Peter Dang Victor Nguyen Can race be erased?

Introduction Throughout human history, intergroup conflict has focused on categorization between us and them Humans have been shown to discriminate in favor of their ingroup and against the outgroup In previous studies, this has held true even when the experimenter assigns temporary groups using trivial measures.

Encoding Race a Product of Evolution? Selection may have favored the cognitive machinery for automatic encoding of an individual’s sex and age, but the same process for race is unlikely to have evolved Our typical ancestral individual would almost never encounter individuals genetically distinct enough to classify as a different “race”

Hypothesis Hypothesis: Automatic and mandatory encoding of race is a byproduct of adaptations that evolved for an alternative function: detecting coalitions and alliances Hunter gatherer societies lived in bands and neighboring bands frequently came into contact with each other Computational machinery designed to detect coalitions should be sensitive to two factors: Patterns of coordinated action Cues that predict an individual’s political allegiances These allegiances were often associated with appearance Arbitrary cues such as skin color should only pick up significance if they proved predictive validity for coalitional membership

Predictions #1: Race will not be encoded across all social contexts and with equal strength #2: Shared visual appearance is not necessary for coalition encoding #3: Arbitrary cues other than racial appearance can be endowed with the same properties as race

Predictions (cont…) #4: Strength of race encoding will diminish by creating a social context where Race is no longer a valid cue to coalition There are alternative cues that reliably indicate coalitional affiliation #5: Sex will be encoded more strongly than race #6: Encoding of sex will not diminish coalition encoding

Methods Memory confusion protocol Asked to form impressions of individuals See sequence of sentences paired with photos Surprise recall task Uses errors in recall to reveal whether subjects are categorizing target individuals into groups

Experiment 1 Each speaker was a young man Only way to distinguish was through the content of what they said 4 speakers to each coalition Two Euro-American men Two African-American men

Experiment 2 Identical to Experiment 1 Only difference was whether individuals wore yellow or gray shirts

Experiment 3 and 4 Same as experiment as 1 and 2 The African Americans were replaced by White Euro American women

Results – By Experiments 1: More within than between coalition errors Effect size for race found Effect size for race twice as large as coalition 2: Significant increase in coalitional effect size Effect size of race reduced Effect size of coalition larger than of race

Results – By Experiments 3: Effect size of sex very high Effect size of sex greater than effect size of coalition and race Effect size of coalition small 4: Effect size of coalition large

Discussion – By Predictions 1, 2, and 3 1: Race is not encoded equally across all social contexts Effect size of race diminished in exp 2 compared to exp 1 2: Shared appearance ≠ coalition. Coalitional encoding without appearance possible More within rather than between coalition errors in exp 1 3: Cues other than race can be substituted for coalitional membership Effect of shirt color in exp 2 larger than in exp 1.

Discussion – By Predictions 4, 5, and 6 4: Racial encoding decreases when it is no longer valid and there are better indicators of coalition Effect size for race diminished in exp 2 compared to exp 1. 5: Sex is encoded more strongly than race Effect sizes for sex were very high for exps 3 and 5 6: Sex encoding does not affect coalitional encoding Coalitional effect did not decrease from exp 1 to 3 and from 2 to 4

Discussion – Counter-arguments Race and coalition might be competing as they’re a continuous variable – sex is generally dichotomous. Separate attention capacities for these Overwriting of race encoding doesn’t mean we don’t do it naturally. Coalition encoding served an end purpose – we might just be flexible enough to meet our goals and able to suppress something natural. Early versus late selection If subjects are able to alter racial encoding so quickly in context of experiment, why is race so prevalent in real life? Social context overwrite internal cues?