Summarized and sequential discrimination - A paradigm for research on the perception of multiple instances of discrimination

Abstract

Despite a large body of knowledge about factors influencing perceptions of discrimination in single instances, little is known about the perception of discrimination based on multiple instances of discrimination. One reason for this lack of knowledge is that existing methods in discrimination perception research are not optimal for this subject. The present manuscript introduces the Summarized and Sequential Discrimination (SUSED) Paradigm, which was designed to facilitate investigating processes of discrimination perception based on multiple discriminatory instances. The SUSED-paradigm provides participants with statistical information about multiple instances of discrimination and fosters investigating information processing underlying judgments of discrimination. In the SUSED-paradigm, information on discrimination is presented either in a summarized or in a sequential format in which an approximation of the actual statistical strength of discrimination can be derived from the given information. Experiments 1–6 (N = 1130) demonstrate the utility of the SUSED-paradigm for experimentally manipulating statistical discrimination at multiple levels of strength in a manner that can be perceived by participants. The results demonstrate high correlations between subjective and statistical discrimination strengths, even when real marginalized groups were presented. Furthermore, we compared how three different measures of discrimination perception differ in their sensitivity to variations in differential group treatments and the strength of the statistical discrimination. Experiments 7 and 8 (N = 347) replicated the well-documented prototype effect in both formats of the SUSED-paradigm to gauge the paradigms convergent validity with former methods.