Steven Othello Roberts

All Publications

• Conversations about race in Black and White US families: Before and after George Floyd's death. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Sullivan, J. N., Eberhardt, J. L., Roberts, S. O. 2021; 118 (38)

  Abstract

  Research has shown that Black parents are more likely than White parents to have conversations about race with their children, but few studies have directly compared the frequency and content of these conversations and how they change in response to national events. Here we examine such conversations in the United States before and after the killing of George Floyd. Black parents had conversations more often than White parents, and they had more frequent conversations post-Floyd. White parents remained mostly unchanged and, if anything, were less likely to talk about being White and more likely to send colorblind messages. Black parents were also more worried than White parents-both that their children would experience racial bias and that their children would perpetrate racial bias, a finding that held both pre- and post-Floyd. Thus, even in the midst of a national moment on race, White parents remained relatively silent and unconcerned about the topic.

  View details for DOI 10.1073/pnas.2106366118

  View details for PubMedID 34518224

• The psychology of American racism. The American psychologist Roberts, S. O., Rizzo, M. T. 2020

  Abstract

  American racism is alive and well. In this essay, we amass a large body of classic and contemporary research across multiple areas of psychology (e.g., cognitive, developmental, social), as well as the broader social sciences (e.g., sociology, communication studies, public policy), and humanities (e.g., critical race studies, history, philosophy), to outline seven factors that contribute to American racism: (a) Categories, which organize people into distinct groups by promoting essentialist and normative reasoning; (b) Factions, which trigger ingroup loyalty and intergroup competition and threat; (c) Segregation, which hardens racist perceptions, preferences, and beliefs through the denial of intergroup contact; (d) Hierarchy, which emboldens people to think, feel, and behave in racist ways; (e) Power, which legislates racism on both micro and macro levels; (f) Media, which legitimize overrepresented and idealized representations of White Americans while marginalizing and minimizing people of color; and (g) Passivism, such that overlooking or denying the existence of racism obscures this reality, encouraging others to do the same and allowing racism to fester and persist. We argue that these and other factors support American racism, and we conclude with suggestions for future research, particularly in the domain of identifying ways to promote antiracism. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

  View details for DOI 10.1037/amp0000642

  View details for PubMedID 32584061

• God as a White man: A psychological barrier to conceptualizing Black people and women as leadership worthy. Journal of personality and social psychology Roberts, S. O., Weisman, K., Lane, J. D., Williams, A., Camp, N. P., Wang, M., Robison, M., Sanchez, K., Griffiths, C. 2020

  Abstract

  In the United States, God is commonly conceptualized as the omnipotent and omniscient entity that created the universe, and as a White man. We questioned whether the extent to which God is conceptualized as a White man predicts the extent to which White men are perceived as particularly fit for leadership. We found support for this across 7 studies. In Study 1, we created 2 measures to examine the extent to which U.S. Christians conceptualized God as a White man, and in Study 2 we found that, controlling for multiple covariates (e.g., racist and sexist attitudes, religiosity, political attitudes), responses on these measures predicted perceiving White male job candidates as particularly fit for leadership, among both Black and White, male and female, Christians. In Study 3, we found that U.S. Christian children, both White and racial minority, conceptualized God as more White than Black (and more male than female), which predicted perceiving White people as particularly boss-like. We next found evidence to suggest that this phenomenon is rooted in broader intuitions that extend beyond Christianity. That is, in a novel context with novel groups and a novel god, U.S. Christian adults (Studies 4 and 6), atheist adults (Study 5), and agnostic preschoolers (Study 7), used a god's identity to infer which groups were best fit for leadership. Collectively, our data reveal a clear and consistent pattern: Attributing a social identity to God predicts perceiving individuals who share that identity as more fit for leadership. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

  View details for DOI 10.1037/pspi0000233

  View details for PubMedID 31999155

• Racial Inequality in Psychological Research: Trends of the Past and Recommendations for the Future. Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science Roberts, S. O., Bareket-Shavit, C. n., Dollins, F. A., Goldie, P. D., Mortenson, E. n. 2020: 1745691620927709

