Kerry Kawakami

York University · Department of Psychology

Previous research has demonstrated that individuals from Western cultures exhibit categorical perception (CP) in their judgments of emotional faces. However, the extent to which this phenomenon characterises the judgments of facial expressions among East Asians remains relatively unexplored. Building upon recent findings showing that East Asians ar...

In five experiments, we investigated how Black participants perceive Duchenne and non-Duchenne smiles on Black and White targets. Results consistently demonstrated that when assessing happiness, faces with Duchenne compared to non-Duchenne smiles were rated as happier on both Black and White targets. However, when assessing a more socially evaluati...

When someone violates a social norm, others may think that some sanction would be appropriate. We examine how the experience of emotions like anger and disgust relate to the judged appropriateness of sanctions, in a pre-registered analysis of data from a large-scale study in 56 societies. Across the world, we find that individuals who experience an...

One reason for the persistence of racial inequality may be anticipated dissimilarity with racial outgroups. In the present research, we explored the impact of perceived similarity with White and Black targets on facial identity recognition accuracy. In two studies, participants first completed an ostensible personality survey. Next, in a Learning P...

The human face is arguably the most important of all social stimuli because it provides so much valuable information about others. Therefore, one critical factor for successful social communication is the ability to process faces. In general, a wide body of social cognitive research has demonstrated that perceivers are better at extracting informat...

Nielsen et al. (1) argue that Van Doesum et al. (2) need to consider three points for their interpretation of a positive association between individual-level social mindfulness (SoMi) and environmental performance (EPI) at the country level (3). The association is weaker when 1) it is controlled for GDP and 2) when the data of three countries are r...

How does mere exposure help interracial face recognition? The study shows that although White participants’ recognition accuracy of Black faces increases with the number of repeated exposures, the increase rate does not surpass that of recognition accuracy of White faces. Thus, subjects learned White and Black faces at a similar pace, and mere expo...

One reason for the persistence of racial discrimination may be anticipated dissimilarity with racial outgroup members that prevent meaningful interactions. In the present research, we investigated whether perceived similarity would impact the processing of same-race and other-race faces. Specifically, in two experiments, we varied the extent to whi...

Humans are social animals, but not everyone will be mindful of others to the same extent. Individual differences have been found, but would social mindfulness also be shaped by one’s location in the world? Expecting cross-national differences to exist, we examined if and how social mindfulness differs across countries. At little to no material cost...

Past research suggests that East Asians (Easterners) are more likely than North Americans and Western Europeans (Westerners) to incorporate information from concurrent affective contexts when judging facial expressions. The present research extends this literature by investigating the impact of temporal affective contexts on emotion perception. Spe...

Across three studies, we examined non-Black children's spontaneous associations with targets who differed by both race and emotional expression. Children aged 5 to 10 years (N = 419; 215 girls; 58% White; 65% of household incomes >$75,000/year) completed Implicit Association Tests (IAT; Greenwald et al., 2003) containing smiling Black and neutral W...

Norm enforcement may be important for resolving conflicts and promoting cooperation. However, little is known about how preferred responses to norm violations vary across cultures and across domains. In a preregistered study of 57 countries (using convenience samples of 22,863 students and non-students), we measured perceptions of the appropriatene...

The current research investigated support for confronting a sexist comment and how responses in a work or social setting by a target or witness can influence actor perceptions. Across three studies, we demonstrated that although most people supported confrontation by a female target, she was evaluated less positively when confronting than passive,...

A large literature has provided evidence that intergroup biases are common in facial recognition. In investigations of faces of different races, research has repeatedly demonstrated an Own Race Bias in which people are more accurate in recognizing racial ingroup compared to outgroup members. The primary goal of this research was to investigate whet...

Despite current societal trends to encourage diversity, individuals often avoid acknowledging race, and we suggest also conflict, because of concerns about appearing prejudiced. The present research investigated the use of racial color and conflict blind strategies in an ambiguous negative intergroup context. In three studies, we assessed whether p...

The present research comprises six experiments that investigated racial biases in the perception of positive emotional expressions. In an initial study, we demonstrated that White participants distinguished more in their happiness ratings of Duchenne (“true”) and non-Duchenne (“false”) smiles on White compared with Black faces (Experiment 1). In a...

In the present chapter, we examine predicted and actual personal responses to racism and sexism by targets of bias and by nontarget group witnesses. We summarize research related to forecasted responses when imagining intergroup bias first, and then we turn to actual responses. Our review indicates that people often overestimate the extent to which...

Many current and past theories of social categorization acknowledge and even underline the critical role that visual processing plays in intergroup misperceptions and biases, yet research that directly measures or manipulates these processes is limited. In the present paper, we reviewed the current literature on visual attention to own and other gr...

