Research Details

Abstract

Researchers have used theories of social dominance, system justification, authoritarianism, and social identity, to understand how monoracials’ sociopolitical motives influence their categorization of multiracials. The result has been a growing understanding of how particular sociopolitical motives and contexts impact categorization, without a unifying perspective to integrate these insights. We review evidence supporting each theory’s predictions concerning how monoracials categorize multiracials that combine their ingroup with an outgroup, with attention to the moderating role of perceiver group status. We highlight that most studies cannot arbitrate between theoretical accounts of categorization and reveal additional gaps in the literature. To advance this research area, we introduce the Sociopolitical Motive x Intergroup Threat Model of Racial Categorization that 1) clarifies which sociopolitical motives interact with which intergroup threats to predict categorization and 2) highlights the role of perceiver group status. Furthermore, we consider how our model can help understand intergroup phenomena beyond multiracial categorization.

Type

Article

Author(s)

Arnold Ho, Nour Kteily, Jacqueline Chen

Date Published

2020

Citations

Ho, Arnold, Nour Kteily, and Jacqueline Chen. 2020. Introducing the Sociopolitical Motive x Intergroup Threat Model to Understand How Monoracial Perceivers’ Sociopolitical Motives Influence their Categorization of Multiracial People. Personality and Social Psychology Review.