Sarah E. Gaither

• Ph.D.
• Professor (Assistant) at Duke University

Past research shows that adults often display poor memory for racially ambiguous and racial outgroup faces, with both face types remembered worse than own-race faces. In the present study, the authors examined whether children also show this pattern of results. They also examined whether emerging essentialist thinking about race predicts children’s...

In a multi-phase research design over two academic semesters, White college students assigned to either a same-race or other-race roommate were tracked across two survey phases and a third phase involving an interracial interaction with a Black stranger. After four months, Whites who lived with an other-race roommate came to have more diverse frien...

Multiracial individuals report the social pressure of having to “choose” one of their racial groups is one primary source of psychological conflict. Yet because of their ability to maneuver among their multiple identities, multiracials also adopt flexible cognitive strategies in dealing with their social environments—demonstrating a benefit to havi...

Three studies assessed the impact of White individuals’ mere membership in racially diverse or homogeneous groups on conformity. In Study 1, White participants were randomly assigned to four-person groups that were racially diverse or homogeneous in which three confederates routinely endorsed clearly inferior college applicants for admission. Parti...

To date, research has primarily used a singular identity framework for investigating how social identity shapes behavior. Thus, research has also largely ignored the role that having multiple, simultaneous identities may play in our lives. This paper reviews work that pushes that singular identity framework beyond either/or binary constructs of ide...

As young as 3 years old, children rely on a mutual intentionality framework to confer group membership—that is, agreement between a joiner (“I want to be in your group”) and group (“We want you to be in our group”). Here, we tested whether children apply this cognitive framework in the context of identity‐based groups, specifically gender and race....

The field of psychology has a long history of studying how diversity influences various outcomes such as identity development, social behaviors, perceptions, and decision making. However, considering the ways that diversity science research has expanded in recent years, the goal of this special issue is to provide space to highlight work that cente...

This study examined the relation between schools' color‐evasive versus multicultural diversity ideologies, school characteristics, and adolescent development. Across two datasets linking individual‐level survey data ( N = 1692) and administrative records ( N = 300,063; M age = 12.4, 52% female, 48% male), schools' stated support for diversity (via...

When adult men are made to feel gender‐atypical, they often lash out with aggression, particularly when they are pressured (vs. autonomously motivated) to be gender‐typical. Here, we examined the development of this phenomenon. Specifically, we provided a first experimental test of whether threatening adolescent boys’ perceived gender typicality el...

Many colleges and universities seek to leverage the promise of intergroup contact theory by adopting housing policies that randomly assign first-year students to roommates, with the goal of increasing intergroup contact. Yet, it is unclear whether random roommate assignment policies increase cross-race contact, whether this (potentially involuntary...

Much of psychological science relies on collaboration—from generating new theories and study ideas, to collecting and analyzing data, to writing and sharing results with the broader community. Learning how to collaborate with others is an important skill, yet this process is not often explicitly discussed in academia. Here, five researchers from di...

Despite increasing advocacy for gender equality, gender prejudice and discrimination persist. The origins of these biases develop in early childhood, but it is less clear whether (1) children's gender attitudes predict discrimination and (2) gender attitudes and discrimination vary by ethnicity and US region. We examine these questions with an ethn...

Children’s socioeconomic status (SES) is linked to disparate access to resources and affects social behaviors such as inclusion and resource allocations. Yet it is unclear whether children’s essentialized view of SES (i.e., believing SES is immutable) or subjective social status (SSS) influences behavioral biases toward high- versus low-SES peers....

Health professionals who care for children will find a thoughtful and hands-on resource to address racism and race-related issues in their practices in this essay collection. Leading experts from across disciplines frame the issues and provide practical information on prevention, intervention, and anticipatory guidance. Each chapter is grounded in...

Previous work has shown the robust nature of gender bias in both children and adults. However, much less attention has been paid toward understanding what factors shape these biases. The current preregistered study used parent surveys and child interviews to test whether parents’ conversations with their children about and modeling of gender interg...

Two processes describe racially ambiguous Black/White Biracial categorization—the one‐drop rule, or hypodescent , whereby racially ambiguous people are categorized as members of their socially subordinated racial group (i.e., Black/White Biracial faces categorized as Black) and the ingroup overexclusion effect , whereby racially ambiguous people ar...

We examined how the number of groups in a categorization task influences how White Americans categorize ambiguous faces. We investigated the strength of identity-driven ingroup overexclusion-wherein highly identified perceivers overexclude ambiguous members from the ingroup-proposing that, compared with dichotomous tasks (with only the ingroup and...

