The COVID-19 pandemic and changes in social behavior: Protective face masks reduce deliberate social distancing preferences while leaving automatic avoidance behavior unaffected.

Protective face masks were one of the central measures to counteract viral transmission in the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior research indicates that face masks impact various aspects of social cognition, such as emotion recognition and social evaluation. Whether protective masks also influence social avoidance behavior is less clear. Our project assessed direct and indirect measures of social avoidance tendencies towards masked and unmasked faces in two experiments with 311 participants during the first half of 2021. Two interventions were used in half of the participants from each sample (Experiment 1: protective face masks; Experiment 2: a disease prime video) to decrease or increase the salience of the immediate contagion threat. In the direct social avoidance measure, which asked for the deliberate decision to approach or avoid a person in a hypothetical social encounter, participants showed an increased willingness to approach masked as opposed to unmasked faces across experiments. This effect was further related to interindividual differences in pandemic threat perception in both samples. In the indirect measure, which assessed automatic social approach and avoidance tendencies, we neither observed an approach advantage towards masked faces nor an avoidance advantage for unmasked faces. Thus, while the absence of protective face masks may have led to increased deliberate social avoidance during the pandemic, no such effect was observed on automatic regulation of behavior, thus indicating the relative robustness of this latter behavior against changes in superordinate social norms.

Shooter biases and stereotypes among police and civilians.

The present research assesses potential correlates of discriminatory police behavior, comparing police and civilian participants in a first person shooter task (FPST) as well as on various self-report measures of intergroup contact, intergroup attitudes, and ideological beliefs in three preregistered studies. Study 1 (N = 330), using a FPST with a short response window (630 ms), did not observe shooter biases in reaction times, error rates and signal detection parameters in neither police nor civilian participants. Study 2a (N = 290), using a longer response window (850 ms), observed a shooter bias in reaction times, error rates, and response criterion in both civilian and police participants. These shooter biases were largely driven by faster reactions, fewer errors, and more liberal shoot decisions for armed Arab (vs. White) targets. Study 2b (N = 191; 850 ms response window) closely replicated shooter biases in reaction times, error rates, and response criterion in a sample of civilian online participants. Across studies, we observed similar results in the shooter task for police and civilian samples. Furthermore, both police and civilian participants expressed anti-Muslim and anti-Arab attitudes across a variety of self-report measures. However, compared to civilians, police participants reported higher levels of anti-Muslim attitudes on some measures as well as higher levels of social dominance orientation, which might pose additional risk factors for discriminatory behavior. Lastly, while we observed reliable individual differences in self-reported intergroup attitudes, ideologies, and intergroup contact, none of these characteristics correlated with shooter biases.

Real-life outgroup exposure, self-reported outgroup contact and the other-race effect.

People are better at recognizing faces from their own racial or ethnic group compared with faces from other racial or ethnic groups, known as the other-'race' effect (ORE). Several theories of the ORE assume that memory for other-race faces is impaired because people have less contact with members of other racial or ethnic groups, resulting in lower visual expertise. The present research investigates contact theories of the ORE, using self-report contact measures and objective measures of potential outgroup exposure (estimated from participants' residential location and from GPS tracking). Across six studies (total N = 2660), we observed that White American and White German participants displayed better memory for White faces compared with Black or Middle Eastern faces, whereas Black American participants displayed similarly equal or better memory for White compared with Black faces. We did not observe any relations between the ORE and objective measures of potential outgroup exposure. Only in Studies 2a and 2b, we observed very small correlations (rs = -.08 to .06) between 4 out of 30 contact measures and the ORE. We discuss methodological limitations and implications for theories of the ORE.

Beyond stereotypes: Prejudice as an important missing force explaining group disparities.

We comment on Cesario's assertion that social psychological intergroup research focuses solely on stereotypes, neglecting actual differences between groups to explain group disparities. This reasoning, however, misses yet another explaining force: In addition to stereotypes, ample laboratory and field research documents relationships between group disparities, discrimination, and prejudice, which cannot be explained by people's accurate judgments of real-world group differences.

