The first-name bias : ethnic-minority first names evoke social stereotypes
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- In many important decisions, such as for citizenship, criminal sentencing, admissions, and hiring, decision-makers have ready access to individuals' names. How do names affect person perception? We explored the hypothesis that the ethnic associations of first names function like social category labels: People use first names as a cue to a person's affiliation with minority or mainstream American culture. They then may apply ethnic social stereotypes and, in some cases, make discriminatory downstream judgments on this basis. In 7 experimental studies, we examine this first-name bias across three contexts: a) perceptions of who belongs in America (e.g., among Hispanic applicants, is Juan more suitable for U.S. citizenship than an otherwise identical John?), b) beliefs about whether individuals with ethnic-minority names conform to social stereotypes (e.g., among Asian-American students, is Zhou-Ling viewed as smarter than an otherwise identical Angela?), and c) discrimination in criminal sentencing (e.g., among African American defendants, is Jamal sentenced more harshly than an otherwise identical Jake for a violent crime?). An additional archival study of prison records revealed that even given equivalent criminal histories, African American inmates with stereotypically African American names received significantly longer sentences than both African American inmates with Anglo names and European American inmates. Together these studies show that the first-name bias is a robust effect that occurs across diverse names in the lab (66 different name pairs in 7 experiments) and in the real world (209 distinct names of African American inmates in the archival study). The first-name bias persisted across different types of judgment tasks, levels of processing, and in a variety of important social contexts, including immigration, school, the workplace, and the courtroom. This work reveals a nuanced form of bias and an especially ironic bias -- a bias that arises from perhaps the most individuating piece of information about an individual, their first name.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2015 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Kenthirarajah, Dushiyanthini (Toni) |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Psychology. |
| Primary advisor | Walton, Gregory M. (Gregory Mariotti) |
| Primary advisor | Zaki, Jamil, 1980- |
| Thesis advisor | Walton, Gregory M. (Gregory Mariotti) |
| Thesis advisor | Zaki, Jamil, 1980- |
| Thesis advisor | Dweck, Carol S, 1946- |
| Advisor | Dweck, Carol S, 1946- |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Dushiyanthini (Toni) Kenthirarajah. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Psychology. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2015. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2015 by Dushiyanthini Kenthirarajah
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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