Free access to the full text until June 23, 2023: https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1h0hQ39HO4NsDA

Manhood is a precarious social status. Under perceived gender identity threat, men are disproportionately likely to enact certain stereotype-consistent responses such as aggression to maintain their gender status. Yet less is known regarding individual variation in men’s threat responsiveness—that is, the psychological conditions under which one’s...

Several sociocultural female body ideals exist — thin, muscular/athletic, and, more recently, curvier ideals, which research specifically suggests are more prevalent among Black women. Two validated measures assess women’s desire for curvier bodies, but neither assess certain facets of curvy ideals (e.g., thick vs. slim-thick) separately. We develo...

Most research has investigated Multiracial and Multicultural populations as separate topics, despite demographic and experiential overlap between these. This Element bridges that divide by reviewing and comparing Multiracial and Multicultural research to date-their origins, theoretical and methodological development, and key findings in identity ne...

Past work on Black and Latinx individuals demonstrates that observers can accurately predict an individual’s racial identity strength based on the observers’ perceptions of the individual’s phenotypic prototypicality (how much someone looks like a prototypical member of their racial group). However, the growing Biracial demographic varies considera...

[accepted for publication in Personality and Social Psychology Review on November 8, 2022] Manhood is a precarious social status (Bosson et al., 2021). Under perceived gender identity threat, men are disproportionately likely to enact certain stereotype-consistent responses like aggression to maintain their gender status. Yet less is known regardin...

Few narrative identity studies have investigated how common correlates of well-being in the U.S. (redemption, contamination, agency, and communion) relate to the good life for non-U.S., racial minority populations. The current study assessed whether Asian young adults’ (N = 197) degree of acculturation to Euro-American values is associated with bot...

Today, identity expression and acceptance represent an important area of political advocacy and representation. Yet, how responsive are voters to new racial identity cues promoted by political leaders? Using candidates with interracial backgrounds as a case study, we assess whether voters are responsive to candidates who assert a mixed-race identit...

The past generation has seen a dramatic rise in multiracial populations and a consequent increase in exposure to individuals who challenge monolithic racial categories. We examine and compare two potential outcomes of the multiracial population growth that may impact people’s racial categorization experience: (a) exposure to racially ambiguous face...

For decades, affective scientists have examined how adults and children reason about others’ emotions. Yet, our knowledge is limited regarding how emotion reasoning is impacted by race—that is, how individuals reason about emotions displayed by people of other racial groups. In this review, we examine the developmental origins of racial biases in e...

For decades, affective scientists have examined how adults and children reason about others’ emotions. Yet, our knowledge is limited regarding how emotion reasoning is impacted by race—that is, how individuals reason about emotions displayed by people of other racial groups. In this review, we examine the developmental origins of racial biases in e...

People's social class, and the perceptions of their social class are embedded in an institutional context that has important ramifications for one's life opportunities and outcomes. Research on first impressions has found that people are relatively accurate at judging a variety of traits such as perceived sexual orientation and income, but there is...

One of the strengths of Critical Mixed Race Studies is that it represents research methodologies and frameworks from multiple disciplines across the social sciences and humanities. However, if these disciplines are not in dialogue with each other, that benefit may be lost. Here, we use psychological and sociological research on Multiracial populati...

Objectives: Racially ambiguous face categorization research is growing in prominence, and yet the majority of this work has focused on White and Western samples and has primarily used biracial Black/White stimuli. Past findings suggest that biracial Black/White faces are more often seen as Black than White, but without testing these perceptions wit...

People’s social class, and the perceptions of their social class are embedded in an institutional context that has important ramifications for one’s life opportunities and outcomes. Research on first impressions has found that people are relatively accurate at judging a variety of traits such as perceived sexual orientation and income, but there is...

Objectives: Racially ambiguous face categorization research is growing in prominence, and yet the majority of this work has focused on White and Western samples and has primarily used biracial Black/White stimuli. Past findings suggest that biracial Black/White faces are more often seen as Black than White, but without testing these perceptions wit...

Recent research suggests that young children’s causal justification for minimal group membership can be induced via a cognitive framework of mutual intentionality. That is, an individual can become a group member when both the individual and group agree to membership. Here, we investigated if children ages 3–5 understand groups formed by mutual int...

The COVID-19 pandemic has extensively changed the state of psychological science from what research questions psychologists can ask to which methodologies psychologists can use to investigate them. In this article, we offer a perspective on how to optimize new research in the pandemic’s wake. Because this pandemic is inherently a social phenomenon—...

Recent research suggests that young children’s causal justification for minimal group membership can be induced via a cognitive framework of mutual intentionality. That is, an individual can become a group member when both the individual and group agree to membership. Here, we investigated if children ages 3-5 understand groups formed by mutual int...