Racial Bias in Police Traffic Stops: White Residents' County-Level Prejudice and Stereotypes Are Related to Disproportionate Stopping of Black Drivers.

Racial disparities in policing are well documented, but the reasons for such disparities are often debated. In the current research, we weighed in on this debate using a regional-level bias framework: We investigated the link between racial disparities in police traffic stops and regional-level racial bias, employing data from more than 130 million police traffic stops in 1,413 U.S. counties and county-level measures of racial bias from more than 2 million online respondents. Compared with their population share in county demographics, Black drivers were stopped at disproportionate rates in the majority of counties. Crucially, disproportionate stopping of Black drivers was higher in counties with higher levels of racial prejudice by White residents (rs = .07-.36). Furthermore, county-level aggregates of White people's threat-related stereotypes were less consistent in predicting disproportionate stopping (rs = .00-.19). These observed relationships between regional-level bias and racial disparities in policing highlight the importance of the context in which police operate.

Emotion misattribution from complex scene pictures: Evidence for affective processing beyond valence.

The present experiments employed an emotion misattribution procedure to investigate if, and to what extent, emotional pictures are automatically processed on an emotion-specific level. We employed emotional pictures from the International Affective Picture System (Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 2008) depicting joy-, anger-, fear-, and sadness-related contents as prime stimuli in the four-category emotion misattribution procedure (Rohr, Degner, & Wentura, 2015). Pictures were presented briefly and masked to avoid intentional responding. The pattern of results across all experiments provides evidence for an unfolding of emotion specificity along with the degree of visibility of primes. When presentation duration allowed for relatively good prime visibility (40 ms; Experiment 1), we observed emotion-specific misattribution effects for each prime category. With shorter prime presentation reducing prime visibility (30 ms; Experiment 2a and 2b), misattribution effects became less specific: While anger-related emotional scenes were clearly differentiated from fear and sadness-associated scenes, the latter two were not differentiated from one another. This pattern cannot be explained by simple semantic processing, but fits to an early appraisal of the coping ability associated with the emotion triggered by the pictorial content highlighting that specific, emotion-related processes are involved at the very early stages of emotional information processing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Do Members of Disadvantaged Groups Explain Group Status With Group Stereotypes?

Recent research on group attitudes in members of disadvantaged groups has provided evidence that group evaluations closely align with societal stigma, reflecting outgroup favoritism in members of those groups that are most strongly stigmatized. While outgroup favoritism is clearly evident among some groups, there is still debate about the psychological mechanisms underlying outgroup favoritism. The current research focuses on a less intensively examined aspect of outgroup favoritism, namely the use of status-legitimizing group stereotypes. We present data from members of four disadvantaged groups (i.e., persons who self-categorize as gay or lesbian, n = 205; Black or African American, n = 209; overweight n = 200, or are aged 60-75 years n = 205), who reported the perceived status of their ingroup and a comparison majority outgroup and provided explanations for their status perceptions. Contrary to assumptions from System Justification Theory, participants rarely explained perceived group status differences with group stereotypes, whereas they frequently explained ingroup disadvantage with perceived stigmatization and/or systemic reasons. Further exploratory analyses indicated that participants' status explanations were related to measures of intergroup attitudes, ideological beliefs, stigma consciousness, and experienced discrimination. Our results highlight the need to develop a better understanding whether, under what circumstances, and with which consequences members of disadvantaged groups use group stereotypes as attributions of ingroup status and status differences.

Spontaneous state inferences.