  Abstract

  Race plays an important role in how people think, develop, and behave. In the current article, we queried more than 26,000 empirical articles published between 1974 and 2018 in top-tier cognitive, developmental, and social psychology journals to document how often psychological research acknowledges this reality and to examine whether people who edit, write, and participate in the research are systematically connected. We note several findings. First, across the past five decades, psychological publications that highlight race have been rare, and although they have increased in developmental and social psychology, they have remained virtually nonexistent in cognitive psychology. Second, most publications have been edited by White editors, under which there have been significantly fewer publications that highlight race. Third, many of the publications that highlight race have been written by White authors who employed significantly fewer participants of color. In many cases, we document variation as a function of area and decade. We argue that systemic inequality exists within psychological research and that systemic changes are needed to ensure that psychological research benefits from diversity in editing, writing, and participation. To this end, and in the spirit of the field's recent emphasis on metascience, we offer recommendations for journals and authors.

  View details for DOI 10.1177/1745691620927709

  View details for PubMedID 32578504

• The Roles of Group Status and Group Membership in the Practice of Hypodescent. Child development Roberts, S. O., Ho, A. K., Gulgoz, S., Berka, J., Gelman, S. A. 2019

  Abstract

  Hypodescent emerged in U.S. history to reinforce racial hierarchy. Research suggests that among contemporary U.S. adults, hypodescent continues to shape social perception. Among U.S. children, however, hypodescent is less likely to be endorsed. Here, we tested for hypodescent by introducing U.S. children (ages 4-9) and adults (N=273) to hierarchically ordered novel groups (one was high status and another was low status) and then to a child who had one parent from each group. In Study 1, we presented the groups in a third-party context. In Study 2, we randomly assigned participants to the high-status or the low-status group. Across both studies, participants did not reliably endorse hypodescent, raising questions as to what elicits this practice.

  View details for DOI 10.1111/cdev.13279

  View details for PubMedID 31286497

• The Role of Group Norms in Evaluating Uncommon and Negative Behaviors JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY-GENERAL Roberts, S. O., Ho, A. K., Gelman, S. A. 2019; 148 (2): 374–87

  Abstract

  Children often believe that how a group is reflects how individual group members should be. We provided a strong test of this descriptive-to-prescriptive tendency by examining whether children (Ages 4 to 9) maintained the correctness of group norms even when such norms differed in their prevalence (e.g., drinking juice out of bowls instead of cups; Study 1) or in their valence (e.g., giving people punches instead of flowers; Study 2). In Study 1, disapproval toward nonconformity varied as a function of the norm's prevalence and of participant age. In Study 2, both children and adults approved of conformity to positive norms and disapproved of conformity to negative norms (e.g., "If Glerks make babies cry, an individual Glerk should not"). Nevertheless, across studies, descriptive-to-prescriptive reasoning played a role. In Study 1, participants evaluated nonconformity to common norms as worse than conformity to uncommon norms (even though both cases involved uncommon behavior), and they evaluated nonconformity to uncommon norms as worse than conformity to common norms (even though both cases involved common behavior). In Study 2, participants evaluated nonconformity to positive norms as worse than conformity to negative norms (even though both cases involved negative behavior), and they evaluated nonconformity to negative norms as worse than conformity to positive norms (even though both cases involved positive behavior). Together, these data highlight the limits (and scope) of descriptive-to-prescriptive reasoning and suggest that when children (and adults) evaluate the appropriateness of someone's behavior, they consider not only the behavior, but also, the norms of the group. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

  View details for DOI 10.1037/xge0000534

  View details for Web of Science ID 000456244600011

  View details for PubMedID 30570328

• So It Is, So It Shall Be: Group Regularities License Children's Prescriptive Judgments. Cognitive science Roberts, S. O., Gelman, S. A., Ho, A. K. 2017; 41: 576-600

  Abstract

  When do descriptive regularities (what characteristics individuals have) become prescriptive norms (what characteristics individuals should have)? We examined children's (4-13 years) and adults' use of group regularities to make prescriptive judgments, employing novel groups (Hibbles and Glerks) that engaged in morally neutral behaviors (e.g., eating different kinds of berries). Participants were introduced to conforming or non-conforming individuals (e.g., a Hibble who ate berries more typical of a Glerk). Children negatively evaluated non-conformity, with negative evaluations declining with age (Study 1). These effects were replicable across competitive and cooperative intergroup contexts (Study 2) and stemmed from reasoning about group regularities rather than reasoning about individual regularities (Study 3). These data provide new insights into children's group concepts and have important implications for understanding the development of stereotyping and norm enforcement.

