Conversations about race in Black and White US families: Before and after George Floyd's death.

Research has shown that Black parents are more likely than White parents to have conversations about race with their children, but few studies have directly compared the frequency and content of these conversations and how they change in response to national events. Here we examine such conversations in the United States before and after the killing of George Floyd. Black parents had conversations more often than White parents, and they had more frequent conversations post-Floyd. White parents remained mostly unchanged and, if anything, were less likely to talk about being White and more likely to send colorblind messages. Black parents were also more worried than White parents-both that their children would experience racial bias and that their children would perpetrate racial bias, a finding that held both pre- and post-Floyd. Thus, even in the midst of a national moment on race, White parents remained relatively silent and unconcerned about the topic.

The emotional and mental health impact of the murder of George Floyd on the US population.

On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, an unarmed Black American male, was killed by a White police officer. Footage of the murder was widely shared. We examined the psychological impact of Floyd's death using two population surveys that collected data before and after his death; one from Gallup (117,568 responses from n = 47,355) and one from the US Census (409,652 responses from n = 319,471). According to the Gallup data, in the week following Floyd's death, anger and sadness increased to unprecedented levels in the US population. During this period, more than a third of the US population reported these emotions. These increases were more pronounced for Black Americans, nearly half of whom reported these emotions. According to the US Census Household Pulse data, in the week following Floyd's death, depression and anxiety severity increased among Black Americans at significantly higher rates than that of White Americans. Our estimates suggest that this increase corresponds to an additional 900,000 Black Americans who would have screened positive for depression, associated with a burden of roughly 2.7 million to 6.3 million mentally unhealthy days.

The effect of group status on children's hierarchy-reinforcing beliefs.

Members of advantaged groups are more likely than members of disadvantaged groups to think, feel, and behave in ways that reinforce their group's position within the hierarchy. This study examined how children's status within a group-based hierarchy shapes their beliefs about the hierarchy and the groups that comprise it in ways that reinforce the hierarchy. To do this, we randomly assigned children (4-8 years; N = 123; 75 female, 48 male; 21 Asian, 9 Black, 21 Latino/a, 1 Middle-Eastern/North-African, 14 multiracial, 41 White, 16 not-specified) to novel groups that differed in social status (advantaged, disadvantaged, neutral third-party) and assessed their beliefs about the hierarchy. Across five separate assessments, advantaged-group children were more likely to judge the hierarchy to be fair, generalizable, and wrong to challenge and were more likely to hold biased intergroup attitudes and exclude disadvantaged group members. In addition, with age, children in both the advantaged- and disadvantaged-groups became more likely to see membership in their own group as inherited, while at the same time expecting group-relevant behaviors to be determined more by the environment. With age, children also judged the hierarchy to be more unfair and expected the hierarchy to generalize across contexts. These findings provide novel insights into how children's position within hierarchies can contribute to the formation of hierarchy-reinforcing beliefs. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: A total of 123 4-8-year-olds were assigned to advantaged, disadvantaged, and third-party groups within a hierarchy and were assessed on seven hierarchy-reinforcing beliefs about the hierarchy. Advantaged children were more likely to say the hierarchy was fair, generalizable, and wrong to challenge and to hold intergroup biases favoring advantaged group members. With age, advantaged- and disadvantaged-group children held more essentialist beliefs about membership in their own group, but not the behaviors associated with their group. Results suggest that advantaged group status can shape how children perceive and respond to the hierarchies they are embedded within.

Being from a highly resourced context predicts believing that others are highly resourced: An early developing worldview that stymies resource sharing.

We tested whether children's and adults' resource levels predicted their beliefs about resources (Study 1) and whether those beliefs shaped their willingness to share their resources with others (Study 2). In Study 1, we found that among adults (n = 230, 59.1% female, 72.6% White) and young children (n = 109, 4-6 years old, 56% female, 33% White), increased resource level predicted increases in the belief that others have lots of resources. In Study 2, we found that adults (n = 495, 52.5% female, 69.1% White) and young children (n = 154, 4-5 years old, 52.6% female, 36.4% White) randomly assigned to believe that others have lots of resources were less likely to share their own resources with others. Implications for reducing economic inequality are discussed.