Perceivers routinely draw inferences about others from their behavior in an attempt to make sense of the world. Previous research has established that spontaneous inferences include stable characteristics such as traits and a number of variable person-related concepts such as goals, intentions, and motivations. The current research investigated the occurrence of more general spontaneous state inferences. In a series of four preregistered studies (N = 883), we adapted two established experimental paradigms frequently used in spontaneous social inference research to the investigation of spontaneous trait and state inferences. In Studies 1 and 2, we observed evidence for the occurrence of spontaneous state inferences from state-implying statements. In Studies 3 and 4, we observed the simultaneous occurrence of spontaneous trait and state inferences from statements that allowed for both inferences. In a fifth study (N = 97), we provide evidence that people represent states and traits as functionally different: Participants judged the likelihood of behavioral repetition higher when the same behavior was related to a trait-inference than a state-inference. The observation of multiple simultaneous spontaneous inferences in the current research suggests that further theory building regarding the underlying mechanisms and processes of spontaneous impression formation in person perception from behavior is warranted. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Moderators of intergroup evaluation in disadvantaged groups: A comprehensive test of predictions from system justification theory.

We examined hypotheses proposed by System Justification Theory (SJT; Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004) regarding intergroup evaluation in disadvantaged groups, using large samples of online participants (total N = 715,721), spanning 8 intergroup domains and 14 nations. Using a meta-analytic approach, we tested these hypotheses at the individual level (as SJT is generally articulated), as well as at the social group level. Consistent with SJT, individual-level analyses revealed that disadvantaged groups demonstrated outgroup favoritism on Implicit Association Tests (IATs; i.e., implicit measures), but demonstrated ingroup favoritism or no intergroup preference on self-report (i.e., explicit) measures. Additionally, these average effects were characterized by high heterogeneity, and follow-up exploratory analyses revealed that intergroup evaluation in disadvantaged groups was moderated by the intergroup domain: Whereas some disadvantaged groups consistently displayed outgroup favoritism (e.g., age, weight), others consistently displayed ingroup favoritism (e.g., sexual orientation, religion), and yet others displayed diverging patterns on implicit and explicit measures (e.g., race, ethnicity). Consistent with SJT, intergroup evaluation on all measures was moderated by self-reported conservatism. Furthermore, the magnitude of these relationships depended on the level of analysis, with small effects emerging at the individual level and medium-sized effects emerging at the social group level. Social group-level analyses also indicated that intergroup evaluation in disadvantaged groups was moderated by stigma. Overall, these findings support and extend the predictions of SJT, but the relatively complex patterns of intergroup evaluation in disadvantaged groups identified here illustrate a need for further theory development and more theory-driven research in this domain. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Subjective status and perceived legitimacy across countries.

The relationships between subjective status and perceived legitimacy are important for understanding the extent to which people with low status are complicit in their oppression. We use novel data from 66 samples and 30 countries (N = 12,788) and find that people with higher status see the social system as more legitimate than those with lower status, but there is variation across people and countries. The association between subjective status and perceived legitimacy was never negative at any levels of eight moderator variables, although the positive association was sometimes reduced. Although not always consistent with hypotheses, group identification, self-esteem, and beliefs in social mobility were all associated with perceived legitimacy among people who have low subjective status. These findings enrich our understanding of the relationship between social status and legitimacy.

Recognizing Emily and Latisha: Inconsistent Effects of Name Stereotypicality on the Other-Race Effect.

A person's name may activate social category information, which has been shown to lead to stereotyping and discrimination in various contexts. However, no previous research has investigated the influence of names on more basic processes of person perception. We present a set of seven experimental studies examining the influence of names on face recognition, namely, on the other-race effect (i.e., the relative difficulty to recognize outgroup faces). White-American participants completed online recognition tasks with White ingroup faces and Black or Chinese outgroup faces. Outgroup faces were presented with typical outgroup names versus typical White names; White faces were presented with typical White names versus infrequent names. We expected better recognition of outgroup faces with typical White names compared to outgroup faces with typical outgroup names. Employing an internal meta-analysis, we observe overall evidence of a small but significant effect (dz = 0.11). However, the pattern of results across the seven studies is inconsistent. Given that particularly the high-powered pre-registered studies did not show an effect, we suggest that the effect should be interpreted with caution. We discuss that a small effect may still have important implications for real life as well as for theories of the ORE, emphasizing the importance of future research regarding the influence of name typicality on inter-group face perception.