  View details for DOI 10.1111/cogs.12443

  View details for PubMedID 27914116

  View details for PubMedCentralID PMC5395313

• Making boundaries great again: Essentialism and support for boundary-enhancing initiatives Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin Roberts, S. O., Ho, A. K., Rhodes, M., Gelman, S. A. 2017

  View details for DOI 10.1177/014616724801

• Can White Children Grow Up to Be Black? Children's Reasoning About the Stability of Emotion and Race DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY Roberts, S. O., Gelman, S. A. 2016; 52 (6): 887-893

  Abstract

  Recent research questions whether children conceptualize race as stable. We examined participants' beliefs about the relative stability of race and emotion, a temporary feature. Participants were White adults and children ages 5-6 and 9-10 (Study 1) and racial minority children ages 5-6 (Study 2). Participants were presented with target children who were happy or angry and Black or White and were asked to indicate which of 2 adults (a race but not emotion match or an emotion but not race match) each child would grow up to be. White adults, White 9- to 10-year-olds, and racial minority 5- to 6-year-olds selected race matches, whereas White 5- to 6-year-olds selected race and emotion matches equally. These data suggest that beliefs about racial stability vary by age and social group. (PsycINFO Database Record

  View details for DOI 10.1037/dev0000132

  View details for Web of Science ID 000377958700005

  View details for PubMedID 27148779

  View details for PubMedCentralID PMC4882227

• Do Children See in Black and White? Children's and Adults' Categorizations of Multiracial Individuals CHILD DEVELOPMENT Roberts, S. O., Gelman, S. A. 2015; 86 (6): 1830-1847

  Abstract

  Categorizations of multiracial individuals provide insight into the development of racial concepts. Children's (4-13 years) and adults', both White (Study 1) and Black (Study 2; N = 387), categorizations of multiracial individuals were examined. White children (unlike Black children) more often categorized multiracial individuals as Black than as White in the absence of parentage information. White and Black adults (unlike children) more often categorized multiracial individuals as Black than as White, even when knowing the individuals' parentage. Children's rates of in-group contact predicted their categorizations. These data suggest that a tendency to categorize multiracial individuals as Black relative to White emerges early in development and results from perceptual biases in White children but ideological motives in White and Black adults.

  View details for DOI 10.1111/cdev.12410

  View details for Web of Science ID 000363903400012

  View details for PubMedID 26315349

  View details for PubMedCentralID PMC4626305

• The emotional and mental health impact of the murder of George Floyd on the US population. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Eichstaedt, J. C., Sherman, G. T., Giorgi, S., Roberts, S. O., Reynolds, M. E., Ungar, L. H., Guntuku, S. C. 2021; 118 (39)

  Abstract

  On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, an unarmed Black American male, was killed by a White police officer. Footage of the murder was widely shared. We examined the psychological impact of Floyd's death using two population surveys that collected data before and after his death; one from Gallup (117,568 responses from n = 47,355) and one from the US Census (409,652 responses from n = 319,471). According to the Gallup data, in the week following Floyd's death, anger and sadness increased to unprecedented levels in the US population. During this period, more than a third of the US population reported these emotions. These increases were more pronounced for Black Americans, nearly half of whom reported these emotions. According to the US Census Household Pulse data, in the week following Floyd's death, depression and anxiety severity increased among Black Americans at significantly higher rates than that of White Americans. Our estimates suggest that this increase corresponds to an additional 900,000 Black Americans who would have screened positive for depression, associated with a burden of roughly 2.7 million to 6.3 million mentally unhealthy days.