Beyond Black and White: Conceptualizing and essentializing Black-White identity.

OBJECTIVE: Psychological research suggests that Black-White individuals are often conceptualized as Black and White, and that essentialist beliefs about race are negatively associated with conceptualizing Black-White individuals as such. The present research examined what people think it means to be Black and White (e.g., a mixture of Black and White vs. completely Black and completely White) and whether essentialism is indeed negatively associated with such concepts. METHOD: We used multiple methodologies (e.g., surveys, open-ended explanations, experimental manipulations) to examine how Black, White, and Black-White perceivers conceptualized Black-White individuals (Studies 1-3) and the extent to which essentialist beliefs, both dispositional (Studies 2-3) and experimentally induced (Study 4), predicted those concepts. RESULTS: We find that U.S. Black-White individuals most often conceptualized "Black and White" to mean a mixture of Black and White (Study 1), as did U.S. White individuals and U.S. Black individuals (Studies 2 and 3), and that racial essentialism-both dispositional (Studies 2 and 3) and experimentally manipulated (Study 4)-was positively associated with this conception. CONCLUSION: Our data shed new light on the complexity of race concepts and essentialism and advance the psychological understanding of Black-White identity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The influence of vector-borne disease on human history: socio-ecological mechanisms.

Vector-borne diseases (VBDs) are embedded within complex socio-ecological systems. While research has traditionally focused on the direct effects of VBDs on human morbidity and mortality, it is increasingly clear that their impacts are much more pervasive. VBDs are dynamically linked to feedbacks between environmental conditions, vector ecology, disease burden, and societal responses that drive transmission. As a result, VBDs have had profound influence on human history. Mechanisms include: (1) killing or debilitating large numbers of people, with demographic and population-level impacts; (2) differentially affecting populations based on prior history of disease exposure, immunity, and resistance; (3) being weaponised to promote or justify hierarchies of power, colonialism, racism, classism and sexism; (4) catalysing changes in ideas, institutions, infrastructure, technologies and social practices in efforts to control disease outbreaks; and (5) changing human relationships with the land and environment. We use historical and archaeological evidence interpreted through an ecological lens to illustrate how VBDs have shaped society and culture, focusing on case studies from four pertinent VBDs: plague, malaria, yellow fever and trypanosomiasis. By comparing across diseases, time periods and geographies, we highlight the enormous scope and variety of mechanisms by which VBDs have influenced human history.

Should Individuals Think Like Their Group? A Descriptive-to-Prescriptive Tendency Toward Group-Based Beliefs.

Across three pre-registered studies with children (ages 4-9) and adults (N = 303), we examined whether how a group is predicted evaluations of how group members should be (i.e., a descriptive-to-prescriptive tendency), under conditions in which the descriptive group norms entailed beliefs that were fact-based (Study 1), opinion-based (Study 2), and ideology-based (Study 3). Overall, participants tended to disapprove of individuals with beliefs that differed from their group, but the extent of this tendency varied across development and as a function of the belief under consideration (e.g., younger children did not show a descriptive-to-prescriptive tendency in the context of facts and ideologies, suggesting that they prioritized truth over group norms). Implications for normative reasoning and ideological polarization are discussed.

The Roles of Privacy and Trust in Children's Evaluations and Explanations of Digital Tracking.

A "digital revolution" has introduced new privacy violations concerning access to information stored on electronic devices. The present two studies assessed how U.S. children ages 5-17 and adults (N = 416; 55% female; 67% white) evaluated those accessing digital information belonging to someone else, either location data (Study 1) or digital photos (Study 2). The trustworthiness of the tracker (Studies 1 and 2) and the privacy of the information (Study 2) were manipulated. At all ages, evaluations were more negative when the tracker was less trustworthy, and when information was private. However, younger children were substantially more positive overall about digital tracking than older participants. These results, yielding primarily medium-to-large effect sizes, suggest that with age, children increasingly appreciate digital privacy considerations.

