Cross-cultural perceptions of racial ambiguity: Testing the universality of the ingroup overexclusion effect

Abstract

Two theoretical frameworks are often used to explain how racially ambiguous faces are categorized. The hypodescent framework (also commonly known as the “one-drop rule”) which is dominantly used in the U.S., argues racially ambiguous Biracial faces are more likely to be categorized as their racially subordinate group (e.g., a Biracial Asian/White person will be seen as Asian). In contrast, the ingroup overexclusion framework (IOE), which has been predominantly used in European contexts argues that racially ambiguous faces are categorized into the most prevalent outgroup relative to the perceiver, regardless of group status (e.g., a Biracial Asian/White person will be seen as White by an Asian perceiver, or as Asian for a White perceiver). Thus, without cross-cultural comparisons that decouple racial status from racial group membership, we cannot test both frameworks simultaneously and determine which is a better framework for racially ambiguous categorization outcomes. Here, Chinese Nationals (N = 330) and Asian Americans (N = 196) categorized racially ambiguous faces across a 2 (Categorization Task Type; Two-Choice or Three-Choice) x 2 (Stimulus Set: Asian/White or Asian/Black Biracial faces) between-subjects design. Generally, results show that across both cultural groups, Biracial Asian faces were seen most often as one's furthest outgroup member (i.e., “not Asian”, “White” and “Black” for both stimuli). Thus, these results are more consistent with IOE, and not hypodescent, as the underlying process for racially ambiguous categorization.