Social class bicultural identity integration research demonstrates that integrated social class identities are linked with better health, well-being, and academic performance among first-generation students. Here, we demonstrate that exposure to college graduates in students’ home neighborhoods before college is positively related to higher social...

Native American/American Indian (NA/AI) and Multiracial people (those who claim multiple racial identities) report notably high alcohol use compared to other racial groups in the United States. Nearly half of the NA/AI population is also Multiracial, yet NA/AI and Multiracial college students report different motivations for drinking alcohol. There...

Past research has investigated challenges first-generation college students face, but has overlooked the role that acculturation to college may play. Social class bicultural identity integration research demonstrates that integrated social class identities are linked with better health, well-being, and academic performance among first-generation st...

Mixed-heritage individuals (MHIs) are known to face high levels of social exclusion. Here, we investigate how raciolinguistic ideologies related to one’s heritage language abilities add to these exclusionary experiences. The results from 293 MHIs reveal frequent experiences of marginalisation from members of each of their heritage communities becau...

Mixed-heritage individuals (MHIs) are known to face high levels of social exclusion. Here, we investigate how raciolinguistic ideologies related to one’s heritage language abilities add to these exclusionary experiences. The results from 293 MHIs reveal frequent experiences of marginalization from members of each of their heritage communities becau...

Threatening a man’s manhood—but not a woman’s womanhood—elicits aggression. In two studies, we found evidence that this aggression is related to the social pressure men experience to “be a man.” In Study 1a, we conducted an exploratory factor analysis to isolate participants’ ( N = 195; M age = 19.92) differential motivations for conforming to gend...

Native American/American Indian (NA/AI) and Multiracial (those who claim more than one racial group) people report notably high alcohol use compared to other racial groups in the United States. However, NA/AI and Multiracial college students also report differences in their motivations for drinking alcohol. Therefore, it remains unclear if Multirac...

Objective Accumulating evidence suggests that the prevalence of eating disorders among Chinese women is a public health concern. Prior studies have drawn linkages between conflicting cultural values, identity confusion, and eating disorder symptomatology, which may be relevant for understanding the rise of eating disorders amidst China's rapid econ...

[Pre-print accepted for publication in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin on November 20, 2020.] Threatening a man’s manhood—but not a woman’s womanhood—elicits aggression. In two studies, we found evidence that this aggression is related to the social pressure men experience to “be a man.” In Study 1a, we conducted an exploratory factor an...

Interest in applying evidence from psychological science to strengthen public policy has increased in recent years. The governments of at least 20 countries have “nudge units,” or teams of researchers and policymakers dedicated to applying insights from psychological science to improve public policy. Many international agencies and consulting firms...

Twenty years ago, Multiracial Americans completed the U.S Census with the option to indicate more than one race for the first time. As we embark on the second anniversary of this shift in Multiracial recognition, this article reviews the research related to known sources and systems that perpetuate Multiracial-specific stigma. Policy recommendation...

Because many biracial people identify as members of multiple racial groups, they often experience identity denial (e.g., they are told to identify differently) and identity questioning (e.g., they are asked about their background). Though identity denial and questioning are associated with psychological health outcomes among minority–White biracial...

Stereotype threat posits that students who are members of negatively stereotyped groups in school should feel more threat and less belonging, especially in schools with large achievement disparities and low racial/ethnic minority representation. This research has focused primarily on the experiences of negatively stereotyped monoracial minority stu...

Research addressing the increasing multiracial population (i.e., identifying with two or more races) is rapidly expanding. This meta-analysis ( k = 55) examines categorization patterns consistent with hypodescent, or the tendency to categorize multiracial targets as their lower status racial group. Subgroup analyses suggest that operationalization...

Over the course of development, children acquire adult-like thinking about social categories such as race, which in turn informs their perceptions, attitudes, and behavior. However, children’s developing perceptions of race have been understudied particularly with respect to their potential influence on cross-race egalitarianism. Specifically, the...

Psychology has long focused on social identities and their critical role in defining the self. However, the majority of identity-related findings stems from research on traditional identities (monoracial, cisgender, heterosexual). Considering the relative dearth of research from the full range of identities encompassed in society (e.g., multiracial...

Social exclusion is associated with substance use, but the specific link between majority and minority racial group membership and substance use is unknown. We examined how social exclusion among racial majority (White), Multiracial, and racial minority (Native American, Latino, Asian, and Black) college students relates to self-reported alcohol us...