Categories convey prescriptive information across domains and development.

Young children display a pervasive bias to assume that what they observe in the world reflects how things are supposed to be. The current studies examined the nature of this bias by testing whether it reflects a particular form of reasoning about human social behaviors or a more general feature of category representations. Children aged 4 to 9 years and adults (N = 747) evaluated instances of nonconformity among members of novel biological and human social kinds. Children held prescriptive expectations for both animal and human categories; in both cases, they said it was wrong for a category member to engage in category-atypical behavior. These prescriptive judgments about categories depended on the extent to which people saw the pictured individual examples as representative of coherent categories. Thus, early prescriptive judgments appear to rely on the interplay between general conceptual biases and domain-specific beliefs about category structure.

The Roles of Group Status and Group Membership in the Practice of Hypodescent.

Hypodescent emerged in U.S. history to reinforce racial hierarchy. Research suggests that among contemporary U.S. adults, hypodescent continues to shape social perception. Among U.S. children, however, hypodescent is less likely to be endorsed. Here, we tested for hypodescent by introducing U.S. children (ages 4-9) and adults (N = 273) to hierarchically ordered novel groups (one was high status and another was low status) and then to a child who had one parent from each group. In Study 1, we presented the groups in a third-party context. In Study 2, we randomly assigned participants to the high-status or the low-status group. Across both studies, participants did not reliably endorse hypodescent, raising questions as to what elicits this practice.

How language shapes the cultural inheritance of categories.

It is widely recognized that language plays a key role in the transmission of human culture, but relatively little is known about the mechanisms by which language simultaneously encourages both cultural stability and cultural innovation. This paper examines this issue by focusing on the use of language to transmit categories, focusing on two universal devices: labels (e.g., shark, woman) and generics (e.g., "sharks attack swimmers"; "women are nurturing"). We propose that labels and generics each assume two key principles: norms and essentialism. The normative assumption permits transmission of category information with great fidelity, whereas essentialism invites innovation by means of an open-ended, placeholder structure. Additionally, we sketch out how labels and generics aid in conceptual alignment and the progressive "looping" between categories and cultural practices. In this way, human language is a technology that enhances and expands the categorization capacities that we share with other animals.

How deep do we dig? Formal explanations as placeholders for inherent explanations.

Formal explanations (e.g., "Mittens has whiskers because she's a cat") pose an intriguing puzzle in human cognition: they seem like little more than tautologies, yet they are surprisingly commonplace and natural-sounding. To resolve this puzzle, we hypothesized that formal explanations constitute an implicit appeal to a category's inherent features rather than simply to the category itself (as their explicit content would suggest); the latter is just a placeholder. We conducted a series of eight experiments with 951 participants that supported four predictions that followed from this hypothesis: First, formal explanations-though natural-sounding-were not particularly satisfying. Second, for natural kinds, formal explanations were less satisfying than inherent explanations (specifically, ones that appealed to a natural kind's causally powerful "essence"). Third, participants viewed essence-related inherent explanations as more specific versions of the ideas expressed by formal explanations, which were viewed as more general placeholders. Fourth, and finally, formal explanations tended to serve as placeholders for explanations that appealed to inherent features more so than for other types of explanations, such as ones that appealed to external, environmental factors. In addition to supporting our novel claim about the meaning of formal explanations, these data suggest a new way in which explanations do their psychological work: not via their literal content (as assumed by prior work on explanation), but rather via the additional inferences they encourage. We end by discussing the potential heuristic value of formal explanations for causal learning in childhood.

Children's descriptive-to-prescriptive tendency replicates (and varies) cross-culturally: Evidence from China.