  View details for DOI 10.1073/pnas.2109139118

  View details for PubMedID 34544875

• Children's Concern for Equity and Ownership in Contexts of Individual-based and Group-based Inequality JOURNAL OF COGNITION AND DEVELOPMENT Echelbarger, M., Roberts, S. O., Gelman, S. A. 2021

  View details for DOI 10.1080/15248372.2021.1956931

  View details for Web of Science ID 000689495800001

• Descriptive-to-prescriptive (D2P) reasoning: An early emerging bias to maintain the status quo EUROPEAN REVIEW OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Roberts, S. O. 2021

  View details for DOI 10.1080/10463283.2021.1963591

  View details for Web of Science ID 000689456700001

• Categories convey prescriptive information across domains and development. Journal of experimental child psychology Foster-Hanson, E., Roberts, S. O., Gelman, S. A., Rhodes, M. 2021; 212: 105231

  Abstract

  Young children display a pervasive bias to assume that what they observe in the world reflects how things are supposed to be. The current studies examined the nature of this bias by testing whether it reflects a particular form of reasoning about human social behaviors or a more general feature of category representations. Children aged 4 to 9years and adults (N=747) evaluated instances of nonconformity among members of novel biological and human social kinds. Children held prescriptive expectations for both animal and human categories; in both cases, they said it was wrong for a category member to engage in category-atypical behavior. These prescriptive judgments about categories depended on the extent to which people saw the pictured individual examples as representative of coherent categories. Thus, early prescriptive judgments appear to rely on the interplay between general conceptual biases and domain-specific beliefs about category structure.

  View details for DOI 10.1016/j.jecp.2021.105231

  View details for PubMedID 34358722

• The souls of Black folk (and the weight of Black ancestry) in U.S. Black Americans' racial categorization. Journal of personality and social psychology Roberts, S. O., Bareket-Shavit, C., Wang, M. 2021; 121 (1): 1-22

  Abstract

  We theorized that from the perspective of U.S. Black Americans, a connection to Black ancestry-and the historical hardship associated with that ancestry-plays an important role in racial categorization. We found support for this across six studies. In Studies 1-3, participants categorized targets with Black ancestry and White experiences or targets with White ancestry and Black experiences. U.S. Black Americans' (more than non-Black Americans') racial categorizations were influenced by Black ancestry (more than by White ancestry). In Study 4, we replicated this effect under extreme conditions (e.g., even when targets had Black ancestry and were phenotypically, socially, culturally, self-identified, and advantaged as White for eighty years, U.S. Black Americans categorized them as Black). In Study 5, U.S. Black Americans were more likely than U.S. White Americans to associate their racial ancestry with hardship, and individual differences in those associations predicted the extent to which U.S. Black Americans categorized the target with Black ancestry and White experiences as Black. In Study 6, participants categorized a target with Black ancestry and ancestral hardship (i.e., their ancestors were kidnapped from Africa and experienced slavery) or a target with Black ancestry and ancestral success (i.e., their ancestors immigrated from Africa and experienced upward mobility). U.S. Black Americans (unlike U.S. White Americans) were more identified with the target with ancestral hardship. Collectively, our research suggests that from the perspective of U.S. Black Americans, the collective Black experiences of the past continue to shape the Black collective of the present. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

  View details for DOI 10.1037/pspa0000228

  View details for PubMedID 34472949

• The Roles of Privacy and Trust in Children's Evaluations and Explanations of Digital Tracking. Child development Gelman, S. A., Cuneo, N., Roberts, S. O., Kulkarni, S., Snay, S. 2021

  Abstract

  A "digital revolution" has introduced new privacy violations concerning access to information stored on electronic devices. The present two studies assessed how U.S. children ages 5-17 and adults (N=416; 55% female; 67% white) evaluated those accessing digital information belonging to someone else, either location data (Study 1) or digital photos (Study 2). The trustworthiness of the tracker (Studies 1 and 2) and the privacy of the information (Study 2) were manipulated. At all ages, evaluations were more negative when the tracker was less trustworthy, and when information was private. However, younger children were substantially more positive overall about digital tracking than older participants. These results, yielding primarily medium-to-large effect sizes, suggest that with age, children increasingly appreciate digital privacy considerations.