Bicultural and biracial individuals (those who identify either with two cultures or two races) are often denied membership in the groups with which they identify, an experience referred to as identity denial. The present studies used an experimental design to test the effects of identity denial on physiological and self‐reported stress, and natural...

According to stereotype threat theory, the possibility of confirming a negative group stereotype can evoke feelings of threat, leading people to underperform in the very domains in which they are stereotyped as lacking ability. This theory has immense theoretical and practical implications, but many studies supporting it include small samples and v...

Stereotypes often guide our perceptions of members of social groups. However, research has yet to document what stereotypes may exist for the fastest growing youth demographic in the United States—biracial individuals. Across seven studies ( N = 1,104), we investigate what stereotypes are attributed to various biracial groups, whether biracial indi...

Objectives: The interaction between one’s context and identity may be essential in understanding people’s racial experiences. In this study, we examined 2 contexts (racially diverse vs. homogenously White) and measured the experiences of discrimination and microaggressions for monoracial people of color (POC), multiracial individuals, and White ind...

Studies of children's developing social identification often focus on individual forms of identity. Yet, everyone has multiple potential identities. Here we investigated whether making children aware of their multifaceted identities—effectively seeing themselves from multiple angles—would promote their flexible thinking. In Experiment 1, 6‐7‐year‐o...

Stereotypes often guide our perceptions of members of social groups. However, research has yet to document what stereotypes may exist for the fastest growing youth demographic in the U.S.—biracial individuals. Across seven studies (N = 1,104) we investigate what stereotypes are attributed to various biracial groups, whether biracial individuals are...

Many ethnic minorities in the United States hold both an ethnic minority and national American identity. Yet, they often encounter identity questioning when asked questions such as, “Where are you really from?,” which may operate as an ambiguous threat to their national identity. Because varied motivations (curiosity versus exclusion) create ambigu...

The interaction between one’s context and identity may be essential in understanding people’s racial experiences. Objectives: In this study we examined two contexts (racially diverse vs. homogenously White) and measured the experiences of discrimination and microaggressions for monoracial People of Color (POC), multiracial, and White individuals. A...

Multiracial research emphasizes hypodescent categorizations and relies on computer-generated stimuli. Four experiments showed that real biracial faces in a 2-Choice categorization task (White, Black) elicited hypodescent more than computer-generated faces. Additionally, Experiment 2 showed a 2-Choice categorization task with real biracial faces inc...

The present research sought to provide new insights on the principles guiding the categorization of Black-White multiracial faces at a first encounter. Previous studies have typically measured categorization of multiracial faces using close-ended tasks that constrain available categorizations. Those studies find evidence that perceivers tend to cat...

Because bicultural and biracial people have two identities within one social domain (culture or race), their identification is often challenged by others. Although it is established that identity denial is associated with poor psychological health, the processes through which this occurs are less understood. Across two high-powered studies, we test...

Teaching and talking about race and ethnicity with children and adults is especially important in racially diverse societies. This process has been coined racial/ethnic socialization (RES). Despite the importance of RES, we still know very little about how this process unfolds in the lives of White youth. Thus, from a social, cognitive, and develop...

The majority of social perception research to date has focused on perceptually obvious and prototypical representations of social categories. However, not all people belong to social categories that are easily discernable. Within the past decade, there has been an upsurge of research demonstrating that multifaceted identities (both one's own and pe...

Existing monoracial identity frameworks fail to capture the experiences of biracial people, for whom racial identification may depend on the social context. Though biracial people can vary their racial identity, the social consequences of context-dependent racial self-presentation remain underexplored. Five studies examined how contextual racial pr...

The impact of social group information on the learning and socializing preferences of Hong Kong Chinese children were examined. Specifically, the degree to which variability in racial out‐group exposure affects children's use of race to make decisions about unfamiliar individuals (Chinese, White, Southeast Asian) was investigated. Participants (N =...

Across six studies, we demonstrate that exposure to biracial individuals significantly reduces endorsement of colorblindness as a racial ideology among White individuals. Real-world exposure to biracial individuals predicts lower levels of colorblindness compared to White and Black exposure (Study 1). Brief manipulated exposure to images of biracia...

People take longer to categorize racially ambiguous individuals, but does this perceptual complexity also affect social interactions? In Study 1, White participants interacted with a racially ambiguous confederate who was either labeled as biracial Black/White, monoracial Black, or given no racial label. White participants in the biracial condition...

The present research sought to provide new insights on the principles guiding the categorization of Black-White multiracial faces at a first encounter. Previous studies have typically measured categorization of multiracial faces using close-ended tasks that constrain available categorizations, finding evidence that perceivers tend to categorize mul...