Research with U.S. samples found that children use descriptive group regularities (characteristics shared by individuals within a group) to generate prescriptive judgments (characteristics that should be shared by individuals within a group). Here, we assessed this descriptive-to-prescriptive tendency in a sample of children (ages 4-13years) and adults (ages 18-40years) from mainland China. Participants were introduced to novel groups (i.e., Hibbles and Glerks) who engaged in contrasting morally neutral behaviors (e.g., listening to different kinds of music) and then to conforming and non-conforming individuals (e.g., a Hibble who listened to music more typical of Glerks). Like U.S. children, Chinese children disapproved of non-conformity and rates of disapproval declined with age. However, compared with U.S. children, younger Chinese children (ages 4-6years) rated non-conformity more disapprovingly, and unlike U.S. adults, Chinese adults rated non-conformity more negatively than conformity. Moreover, compared with U.S. participants, Chinese participants across all age groups appealed more often to norm-based explanations when justifying their disapproval. These data provide a cross-cultural replication of children's descriptive-to-prescriptive tendency but also reveal cross-cultural variation, and they have implications for understanding the mechanisms that underlie stereotyping and normative reasoning.

Group presence, category labels, and generic statements influence children to treat descriptive group regularities as prescriptive.

Children use descriptive regularities of social groups (what is) to generate prescriptive judgments (what should be). We examined whether this tendency held when the regularities were introduced through group presence, category labels, or generic statements. Children (ages 4-9years, N=203) were randomly assigned to one of four conditions that manipulated how descriptive group regularities were presented: group presence (e.g., "These ones [a group of three individuals] eat this kind of berry"), category labels (e.g., "This [individual] Hibble eats this kind of berry"), generic statements (e.g., [showing an individual] "Hibbles eat this kind of berry"), or control (e.g., "This one [individual] eats this kind of berry"). Then, children saw conforming and non-conforming individuals and were asked to evaluate their behavior. As predicted, children evaluated non-conformity negatively in all conditions except the control condition. Together, these results suggest that minimal perceptual and linguistic cues provoke children to treat social groups as having normative force.

Essentialism and Racial Bias Jointly Contribute to the Categorization of Multiracial Individuals.

Categorizations of multiracial individuals provide insight into the psychological mechanisms driving social stratification, but few studies have explored the interplay of cognitive and motivational underpinnings of these categorizations. In the present study, we integrated research on racial essentialism (i.e., the belief that race demarcates unobservable and immutable properties) and negativity bias (i.e., the tendency to weigh negative entities more heavily than positive entities) to explain why people might exhibit biases in the categorization of multiracial individuals. As theorized, racial essentialism, both dispositional (Study 1) and experimentally induced (Study 2), led to the categorization of Black-White multiracial individuals as Black, but only among individuals evaluating Black people more negatively than White people. These findings demonstrate how fundamental cognitive and motivational biases interact to influence the categorization of multiracial individuals.

Do Children See in Black and White? Children's and Adults' Categorizations of Multiracial Individuals.

Categorizations of multiracial individuals provide insight into the development of racial concepts. Children's (4-13 years) and adults', both White (Study 1) and Black (Study 2; N = 387), categorizations of multiracial individuals were examined. White children (unlike Black children) more often categorized multiracial individuals as Black than as White in the absence of parentage information. White and Black adults (unlike children) more often categorized multiracial individuals as Black than as White, even when knowing the individuals' parentage. Children's rates of in-group contact predicted their categorizations. These data suggest that a tendency to categorize multiracial individuals as Black relative to White emerges early in development and results from perceptual biases in White children but ideological motives in White and Black adults.

Condemned or valued: Young children evaluate nonconformity based on nonconformists' group orientations.

