elena stepanova

Participants rated the attractiveness and racial typicality of male
faces varying in their facial features from Afrocentric to Eurocentric
and in skin tone from dark to light in two experiments. Experiment
1 provided evidence that facial features and skin tone have
an interactive effect on perceptions of attractiveness and mixedrace
faces are perceived as more attractive than single-race faces.
Experiment 2 further confirmed that faces with medium levels of
skin tone and facial features are perceived as more attractive than
faceswith extremelevels of these factors. Black phenotypes (combinations
of dark skin tone and Afrocentric facial features) were
rated as more attractive than White phenotypes (combinations of
light skin tone and Eurocentric facial features); ambiguous faces
(combinations of Afrocentric and Eurocentric physiognomy) with
medium levels of skin tone were rated as the most attractive in
Experiment 2. Perceptions of attractiveness were relatively independent
of racial categorization in both experiments.

Research on non-pharmacological effects of alcohol shows that exposure to alcohol-related cues (i.e., alcohol priming) can increase behaviors associated with actual alcohol consumption. Attributions of responsibility to female victims in sexual assault scenarios are affected by whether or not alcohol was consumed by a victim or/and perpetrator. Victims often receive higher levels of blame if they consume alcohol prior to the assault. This work extends the research on non-pharmacological effects of alcohol into a novel domain of blame attribution toward rape victims. In two studies, participants in lab settings (Study 1; N = 184) and online (Study 2; N = 421) were primed with alcohol or neutral beverage advertisements as part of a purportedly separate ad-rating task and then were presented with a vignette depicting an acquaintance rape where the characters consumed beer or soda. Participants subsequently completed a questionnaire assessing victim blame and perpetrator blame. Across both studies, participants blamed the victim most when they were exposed to both contextual (story) and non-contextual (ads) alcohol cues; this effect was especially prominent in males in Study 1. Findings for perpetrator blame were inconsistent across studies. Implications of non-pharmacological effects of alcohol on blame attribution toward rape victims are discussed in the context of courtroom situations and bystander intervention.

Cultural differences between Black and White individuals in the South are connected to the inequitable history of the United States. We wondered if these cultural differences would translate to a particularly precious aspect of life: memories of love felt in childhood toward one's parents. Some past studies have shown that Whites score higher on parental attachment measures to parents than Blacks, while other studies show no significant differences. However, no previous study has ever measured memory of feelings of love in relation to differences between ethnicities. In this study, Black (n ¼ 124) and White (n ¼ 125) undergraduates self-reported the strength and frequency of their past feelings of love toward their mother and father in first, sixth, and ninth grade as well as their current feelings of love. Results suggested that Black students reported feeling more love for their mothers in first, sixth, and ninth grades compared to White students. These findings were not explained when we statistically adjusted for age, gender, socioeconomic status, education levels, income, number of years spent living with mother or father, stress, or personality. Therefore, this relationship may be explained by unmeasured or unmeasurable cultural differences. The direction of this effect was in the opposite direction from what we expected based on past attachment research. Given the inequities in U.S. history and the current discussions around ethnicity and race in the United States, the finding that Blacks reported higher remembered feelings of love for their mothers in childhood is intriguing and worthy of dissemination and discussion.

The present study explored mock jurors’ guilt judgments with a 2 (Jurors’ Race: Black vs. White) × 2 (Suspects’ Race: Black vs. White) × 2 (Suspects’ Attractiveness: High vs. Low) design in a group of Millennials (N = 331). Black jurors were more lenient; all jurors were more lenient toward Black suspects; and White jurors were less lenient toward Black unattractive suspects. The current study contributes the following novel findings to the literature: documentation of a possible Black experimenter effect in mock jurors; an interaction among suspects’ race, suspects’ attractiveness, and jurors’ race, suggesting that racial bias exhibited by White jurors may be masking itself as an unattractiveness bias; and additive empathy by Black jurors toward persons who fall within more than one underprivileged group.

We examined the development of racial categorizations of faces spanning the European-East Asian ("White-Asian") categorical continuum in children between the ages of four and nine as well as adults. We employed a stimulus set that independently varied skin color and other aspects of facial physiognomy, allowing the contribution of each to be assessed independently and in interaction with each other. Results demonstrated substantial development across this age range in children's ability to draw on both sorts of cue, with over twice as much variance explained by stimulus variation in adults than children. Nonetheless, children were clearly sensitive to both skin color and other aspects of facial physiognomy, suggesting that understanding of the White-Asian category boundary develops in a somewhat different way than understanding of the White-Black category boundary, in which attention to features other than skin color appear only somewhat later. Discussion focuses on th...