Posthumous stereotypical media portrayals of Michael Brown and other racial and ethnic minority victims of police violence have sparked questions about the influence of racial stereotypes on public opinions about their deaths and criminal proceedings for their killers. However, few studies have empirically investigated how the specific type of info...

How do voters’ identities change after a candidate’s defeat? A longitudinal, within-subjects study used Hillary Clinton’s loss in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to explore social identity theory’s (SIT) tenet that threats to self-relevant groups motivate further connection to and affirmation of the group. Two independent samples (university st...

Stereotypes often guide interracial interactions—both the stereotypes we hold about others, and the stereotypes we believe others hold about us (i.e., meta-stereotypes). In Black-White interactions, the stereotype that Whites are prejudiced is one of the most salient, but does this stereotype vary by gender? White women tend to express more positiv...

Research shows that I-sharing, or sharing subjective experiences with an outgroup member, positively shapes attitudes toward that outgroup member. We investigated whether this type of social experience would also promote a positive interracial interaction with a novel outgroup member. Results showed that White and Black participants who I-shared wi...

The deaths of unarmed racial minorities across the United States have garnered widespread attention and speculation, yet the discussions surrounding why these events keep occurring remain limited. In this chapter, we apply a psychological lens to three notable cases. The shooting deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Tamir Rice sparked a nat...

Racial bias against Black Americans is a continuing problem in the United States. Although interracial dialogue is generally accepted as an effective method to combat racial bias, such dialogues are often avoided because they can make White Americans anxious and are accompanied by negative outcomes. Therefore, in the present study, we tested a simp...

Categorizing racially ambiguous individuals is multifaceted, and the current work proposes social-motivational factors also exert considerable influence on how racial ambiguity is perceived, directing the resolution of ambiguity in a manner that is functionally beneficial to the perceiver. Four studies tested two motivations related to social belon...

Research has shown that priming one’s racial identity can alter a biracial individuals’ social behavior, but can such priming also influence their speech? Language is often used as a marker of one’s social group membership and studies have shown that social context can affect the style of language that a person chooses to use, but this work has yet...

Psychological threat experienced by students of negatively stereotyped groups impairs test performance. However, stereotype boost can also occur if a positively stereotyped identity is made salient. Biracial individuals, whose racial identities may be associated with both negative and positive testing abilities, have not been examined in this conte...

Rigid thinking is associated with less creativity, suggesting that priming a flexible mindset should boost creative thought. In three studies, we investigate whether priming multiple social identities predicts more creativity in domains unrelated to social identity. Study 1 asked monoracial and multiracial participants to write about their racial i...

The present study used archival data to examine how White, Black, and biracial Black/White people respond to implicit attitude feedback suggesting that they harbor racial bias that does not align with their self-reported attitudes. The results suggested that people are generally defensive in response to feedback indicating that their implicit attit...

Children prefer learning from, and affiliating with, their racial ingroup but those preferences may vary for biracial children. Monoracial (White, Black, Asian) and biracial (Black/White, Asian/White) children (N=246, 3-8 years) had their racial identity primed. In a learning preferences task, participants determined the function of a novel object...

Multiracial individuals often do not easily fit into existing racial categories. Perceivers may adopt a novel racial category to categorize multiracial targets, but their willingness to do so may depend on their motivations. We investigated whether perceivers' levels of internal motivation to control prejudice (IMS) and external motivation to contr...

When Barack Obama became the “first Black President” of the United States in 2008, researchers examined how his election impacted Americans’ views of racial progress. When he was reelected in 2012, the minority status of the president had become less novel. In the present study, we investigated whether perceptions concerning racial progress varied:...

In two studies we investigate how the fluid identities of biracial individuals interact with contextual factors to shape behavior in interracial settings. In Study 1, biracial Black/White participants (n = 22) were primed with either their Black or White identity before having a race-related discussion with a Black confederate. Study 2 (n = 34) ass...

The 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa generated extensive controversy over spectators’ use of the African vuvuzela trumpet. We asked 123 White American participants about their opinions of vuvuzelas as well as their attitudes towards a variety of racial/ethnic minority groups including immigrants, African Americans, and Latinos. We found that the...

We know that early experience plays a crucial role in the development of face processing, but we know little about how infants learn to distinguish faces from different races, especially for non‐Caucasian populations. Moreover, it is unknown whether differential processing of different race faces observed in typically studied monoracial infants ext...

Background: Regardless of whether they are subsequently diagnosed with autism, infant siblings of children with autism (IS) may attend differently to faces and objects, and to social cues linking faces and objects, than typically developing (TD) infants (McCleery et al., 2009). The ability to follow another's gaze to an object, or responsiveness to...