Nonconformity--the act of deviating from established norms and expectations of one's group--is often evaluated negatively, despite its potential benefits for society. Three preregistered studies (N = 153) examined how nonconformists' group orientations (attitudes and intentions toward ingroup and outgroups) might affect 4-6-year-olds' evaluations of nonconformity in intergroup situations. Study 1 examined children's default beliefs of nonconformists' group attitudes toward ingroup and outgroup. We found that children expected nonconformists to hold more positive attitudes toward their outgroup than toward their ingroup, and this expectation predicted their disapproval of nonconformity. In Study 2, however, when nonconformity was explicitly motivated by positive intentions toward the ingroup rather than toward the outgroup, children were more accepting of nonconformity. Study 3 found that among nonconformists with different types of group orientations (positive toward the outgroup, ingroup or both group), young children evaluated the most positively nonconformists who bring the ingroup and the outgroup together. Collectively, these findings suggest that children evaluate nonconformity based on nonconformists' group orientations, illuminating one mechanism for how nonconformity could be more socially accepted and valued.

Challenging the White = Neutral Framework in Psychology.

In the United States, White samples are often portrayed as if their racial identities were inconsequential to their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and research findings derived from White samples are often portrayed as if they were generalizable to all humans. We argue that these and other practices are rooted in a "White = neutral" framework (i.e., the conceptualization of White samples as nonracial). First, we review existing data and present some new data to highlight the scope of the White = neutral framework. Second, we integrate research from across psychological science to argue that the continued use of the White = neutral framework will prevent psychology from becoming a truly objective and inclusive science for at least three reasons: (a) Research with White samples will be valued over research with samples of color, (b) norms that maintain White neutrality will remain unchallenged, and (c) the role of White identity in psychological processes will remain underspecified and underexamined. Third, we provide recommendations for how to move beyond the White = neutral framework in hopes of encouraging all psychological scientists to move toward a White ≠ neutral framework in which all samples are identified for the unique and diverse perspectives that they bring to the world.

The Effects of Editorial-Board Diversity on Race Scholars and Their Scholarship: A Field Experiment.

Psychological science is in a unique position to identify and dismantle the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that maintain and increase racial inequality, yet the extent to which psychological science can do so depends on the extent to which race scholarship is supported in psychological science. We theorized that the lack of racial diversity among editors at mainstream journals might obstruct the advancement of race scholarship by signaling to race scholars that their research is not valued by mainstream journals and that they should submit their research elsewhere for publication. Indeed, in a preregistered field experiment with 1,189 psychology Ph.D. students, we found that under all-White editorial boards, race scholars were less likely than non-race scholars (a) to believe that the journal valued racial diversity, research on race, or their own research; (b) to believe that the journal would publish their research; and (c) to be willing to submit their research to the journal for publication. Under racially diverse editorial boards, however, we find no differences between race scholars and non-race scholars. In fact, we found that under diverse editorial boards, compared with under all-White editorial boards, both race scholars and non-race scholars had more positive perceptions of the journal. We argue that racially diverse editorial boards are good for race scholars and their scholarship and for the field more broadly.

The psychology of American racism.

American racism is alive and well. In this essay, we amass a large body of classic and contemporary research across multiple areas of psychology (e.g., cognitive, developmental, social), as well as the broader social sciences (e.g., sociology, communication studies, public policy), and humanities (e.g., critical race studies, history, philosophy), to outline seven factors that contribute to American racism: (a) Categories, which organize people into distinct groups by promoting essentialist and normative reasoning; (b) Factions, which trigger ingroup loyalty and intergroup competition and threat; (c) Segregation, which hardens racist perceptions, preferences, and beliefs through the denial of intergroup contact; (d) Hierarchy, which emboldens people to think, feel, and behave in racist ways; (e) Power, which legislates racism on both micro and macro levels; (f) Media, which legitimize overrepresented and idealized representations of White Americans while marginalizing and minimizing people of color; and (g) Passivism, such that overlooking or denying the existence of racism obscures this reality, encouraging others to do the same and allowing racism to fester and persist. We argue that these and other factors support American racism, and we conclude with suggestions for future research, particularly in the domain of identifying ways to promote antiracism. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).