  View details for DOI 10.1111/cdev.13572

  View details for PubMedID 34117781

• The influence of vector-borne disease on human history: socio-ecological mechanisms. Ecology letters Athni, T. S., Shocket, M. S., Couper, L. I., Nova, N., Caldwell, I. R., Caldwell, J. M., Childress, J. N., Childs, M. L., De Leo, G. A., Kirk, D. G., MacDonald, A. J., Olivarius, K., Pickel, D. G., Roberts, S. O., Winokur, O. C., Young, H. S., Cheng, J., Grant, E. A., Kurzner, P. M., Kyaw, S., Lin, B. J., Lopez, R. C., Massihpour, D. S., Olsen, E. C., Roache, M., Ruiz, A., Schultz, E. A., Shafat, M., Spencer, R. L., Bharti, N., Mordecai, E. A. 2021

  Abstract

  Vector-borne diseases (VBDs) are embedded within complex socio-ecological systems. While research has traditionally focused on the direct effects of VBDs on human morbidity and mortality, it is increasingly clear that their impacts are much more pervasive. VBDs are dynamically linked to feedbacks between environmental conditions, vector ecology, disease burden, and societal responses that drive transmission. As a result, VBDs have had profound influence on human history. Mechanisms include: (1) killing or debilitating large numbers of people, with demographic and population-level impacts; (2) differentially affecting populations based on prior history of disease exposure, immunity, and resistance; (3) being weaponised to promote or justify hierarchies of power, colonialism, racism, classism and sexism; (4) catalysing changes in ideas, institutions, infrastructure, technologies and social practices in efforts to control disease outbreaks; and (5) changing human relationships with the land and environment. We use historical and archaeological evidence interpreted through an ecological lens to illustrate how VBDs have shaped society and culture, focusing on case studies from four pertinent VBDs: plague, malaria, yellow fever and trypanosomiasis. By comparing across diseases, time periods and geographies, we highlight the enormous scope and variety of mechanisms by which VBDs have influenced human history.

  View details for DOI 10.1111/ele.13675

  View details for PubMedID 33501751

• Children's Beliefs About Causes of Human Characteristics: Genes, Environment, or Choice? JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY-GENERAL Meyer, M., Roberts, S. O., Jayaratne, T. E., Gelman, S. A. 2020; 149 (10): 1935–49

  Abstract

  To what extent do our genes make us nice, smart, or athletic? The explanatory frameworks we employ have broad consequences for how we evaluate and interact with others. Yet to date, little is known regarding when and how young children appeal to genetic explanations to understand human difference. The current study examined children's (aged 7-13 years) and adults' explanations for a set of human characteristics, contrasting genetic attributions with environmental and choice-based attributions. Whereas most adults and older children offered an unprompted genetic explanation at least once on an open-ended task, such explanations were not seen from younger children. However, even younger children, once trained on the mechanism of genes, endorsed genetic explanations for a range of characteristics-often in combination with environment and choice. Moreover, only adults favored genetic explanations for intelligence and athleticism; children, in contrast, favored environment and choice explanations for these characteristics. These findings suggest that children can employ genetic explanations in principled ways as early as 7 years of age but also that such explanations are used to account for a wider range of features by adults. Our study provides some of the first evidence regarding the ways in which genetic attributions emerge and change starting in early childhood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

  View details for DOI 10.1037/xge0000751

  View details for Web of Science ID 000577141100007

  View details for PubMedID 32191083

• Should Individuals Think Like Their Group? A Descriptive-to-Prescriptive Tendency Toward Group-Based Beliefs. Child development Roberts, S. O., Ho, A. K., Gelman, S. A. 2020

  Abstract

  Across three pre-registered studies with children (ages 4-9) and adults (N=303), we examined whether how a group is predicted evaluations of how group members should be (i.e., a descriptive-to-prescriptive tendency), under conditions in which the descriptive group norms entailed beliefs that were fact-based (Study 1), opinion-based (Study 2), and ideology-based (Study 3). Overall, participants tended to disapprove of individuals with beliefs that differed from their group, but the extent of this tendency varied across development and as a function of the belief under consideration (e.g., younger children did not show a descriptive-to-prescriptive tendency in the context of facts and ideologies, suggesting that they prioritized truth over group norms). Implications for normative reasoning and ideological polarization are discussed.