The present experiments were designed to investigate whether an intervention that targeted racial attitudes influenced not only prejudice but also self–Black associations. Because past research has demonstrated that people strive to build connections with favorable social categories, we predicted that positive evaluative training would increase ide...

Responses to outgroup racism can have serious implications for the perpetuation of bias, yet research examining this process is rare. The present research investigated self-reported, physiological, and cognitive responses among "experiencers" who witnessed and "forecasters" who imagined a racist comment targeting an outgroup member. Although previo...

The primary aim of this chapter is to provide a framework to understand and synthesize the processes of person construal—early perceptions that lead to initial ingroup/outgroup categorizations—with the processes involved in intergroup relations. To this end, we review research examining the initial perception and categorization of ingroup and outgr...

Sharing a social identity is a key component of interdependence in romantic relationships. In particular, sharing a social network of friends and family members with a romantic partner enhances relationship quality, but maintaining an integrated social network is not always possible. When people lack a shared circle of friends with their partners,...

Individuals spontaneously categorize other people on the basis of their gender, ethnicity, and age. But what about the emotions they express? In this research we tested the hypothesis that facial expressions are similar to other social categories in that they can function as contextual cues to control attention. Specifically, we associated expressi...

The incoming editor of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Interpersonal Relations and Group Processes discusses her plans to continue to encourage submission of a broad range of research related to interpersonal and group processes. She notes other goals for the new editorial team, which include encouraging the submission of high-quality...

Human faces, and more specifically the eyes, play a crucial role in social and nonverbal communication because they signal valuable information about others. It is therefore surprising that few studies have investigated the impact of intergroup contexts and motivations on attention to the eyes of ingroup and outgroup members. Four experiments inves...

This chapter builds on the authors' concept of aversive racism as being typical of many people. Aversive racists are people who sincerely believe themselves to be unprejudiced, but who still harbor some negative feelings (often unconscious ones) toward ethnic minority groups. The authors report on a series of studies aimed at reducing people's auto...

In a series of five experiments, we demonstrate that exposure to information related to an out-group's heterogeneity reduces prejudice more effectively than exposure to only positive characteristics of the out-group. We exposed participants to a poster that associated both positive and negative traits with an out-group (mixed condition), to a poste...

The self-concept is one of the main organizing constructs in the behavioral sciences because it influences how people interpret their environment, the choices they make, whether and how they initiate action, and the pursuit of specific goals. Because belonging to social groups and feeling interconnected is critical to human survival, the authors pr...

The present research examined the impact that perceived progress on egalitarian goals had on subsequent racial bias. In particular, a new bogus pipeline procedure was used to provide feedback to participants that they were becoming incrementally more egalitarian. The impact of this information on intergroup behavior and attitudes was tested. In par...

Two general strategies for reducing prejudice are to approach equality and to avoid prejudice. The current research investigated the importance of matching two factors, contextual valence and regulatory focus, on the efficacy of these two strategies in reducing implicit prejudice. The findings demonstrate that although an approach strategy is more...

Although perceived differences between outgroup social categories and the self are often cited as a major contributor to prejudice and intergroup tension, surprisingly few studies have examined ways to improve associations between the self and racial outgroups. The present research investigated one strategy to increase these associations—approach t...

The current research examined whether people will attempt to modify internal aspects of the self to make them congruent with others, even when those modifications have negative implications for the self, a phenomenon we refer to as negative self-synchronization. We proposed that negative self-synchronization will occur only for individuals who are...

The present research investigated the effectiveness of a new technique for reducing automatic biases rooted in attribution theory – the Situational Attribution Training Technique. The goal of this strategy extends previous work by targeting the fundamental attributional pillars underlying automatic stereotyping. We aimed to circumvent the well-docu...

The current study examines the impact of the challenge for cause procedure and its effectiveness in curbing racial prejudice in trials involving Black defendants. Participants were provided with a trial summary of a defendant charged with either drug trafficking or embezzlement. The race of the defendant was either White or Black, with participants...

Contemporary race relations are marked by an apparent paradox: Overt prejudice is strongly condemned, yet acts of blatant racism still frequently occur. We propose that one reason for this inconsistency is that people misunderstand how they would feel and behave after witnessing racism. The present research demonstrates that although people predict...

Implicit and Explicit AttitudesComplex AttitudesThe Case of Racial AttitudesConclusions References

On the Nature of Prejudice commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Gordon Allport's classic work on prejudice and discrimination by examining the current state of knowledge in the field. A distinguished collection of international scholars considers Allport's impact on the field, reviews recent developments, and identifies promi...

In two studies, we examined the effect of extensive practice in approaching math on implicit identification with math, implicit math attitudes, and behavior during a math test. The results from Study 1 demonstrated that women trained to approach math showed more identification with and positive implicit attitudes toward math than women trained to a...

