Robert Kurzban University of Pennsylvania Perceptions of Race The Second CEFOM/21 International Symposium Culture, Norms, & Evolution Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan August 8th

Claims “Automaticity” in categorization is an unlikely design feature (for “race”) Race is a proxy for the fundamental conceptual cognitive element, “coalition.” Providing an alternative coalitional dimension should be potent for changing categorization

Background: Social Categorization Literature Social Psychology: 3 social categories are automatically encoded: Age, Sex, & Race Efforts to attenuate categorization by race have been unsuccessful

Method: Memory Confusion Participants hear conversation & see photos In a recall task, participants are asked to recall who said what. Errors in recall index categorization Within-Between group errors calculated for each dimension (and statistically corrected)

“Does anyone besides Rob have a question?” “Which professor from UBC was It?…”

Taylor et al., 1978 Error rates at ~66% More within than between race and sex errors observed Categorization by race not changed by instructions to try to recall information.

There are certain categories that are highly accessible and difficult to suppress, in particular race and sex. Assuming that these categories are extremely salient and powerful, and are automatically encoded in the absence of any specific memory instructions, they may be rather insensitive to … contextual variations… We believe that one of the contributions made by our research is to show how hard it is to interfere with strong, automatically activated categories… Hewstone et al., 1991, p. 526 See also: Hamilton, Stroessner, & Driscoll, 1994 Fazio & Dunton, 1997 Wegner & Bargh, 1998 (Handbook chapter)

Additional Cites “…our theoretical framework and the latency data lead us to believe that the process began with attention being automatically drawn to the race of the Black targets.” Fazio & Dunton, 1997 “Easily discriminable personal features— especially the “big three” of gender, race, and age—tend to activate preconsciously the categories or stereotypes associated with them.” Wegner & Bargh, 1998 (Handbook chapter)

Theoretical Background: Race Adaptations are shaped by recurrent features of ancestral environment Sharp phenotypic gradients were not a recurrent feature of ancestral environments. It is unlikely that there are adaptations designed to encode race per se. Racial categorization is a byproduct. But of what?

What is racial categorization a by-product of? Color perception? Stangor et al. expt 5: Colored sweatshirts had no meaning; not used as a category by participants.  Note. Attentional demands can’t explain this: sex and race can simultaneously be strongly encoded. Perceptual similarity should affect encoding. It doesn’t (Stangor et al., expt 2)

What is racial categorization a by-product of? Reasoning about natural kinds? Various accounts posit humans essentialize human groups.  Rothbart & Taylor, Hirschfeld, Gil-White If so, this would explain the consistently strong results for encoding of race. But, these models do not (straightforwardly) predict that it should be possible to attenuate this process…

What is racial categorization a by-product of? Mechanisms designed to parse coalitions and alliances? “Races” were not a part of human ancestral environments. Dynamic alliances and coalitions were. Categorization by race might be attenuated if race is not diagnostic of alliances, but another visual cue is. Additional predictions derived from this analysis:  While sex could have evolved domain-specific machinery, race could not.  Categorization by sex should be stronger than by race, everything else equal.

Experiment Details Racially mixed (4 White, 4 Black) basketball teams (all male) Competitive content in dialogue IV: Jersey color cue to team membership Prediction: Attenuate racial encoding

And you play like you’re in a zoo. Where you should be anyway Sample Stimulus

Results Adding shirt color cue increases categorization by team (not surprising) Adding shirt color cue decreases categorization by race (surprising)

Experiment 2 Same as above, except teams are all White, but of mixed SEX.

Conclusion “Categorization” by “race” is not “automatic,” and can be attenuated, even after only relatively short exposure.

But does the attenuation of race replicate…?

n.s. Note: No sex differences

Research Program Categorization Cooperation More direct method: Reaction times to gauge categorization Additional control: cognitive load condition Additional contexts.