  View details for DOI 10.1111/cdev.13448

  View details for PubMedID 32845017

• How deep do we dig? Formal explanations as placeholders for inherent explanations COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY Gelman, S. A., Cimpian, A., Roberts, S. O. 2018; 106: 43–59

  Abstract

  Formal explanations (e.g., "Mittens has whiskers because she's a cat") pose an intriguing puzzle in human cognition: they seem like little more than tautologies, yet they are surprisingly commonplace and natural-sounding. To resolve this puzzle, we hypothesized that formal explanations constitute an implicit appeal to a category's inherent features rather than simply to the category itself (as their explicit content would suggest); the latter is just a placeholder. We conducted a series of eight experiments with 951 participants that supported four predictions that followed from this hypothesis: First, formal explanations-though natural-sounding-were not particularly satisfying. Second, for natural kinds, formal explanations were less satisfying than inherent explanations (specifically, ones that appealed to a natural kind's causally powerful "essence"). Third, participants viewed essence-related inherent explanations as more specific versions of the ideas expressed by formal explanations, which were viewed as more general placeholders. Fourth, and finally, formal explanations tended to serve as placeholders for explanations that appealed to inherent features more so than for other types of explanations, such as ones that appealed to external, environmental factors. In addition to supporting our novel claim about the meaning of formal explanations, these data suggest a new way in which explanations do their psychological work: not via their literal content (as assumed by prior work on explanation), but rather via the additional inferences they encourage. We end by discussing the potential heuristic value of formal explanations for causal learning in childhood.

  View details for PubMedID 30189296

• Group presence, category labels, and generic statements influence children to treat descriptive group regularities as prescriptive JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL CHILD PSYCHOLOGY Roberts, S. O., Ho, A. K., Gelman, S. A. 2017; 158: 19-31

  Abstract

  Children use descriptive regularities of social groups (what is) to generate prescriptive judgments (what should be). We examined whether this tendency held when the regularities were introduced through group presence, category labels, or generic statements. Children (ages 4-9years, N=203) were randomly assigned to one of four conditions that manipulated how descriptive group regularities were presented: group presence (e.g., "These ones [a group of three individuals] eat this kind of berry"), category labels (e.g., "This [individual] Hibble eats this kind of berry"), generic statements (e.g., [showing an individual] "Hibbles eat this kind of berry"), or control (e.g., "This one [individual] eats this kind of berry"). Then, children saw conforming and non-conforming individuals and were asked to evaluate their behavior. As predicted, children evaluated non-conformity negatively in all conditions except the control condition. Together, these results suggest that minimal perceptual and linguistic cues provoke children to treat social groups as having normative force.

  View details for DOI 10.1016/j.jecp.2016.11.013

  View details for Web of Science ID 000396961500002

  View details for PubMedID 28167383

• Children's descriptive-to-prescriptive tendency replicates (and varies) cross-culturally: Evidence from China. Journal of experimental child psychology Roberts, S. O., Guo, C., Ho, A. K., Gelman, S. A. 2017

  Abstract

  Research with U.S. samples found that children use descriptive group regularities (characteristics shared by individuals within a group) to generate prescriptive judgments (characteristics that should be shared by individuals within a group). Here, we assessed this descriptive-to-prescriptive tendency in a sample of children (ages 4-13years) and adults (ages 18-40years) from mainland China. Participants were introduced to novel groups (i.e., Hibbles and Glerks) who engaged in contrasting morally neutral behaviors (e.g., listening to different kinds of music) and then to conforming and non-conforming individuals (e.g., a Hibble who listened to music more typical of Glerks). Like U.S. children, Chinese children disapproved of non-conformity and rates of disapproval declined with age. However, compared with U.S. children, younger Chinese children (ages 4-6years) rated non-conformity more disapprovingly, and unlike U.S. adults, Chinese adults rated non-conformity more negatively than conformity. Moreover, compared with U.S. participants, Chinese participants across all age groups appealed more often to norm-based explanations when justifying their disapproval. These data provide a cross-cultural replication of children's descriptive-to-prescriptive tendency but also reveal cross-cultural variation, and they have implications for understanding the mechanisms that underlie stereotyping and normative reasoning.