The current research investigated whether priming students with
a religious message affected their attitudes toward lesbians and gay men.Undergraduate students (N = 145) were randomly assigned to 1 of 3conditions: participants in a religious-positive condition were primed with a biblical passage containing a loving message (e.g., “love one another, for love comes from God”), participants in a religious-negative condition were primed with a biblical passage containing an angry message (e.g., “God takes revenge on all who oppose him”), and participants in a control condition were primed with a neutral passage. After reading the priming passage, participants completed questionnaires assessing various measures of religiosity such as religiousness, spirituality, religious affiliation, extrinsic
and intrinsic religious orientation, religious fundamentalism, and their
attitudes toward lesbians and gay men. Consistent with previous research, religiosity was negatively related to attitudes toward lesbians and gay men (ps < .01). Self-identified Christians had more negative attitudes toward lesbians and gay men (p = .002, ηp2 = .12) than participants of other religious affiliations. However, there was no effect of the priming manipulation on attitudes toward lesbians and gay men (p = .88, ηp2 = .009).

Prior research on the development of race-based categorization has concluded that children understand the perceptual basis of race categories from as early as age 4 (e.g. Aboud, ). However, such work has rarely separated the influence of skin color from other physiognomic features considered by adults to be diagnostic of race categories. In two studies focusing on Black-White race categorization judgments in children between the ages of 4 and 9, as well as in adults, we find that categorization decisions in early childhood are determined almost entirely by attention to skin color, with attention to other physiognomic features exerting only a small influence on judgments as late as middle childhood. We further find that when skin color cues are largely eliminated from the stimuli, adults readily shift almost entirely to focus on other physiognomic features. However, 6- and 8-year-old children show only a limited ability to shift attention to facial physiognomy and so perform poorly o...

Previous research has shown that racial images representing more typical Afrocentric phenotypic characteristics result in more negative evaluations, whether assessed by explicit or implicit attitudes measures. However, the factors that define and moderate the perception of racial typicality have not been sufficiently explored. The current research investigated additive and interactive influences of skin tone and facial physiognomy on racial typicality

Participants (N = 106) performed an affective priming task with facial primes that varied in their skin tone and facial physiognomy, and, which were presented either in color or in gray-scale. Participants' racial evaluations were more positive for Eurocentric than for Afrocentric physiognomy faces. Light skin tone faces were evaluated more positively than dark skin tone faces, but the magnitude of this effect depended on the mode of color presentation. The results suggest that in affective priming tasks, faces might not be processed holistically, and instead, visual features of facial priming stimuli independently affect implicit evaluations.

Participants (N=59) performed racial typicality ratings and racial categorization of affectively neutral faces. The authors manipulated facial physiognomy, skin tone, and color presentation mode (gray scale vs. color) independently. Participants perceived Eurocentric faces as more European American in the gray-scale presentation mode than in the color mode. Independent of facial physiognomy, the planned effect of skin tone also emerged: Participants perceived dark skin tone faces as more African American than they did light skin tone faces, but this tendency was especially true with faces presented in color. These findings suggest that color presentation mode plays an important role in altering the perceptions of faces on dimensions critical to the study of stereotyping and prejudice. The common use of gray-scale stimuli may exaggerate physiognomy-based perceptions of racial typicality and category membership, but it may diminish skin-tone-based perceptions in comparison with more realistic color presentations.

We explored bias and its perception in newspaper reports of the 2002 Olympics figure skating controversy. American and Russian articles were examined for their perceptions of the Canadian and Russian pairs' performances, directionality of the Russian and American media and publics' biases, and media awareness of those biases. Reporters' accounts varied as a function of country of affiliation and indicated a one-sided acknowledgment of media and public bias. The American media acknowledged a pro-Canadian bias in their reporting; there was no self-bias acknowledgment in the Russian press. Country of affiliation produced one-sided coverage of this event, and even the American media's awareness of self-biases did not ensure bias-free reporting. These findings are discussed amid respective countries' cultural and political contexts.