The Development and Testing of "The Goldilocks Effect": Do Contrastive Racial Stereotyping Processes Uphold Social Hierarchies?

Abstract

Stereotypes of racial groups do not exist in a vacuum, and psychologists have previously detailed the stereotype content and social positionings of racial groups in relation to one another (Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002; Zou & Cheryan, 2017). However, psychology does not have a theoretical framework that explains the highly heterogeneous distribution of granular, trait-specific racial group stereotypes, including some stereotypes that are viewed as “positive” or “flattering” (Czopp, Kay, & Cheryan, 2015). In this dissertation, I propose that stereotypes of racial minority groups may be dynamically constructed in direct contrast to each other, where one minority’s ascribed traits are consistently patterned to contrast with another minority’s ascribed traits—e.g., in the domain of intellectual competence, Black Americans are stereotyped as very creative but not hard-working, while Asian Americans are stereotyped as very hard-working but not creative; in the domain of physicality, Black Americans are stereotyped as hyper-athletic, while Asian Americans are stereotyped as not athletic enough. I argue that this contrastive distribution of racial minority stereotypes allows the dominant majority group, White Americans, to position themselves as possessing the optimal and idealized “Goldilocks” form of the trait: for example, they can be positioned as ideally intellectually competent, not too high and not too low in any one trait or trait facet. I propose that this is psychologically motivated and serves to affirm and protect the self and the in-group: it allows the majority group to account for favorable perceptions of racial out-groups, without positioning their own in-group as inferior to either group. These contrastive racial stereotyping processes may serve to uphold social hierarchies, and perpetuate the inequality between racial majority and minority groups.