  View details for DOI 10.1016/j.jecp.2017.03.018

  View details for PubMedID 28552389

• Multiracial Children's and Adults' Categorizations of Multiracial Individuals JOURNAL OF COGNITION AND DEVELOPMENT Roberts, S. O., Gelman, S. A. 2017; 18 (1): 1-15

  View details for DOI 10.1080/15248372.2015.1086772

  View details for Web of Science ID 000394714600001

• Now you see race, now you don’t: Verbal cues influence children’s racial stability judgments Cognitive Development Roberts, S. O., Gelman, S. A. 2017; 43: 129-141

  View details for DOI 10.1016/j.cogdev.2017.03.003

• Children's and Adults' Predictions of Black, White, and Multiracial Friendship Patterns JOURNAL OF COGNITION AND DEVELOPMENT Roberts, S. O., Williams, A. D., Gelman, S. A. 2017; 18 (2): 189-208

  View details for DOI 10.1080/15248372.2016.1262374

  View details for Web of Science ID 000400336700002

• My Heart Made Me Do It: Children's Essentialist Beliefs About Heart Transplants. Cognitive science Meyer, M., Gelman, S. A., Roberts, S. O., Leslie, S. 2016

  Abstract

  Psychological essentialism is a folk theory characterized by the belief that a causal internal essence or force gives rise to the common outward behaviors or attributes of a category's members. In two studies, we investigated whether 4- to 7-year-old children evidenced essentialist reasoning about heart transplants by asking them to predict whether trading hearts with an individual would cause them to take on the donor's attributes. Control conditions asked children to consider the effects of trading money with an individual. Results indicated that children reasoned according to essentialism, predicting more transfer of attributes in the transplant condition versus the non-bodily money control. Children also endorsed essentialist transfer of attributes even when they did not believe that a transplant would change the recipient's category membership (e.g., endorsing the idea that a recipient of a pig's heart would act pig-like, but denying that the recipient would become a pig). This finding runs counter to predictions from a strong interpretation of the "minimalist" position, an alternative to essentialism.

  View details for DOI 10.1111/cogs.12431

  View details for PubMedID 27859571

  View details for PubMedCentralID PMC5435553

• Essentialism and Racial Bias Jointly Contribute to the Categorization of Multiracial Individuals PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Ho, A. K., Roberts, S. O., Gelman, S. A. 2015; 26 (10): 1639-1645

  Abstract

  Categorizations of multiracial individuals provide insight into the psychological mechanisms driving social stratification, but few studies have explored the interplay of cognitive and motivational underpinnings of these categorizations. In the present study, we integrated research on racial essentialism (i.e., the belief that race demarcates unobservable and immutable properties) and negativity bias (i.e., the tendency to weigh negative entities more heavily than positive entities) to explain why people might exhibit biases in the categorization of multiracial individuals. As theorized, racial essentialism, both dispositional (Study 1) and experimentally induced (Study 2), led to the categorization of Black-White multiracial individuals as Black, but only among individuals evaluating Black people more negatively than White people. These findings demonstrate how fundamental cognitive and motivational biases interact to influence the categorization of multiracial individuals.

  View details for DOI 10.1177/0956797615596436

  View details for Web of Science ID 000362995700011

  View details for PubMedID 26330456

  View details for PubMedCentralID PMC4943871

• Racial identity and autonomic responses to racial discrimination PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY Neblett, E. W., Roberts, S. O. 2013; 50 (10): 943-953

  Abstract

  Several studies identify racial identity-the significance and meaning that individuals attribute to race-as a mitigating factor in the association between racial discrimination and adjustment. In this study, we employed a visual imagery paradigm to examine whether racial identity would moderate autonomic responses to blatant and subtle racial discrimination analogues with Black and White perpetrators. We recruited 105 African American young adults from a public, southeastern university in the United States. The personal significance of race as well as personal feelings about African Americans and feelings about how others view African Americans moderated autonomic responses to the vignettes. We use polyvagal theory and a stress, appraisal, and coping framework to interpret our results with an eye toward elucidating the ways in which racial identity may inform individual differences in physiological responses to racial discrimination.

  View details for DOI 10.1111/psyp.12087

  View details for Web of Science ID 000325080100002

  View details for PubMedID 23889076

• From Parental Involvement to Children's Mathematical Performance: The Role of Mathematics Anxiety EARLY EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT Vukovic, R. K., Roberts, S. O., Wright, L. G. 2013; 24 (4): 446-467

  View details for DOI 10.1080/10409289.2012.693430

  View details for Web of Science ID 000318280800005