Investigating the other-race effect in working memory.

People have difficulties in remembering other-race faces; this so-called other-race effect (ORE) has been frequently observed in long-term recognition memory (LTM). Several theories argue that the ORE in LTM is caused by differences in earlier processing stages, such as encoding of ingroup and outgroup faces. We test this hypothesis by exploring whether the ORE can already be observed in visual working memory (VWM)-an intermediate system located between encoding processes and LTM storage. In four independent experiments, we observed decreased performance for outgroup faces compared to ingroup faces using three different VWM tasks: an adaptive N-back task, a self-ordered pointing task, and a change detection task. Also, we found that the number of items stored in VWM is smaller for outgroup faces than for ingroup faces. Further, we explored whether performance differences in the change detection task are related to the classic ORE in recognition memory. Our results provide further evidence that the ORE originates during earlier stages of cognitive processing. We discuss that (how) future ORE research may benefit from considering theories and evidence from the VWM literature.

Masked emotional priming: A double dissociation between direct and indirect effects reveals non-conscious processing of emotional information beyond valence.

We demonstrate non-conscious processing beyond valence by employing the masked emotional priming paradigm (Rohr, Degner, & Wentura, 2012) with a stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) variation. Emotional faces were briefly presented and directly masked, followed by the target face, using a SOA of either 43ms or 143ms. Targets were categorized as happy, angry, fearful, or sad. With short SOA, we replicated the differentiated priming effect within the negative domain (i.e., angry differentiate from fearful/sad). A direct test of prime awareness indicated that primes could not be discriminated consciously in this condition. With long SOA, however, we did not observe the priming effect whereas the direct test indicated some degree of conscious processing. Thus, indirect effects dissociated from direct effects in our study, an indication for non-conscious processing. Thereby, the present study provides evidence for non-conscious processing of emotional information beyond a simple positive-negative differentiation.

The "emotion misattribution" procedure: processing beyond good and bad under masked and unmasked presentation conditions.

In general, it is assumed that misattribution in the Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP) is restricted to crude affect due to its unbound nature, especially under limited presentation conditions. In two experiments, we investigated whether emotion-specific misattributions occur using a four-category misattribution procedure. Experiment 1 yielded emotion-specific misattribution effects under clearly visible presentation conditions demonstrating that the procedure is principally susceptible for emotion-specific effects. In Experiment 2, we employed masked presentation conditions impeding conscious prime perception. A specific pattern of emotion-specific misattributions effects emerged indicating some emotion-specific processing at initial stages of processing. However, not each emotion was misattributed equally. We discuss the implications of these results for the non-conscious processing of emotional information, for the supposed mechanisms of the AMP and its implicit nature.

The apple does not fall far from the tree, or does it? A meta-analysis of parent-child similarity in intergroup attitudes.

Understanding the formation of prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination has long been a core topic of social psychology. Since the seminal theorizing by Allport in 1954, different views on childhood origins of prejudice have been discussed, in which the role of parental socialization varies on a scale from fundamental to negligible. This meta-analysis integrates the available empirical evidence of the past 60 years and critically discusses the current state of knowledge on parental socialization of intergroup attitudes. A random-effects model analysis of data from 131 studies on over 45,000 parent-child dyads indicated a significant medium-sized average effect size for the correlation between parental and child intergroup attitudes. The average effect size was related to study-specific variables, such as the source of parental attitude report (self vs. child reported), the conceptual overlap between measures, and the privacy of assessment. We also found significant moderations by ingroup status and size as well as child age. The latter was, however, mediated by measurement overlap. No significant effect size differences were found in relation to different components of intergroup attitudes (i.e., affective, cognitive, behavioral), nor to child or parent gender. The results unequivocally demonstrate that parent-child attitudes are related throughout childhood and adolescence. We discuss in detail whether and to what extent this interrelation can be interpreted as an indicator of parent-child socialization to allow a critical evaluation of the available contradicting theories. We furthermore address limitations of the available research and the current meta-analysis and derive implications and suggestions for future research.

