. W. (1990). Motivations for judging and knowing: Implications for

causal attribution. In E. T. Higgins & R. M. Sorrentino (Eds.), Handbook of motivation and cognition: Foundations of social behavior (Vol. 2, pp. 333–368).New York: Guilford.

Kruglanski, A. W., & Webster, D. M. (1996). Motivated closing of the mind:‘‘Seizing’’ and ‘‘freezing.’’ Psychological Review , 103 , 263–283.

Levy, S. R., Stroessner, S. J., & Dweck, C. S. (1998). Stereotype formation andendorsement: The role of implicit theories. Journal of Personality and Social

Psychology , 74 , 1421–1436.Lin, M. H., Kwan, V. S. Y., Cheung, A., & Fiske, S. T. (2005). Stereotype content

model explains prejudice for an envied outgroup: Scale of anti-Asian Americanstereotypes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin , 31 , 34–47.



26/28

Markman, A. B., Baldwin, G. C., & Maddox, W. T. (2005). The interaction of payoff structure and regulatory focus in classication. Psychological Science ,16 , 852–855.

Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications forcognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review , 98 , 224–253.

Medin, D. L. (1989). Concepts and conceptual structure. American Psychology ,44 , 1469–1481.

Medin, D. L., & Ortony, A. (1989). Psychological essentialism. In S. Vosniadou &A. Ortony (Eds.), Similarity and analogical reasoning (pp. 179–195). NewYork: Cambridge University Press.

Metcalfe, J., & Mischel, W. (1999). A hot/cool-system analysis of delay of grat-ication: Dynamics of willpower. Psychological Review , 106 , 3–19.

Mischel, W., & Baker, N. (1975). Cognitive appraisals and transformations indelay behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 31 , 254–261.

Mischel, W., & Shoda, Y. (1995). A cognitive–affective system theory of person-ality: Reconceptualizing situations, dispositions, dynamics, and invariance inpersonality structure. Psychological Review , 102 , 246–268.

Mischel, W., & Shoda, Y. (1999). Integrating dispositions and processing dynam-ics within a unied theory of personality: The cognitive–affective personalitysystem. In L. Pervin & J. Oliver (Eds.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research (2nd ed., pp. 197–218). New York: Guilford Press.

Moore, B., Mischel, W., & Zeiss, A. (1976). Comparative effects of the rewardstimulus and its cognitive representation in voluntary delay. Journal of Per-

sonality and Social Psychology , 34 , 419–424.Murphy, G. L., & Medin, D. L. (1985). The role of theories in conceptual coher-ence. Psychological Review , 92 , 289–316.

Nelkin, D., & Lindee, M. S. (1995). The DNA mystique: The gene as a cultural icon . New York: Freeman.

Neuberg, S. L., & Newsom, J. T. (1993). Personal need for structure: Individualdifferences in the desire for simple structure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 65 , 113–131.

No, S., & Hong, Y. (2005). Implicit theories of race measure . Unpublished mea-sure, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

No, S., Hong, Y., Liao, H., Lee, K., Wood, D., & Chao, M. M. (2008). Race andpsychological essentialism: Lay theory of race moderates Asian Americans’responses toward American culture. Journal of Personality and Social Psychol-ogy, 95 , 991–1004.

Ossorio, P., & Duster, T. (2005). Race and genetics: Controversies in biomedical,behavioral, and forensic sciences. American Psychologist , 60 , 115–128.

Pratto, F., Sidanius, J., Stallworth, L. M., & Malle, B. (1994). Social dominanceorientation: A personality variable predicting social and political attitudes.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 67 , 741–763.

Prentice, D. A., & Miller, D. T. (2006). Essentializing differences between womenand men. Psychological Science , 17 , 129–135.

Roisman, G. L., Tsai, J. L., & Chiang, K.-H. S. (2004). The emotional integrationof childhood experience: Physiological, facial expression, and self-reported



27/28


28/28

1310

the role of lay theories of race

Documents