Clara L. Wilkins

Racial Progress as Threat to the Status Hierarchy Implications for Perceptions of Anti-White Bias

In three studies, we examined how racial progress affects Whites’ perceptions of anti-White bias. When racial progress was chronically (Study 1) and experimentally (Study 2) salient, Whites who believed the current U.S. status hierarchy was legitimate were more likely to report that Whites were victims of racial discrimination. In contrast, Whites who perceived the current status system as illegitimate were unaffected by the salience of racial progress. The results of Study 3 point to the role of threat in explaining these divergent reactions to racial progress. When self-affirmed, Whites who perceived the status hierarchy as legitimate no longer showed increased perceptions of anti-White bias when confronted with evidence of racial progress. Implications for policies designed to remedy social inequality are discussed.

Being mixed: who claims a biracial identity?

What factors determine whether mixed-race individuals claim a biracial identity or a monoracial identity? Two studies examine how two status-related factors-race and social class-influence identity choice. While a majority of mixed-race participants identified as biracial in both studies, those who were members of groups with higher status in American society were more likely than those who were members of groups with lower status to claim a biracial identity. Specifically, (a) Asian/White individuals were more likely than Black/White or Latino/White individuals to identify as biracial and (b) mixed-race people from middle-class backgrounds were more likely than those from working-class backgrounds to identify as biracial. These results suggest that claiming a biracial identity is a choice that is more available to those with higher status.

Image-based bidirectional scene reprojection

We introduce a method for increasing the framerate of real-time rendering applications. Whereas many existing temporal upsampling strategies only reuse information from previous frames, our bidirectional technique reconstructs intermediate frames from a pair of consecutive rendered frames. This significantly improves the accuracy and efficiency of data reuse since very few pixels are simultaneously occluded in both frames. We present two versions of this basic algorithm. The first is appropriate for fill-bound scenes as it limits the number of expensive shading calculations, but involves rasterization of scene geometry at each intermediate frame. The second version, our more significant contribution, reduces both shading and geometry computations by performing reprojection using only image-based buffers. It warps and combines the adjacent rendered frames using an efficient iterative search on their stored scene depth and flow. Bidirectional reprojection introduces a small amount of lag. We perform a user study to investigate this lag, and find that its effect is minor. We demonstrate substantial performance improvements (3--4x) for a variety of applications, including vertex-bound and fill-bound scenes, multi-pass effects, and motion blur.

The threat of racial progress and the self-protective nature of perceiving anti-White bias

In two studies we tested whether racial progress is threatening to Whites and whether perceiving anti-White bias assuages that threat. Study 1 revealed that Whites primed with racial progress exhibited evidence of threat (lower implicit self-worth relative to baseline). Study 2 replicated the threat effect from Study 1 and examined how perceiving discrimination may buffer Whites’ self-worth. After White participants primed with high racial progress attributed a negative event to their race, their implicit self-worth rebounded. Participants primed to perceive low racial progress did not experience fluctuations in implicit self-worth. Furthermore, among those primed with high racial progress, greater racial discounting (attributing rejection to race rather than to the self) was associated with greater self-worth protection. These studies suggest that changes to the racial status quo are threatening to Whites and that perceiving greater racial bias is a way to manage that threat.

Reactions to anti-male sexism claims: The moderating roles of status-legitimizing belief endorsement and group identification

Men increasingly identify as victims of gender discrimination, but it is unclear how people react to men who claim to be victims of gender bias. We examined how status-legitimizing belief endorsement (SLBs) and gender identification (GID) moderated men and women’s reactions to a man who claimed to have lost a promotion because of anti-male sexism or another cause. Consistent with theory that claiming bias against high-status groups reinforces the status hierarchy, SLB endorsement was associated with more positive reactions toward an anti-male bias claimant for both men and women. Group identification, in contrast, affects group-specific concerns and thus differentially predicted male and female participants’ reactions. Men evaluated the claimant more positively the more strongly they identified with their gender. The more women identified with their gender, the more negatively they evaluated the male claimant. We also demonstrated that SLBs and GID moderated the extent to which the claimant was perceived as sexist. We discuss how these reactions may perpetuate gender inequality.

Priming status-legitimizing beliefs: Examining the impact on perceived anti-White bias, zero-sum beliefs, and support for Affirmative Action among White people

The current research examines how status-legitimizing beliefs (SLBs) influence White peoples perceptions of anti-White bias, endorsement of zero-sum beliefs, and support for Affirmative Action. We suggest that SLBs perpetuate inequality by increasing White peoples perceptions of zero-sum beliefs and anti-White bias, which in turn lead to decreased support for Affirmative Action. White individuals primed with SLBs perceived greater anti-White bias, endorsed greater zero-sum beliefs, and indicated less support for Affirmative Action than individuals primed with neutral content. Mediation analysis revealed that the SLB prime decreased support for Affirmative Action by increasing perceptions of anti-White bias. This research offers experimental evidence that SLBs contribute to White peoples perceptions of anti-White bias and to decreased support for Affirmative Action.

When Men Perceive Anti-male Bias: Status-Legitimizing Beliefs Increase Discrimination Against Women.

This research examines how increasing perceptions of anti-male bias lead men who endorse the gender status hierarchy to perpetuate social inequality. For men primed with anti-male bias, greater status-legitimizing belief (SLB) endorsement was associated with more negative evaluations of a female target and less desire to help her. SLB endorsement was unrelated to evaluations and helping when men were primed with bias against an outgroup (Study 1). Furthermore, when men perceived anti-male bias, priming SLB caused more negative evaluations and fewer helping intentions toward female targets (Study 2). An analysis of the free-response feedback that participants provided targets revealed ingroup favoritism; men primed with SLBs provided male targets more constructive feedback than they did to female targets (Study 2). Thus, some men may be particularly likely to display discrimination against women when they perceive bias against their own group. We discuss how this behavior may perpetuate social disparities.