Emotionality in a second language: it's a matter of time.

The present study investigated the well acknowledged phenomenon of a different sense of emotionality in a person's first (L1) and second language (L2). Event-related potentials were recorded during the reading of pleasant, unpleasant and neutral words in L1 and L2. Enhanced processing of both emotional compared to neutral words was reflected in an amplified early posterior negativity (EPN) about 280-430 ms after word onset. While the EPN did not differ in amplitude between L1 and L2, it was delayed for L2. Interestingly, a better task performance in L2 but not L1 predicted longer delays of the EPN. These results might indicate that the affective valence of L2 words is processed in a less immediate way due to delayed lexical access. This is interpreted in terms of interference in a highly integrated L1/L2 mental lexicon.

Masked emotional priming beyond global valence activations.

An immense body of research demonstrates that emotional facial expressions can be processed unconsciously. However, it has been assumed that such processing takes place solely on a global valence-based level, allowing individuals to disentangle positive from negative emotions but not the specific emotion. In three studies, we investigated the specificity of emotion processing under conditions of limited awareness using a modified variant of an affective priming task. Faces with happy, angry, sad, fearful, and neutral expressions were presented as masked primes for 33 ms (Study 1) or 14 ms (Studies 2 and 3) followed by emotional target faces (Studies 1 and 2) or emotional adjectives (Study 3). Participants' task was to categorise the target emotion. In all three studies, discrimination of targets was significantly affected by the emotional primes beyond a simple positive versus negative distinction. Results indicate that specific aspects of emotions might be automatically disentangled in addition to valence, even under conditions of subjective unawareness.

Automatic prejudice in childhood and early adolescence.

Four cross-sectional studies are presented that investigated the automatic activation of prejudice in children and adolescents (aged 9 years to 15 years). Therefore, 4 different versions of the affective priming task were used, with pictures of ingroup and outgroup members being presented as prejudice-related prime stimuli. In all 4 studies, a pattern occurred that suggests a linear developmental increase of automatic prejudice with significant effects of outgroup negativity appearing only around the ages of 12 to 13 years. Results of younger children, on the contrary, did not indicate any effect of automatic prejudice activation. In contrast, prejudice effects in an Implicit Association Test (IAT) showed high levels of prejudice independent of age (Study 3). Results of Study 4 suggest that these age differences are due to age-related differences in spontaneous categorization processes. Introducing a forced-categorization into the affective priming procedure produced a pattern of results equivalent to that obtained with the IAT. These results suggest that although children are assumed to acquire prejudice at much younger ages, automatization of such attitudes might be related to developmental processes in early adolescence. We discuss possible theoretical implications of these results for a developmental theory of prejudice representation and automatization during childhood and adolescence.

Assessing automatic activation of valence: a multinomial model of EAST performance.

The Extrinsic Affective Simon Task (EAST; De Houwer, 2003) has been introduced as an indirect measure of automatic activation of valence. EAST effects provide nonrelative valence measures of single stimuli compared to relative measures (e.g., Implicit Association Test) that imply a comparison between two stimuli or concepts. However, EAST effects can be biased by response tendencies. A multinomial process dissociation model of EAST performance is proposed and successfully validated in four experiments. Its parameters provide pure and unbiased measures of automatic valence activation, controlled processing of task-relevant features, and response tendency. A first application of latent-class hierarchical multinomial models reveals a significant amount of parameter heterogeneity resulting from interindividual differences in accuracy motivation.