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Advancing Our Understanding of the Interface Between Perception and Intergroup Relations

We are delighted to have the opportunity to respond to Y. Jenny Xiao, G eraldine Coppin, and Jay J. Van Bavel’s (this issue) perceptual model of intergroup relations. We see this model as filling an important void in the literature between the resurgent interest in motivated perception and the long-standing interest in social psychology in intergroup relations. Xiao and colleagues propose that social groups, identities, and contexts can alter perception across multiple modalities; in turn, these perceptions influence intergroup attitudes, judgments, and behaviors. Although noting that there is relatively little empirical support for the reverse causal pathway, they also postulate that the model may be bidirectional, suggesting that intergroup relations may influence perceptual processes, which may in turn affect social identity. Thus, the crux of the proposed model is that “social identification influences perception” (p. 257). The authors suggest that this particular link has been, until recently, understudied in social psychology, a point to which we return. We find much to like in Xiao and colleagues’ (this issue) theory. Specific to their model, we appreciated the relatively unique focus on multiple modalities. To our knowledge, no extant model of intergroup relations or social identification explicitly includes visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, and gustatory perception as components. Indeed, as the authors note, much of the work in this area has focused on visual perception (e.g., Social Vision; Johnson & Adams, 2013). Nevertheless, perception is not limited to vision; therefore, any theory focusing on how perception, broadly defined, mediates the relationship between social identity and intergroup relations should be multimodal. Moreover, the focus onmultiple modalities serves only to underscore the relative dearth of work in this area focusing on modalities other than vision. Related, perceptual modalities are rarely isolated in vivo, regardless of how they are studied in psychology laboratories. Hence, we appreciated the authors’ inclusion of cross-modal perception in their model as well as in their review of the literature. Second, we found the authors’ review of the extant literature to be particularly inclusive and informative. The authors review the important role social identity and fundamental motivations for belonging have on cognition, as well as note that perception is socially constructed. In addition, the authors review recent research on visual, tactile, auditory, olfactory, and gustatory perception, providing a concise summary while acknowledging where areas for future research exist. Finally, on the whole, we believe the perceptual model of intergroup relations is defensible given the current data. Indeed much of our own work, and other related work at the interface of perception and intergroup relations, corroborates the authors’ arguments. For example, speaking to the effects of social identities on perception (Pathway C), we have demonstrated that target race alters perception of physicality. White perceivers evaluate Black men as more physically formidable and as more muscular than White men matched in height, weight, and strength (Wilson, Hugenberg, & Rule, 2016). In a separate demonstration, Fincher and Tetlock (2016) provided compelling evidence for the perception to intergroup relations pathway (Pathway D), showing that perceptual dehumanization (i.e., withholding face-typical processing) facilitates extreme punishment (i.e., death penalty sentencing). Other work speaks to the proposed bidirectional nature of the model, specifically how intergroup relations can influence perception (Pathway F). Black perceivers who believe Whites are primarily externally motivated to respond without prejudice (i.e., Black perceivers who are suspicious of Whites motives) perceive White faces to be more threatening than their nonsuspicious counterparts (Kunstman, Tuscherer, Trawalter, & Lloyd, 2016). This was documented both in explicit judgments of threat and in patterns of visual attention. Inzlicht, Kaiser, and Major (2008) strengthened this intergroup relations to perception link, demonstrating that individual differences in stigma consciousness affect emotion perception. Women who expect to be treated with prejudice perceive contempt lingering on male faces. Finally, compelling evidence for the final link (perception to social membership; Pathway E) comes from research indicating that perceptual fluency facilitates ingroup categorizations and thereby ingroup advantages (i.e., liking; Claypool, Housley, Hugenberg, Bernstein, & Mackie, 2012) and that fluency can explain when prejudice arises (e.g., Lick & Johnson, 2013). Thus, taken together, we think that there is robust evidence to support many of the core claims of this model. Although we believe the model espoused by Xiao and colleagues (this issue) is important and drives forward our understanding of the interface between perception and intergroup relations, we next note several areas where this model may be