In 4 studies, the authors examined the effect of approaching Blacks on implicit racial attitudes and immediacy behaviors. In Studies 1–3, participants were trained to pull a joystick toward themselves or to push it away from themselves when presented with photographs of Blacks, Whites, or Asians before completing an Implicit Association Test to mea...

The present research examined the impact of counterstereotypic training on the application of stereotypes and the moderating effects of correction on these processes. As expected, when receiving no training, participants chose male over female candidates for a supervisory position and rated both male and female candidates as more gender stereotypic...

The primary aim of the present research was to examine the effect of training in associating nonstereotypic traits with men and women on hiring decisions. While previous findings demonstrate that training can reduce the uncontrolled activation of stereotypes, the present results show that training by itself may not reduce the more controlled applic...

Recent studies have shown that mimicry occurs unintentionally and even among strangers. In the present studies, we investigated the consequences of this automatic phenomenon in order to learn more about the adaptive function it serves. In three studies, we consistently found that mimicry increases prosocial behavior. Participants who had been mimic...

In four studies, we examined the spontaneous activation of specific attitudes related to social categories. These studies investigated whether priming participants with concepts associated with the elderly and skinheads influenced participants' attitudes. The results consistently demonstrated that priming a social category can influence people's at...

The Contact Hypothesis has long been considered one of psychology’s most effective strategies for improving intergroup relations. In this article, we review the history of the development of the Contact Hypothesis, and then we examine recent developments in this area. Specifically, we consider the conditions that are required for successful contact...

The present research examined the moderating influences of individual differences in sexism on the application of gender stereotypes to stereotypic versus nonstereotypic targets as a function of contexts that induced sex stereotypic or counterstereotypic responses. Specifically, participants first received an attribution task in which they were ind...

The authors review a series of studies that illustrate how one form of contemporary racial bias of Whites, aversive racism, can shape different perspectives of Blacks and Whites in ways that can undermine race relations. This research demonstrates that contemporary racism among Whites is subtle, often unintentional, and unconscious but that its eff...

The present research examined how implicit racial associations and explicit racial attitudes of Whites relate to behaviors and impressions in interracial interactions. Specifically, the authors examined how response latency and self-report measures predicted bias and perceptions of bias in verbal and nonverbal behavior exhibited by Whites while the...

On the basis of theorizing that proposes that category representations include a variety of associations and not simply trait information, two studies investigated whether the automatic activation of stereotypic traits following category priming is a necessary mediator of automatic social behavior. The results across both studies demonstrated an au...

Recent research has moved beyond the mere documentation of implicit stereotypes to consider how these measures relate to attitudes and predict behaviors. Little is known, however, about the basic psychometric properties of these measures. The present research includes three studies that provide evidence for test-retest reliability of implicit stere...

The primary aim of the present research was to examine the effect of training in negating stereotype associations on stereotype activation. Across 3 studies, participants received practice in negating stereotypes related to skinhead and racial categories. The subsequent automatic activation of stereotypes was measured using either a primed Stroop t...

In the present study, automatic stereotype activation related to racial categories was examined utilizing a primed Stroop task. The speed of participants’ ink-color naming of stereotypic and nonstereotypic target words following Black and White category primes were compared: slower naming times are presumed to reflect interference from automatic ac...

The main goal of the present study was to investigate the interrelationships among preudice and the endorsement and activation of cultural stereotypes. The endorsement of stereotypes was examined using an attribution estimate measure. Stereotype activation was examined using a pronunciation task with short and long stimulus onset asynchronies (300...

The present research, involving three experiments, examined the existence of implicit attitudes of Whites toward Blacks, investigated the relationship between explicit measures of racial prejudice and implicit measures of racial attitudes, and explored the relationship of explicit and implicit attitudes to race-related responses and behavior. Exper...

Les perceptions en matiére de discriminations personnelles et de groupe dans cinq domaines (emploi, rémunération, prêt, promotion et clubs) ont été examinées à partir d'une enquête sur les minorités réalisée en 1992, laquelle consistait en des entrevues téléphoniques effectuées auprés de 902 répondants de différents groupes ethniques de Toronto. Le...

The goal of this paper is to compare and contrast relative deprivation and social identity theories in an attempt to form an integrative model of social comparison. The model posits that, depending on the determinants of salience, people come to categorize themselves as individuals or group members. When personal or group self-identities are salien...

Salient self-identities and their impact upon feelings of relative deprivation (RD) and subsequent action intentions were examined. Eight experimental conditions (Personal/Group Salience × Large/Small Intragroup Inequalities × Large/Small Intergroup Inequalities) were created utilizing a role-play design. Significant main effects for both salience...