Nicholas P Alt
Biographic Data
| ID | 1321494 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nicholas P Alt |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nicholas P |
| FAMILY NAME | Alt |
| SIGNATURE | ALT N P |
| AFFILIATIONS | Occidental College |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6186-6463 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 54 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 15 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Asian Americans and Affirmative Action
In 2023, the Supreme Court of the United States effectively ended race-based affirmative action in college admissions with their decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard . Asian Americans were featured prominently in the case and broader discourse, even though a majority (69%) of Asian Americans support such policies. Here, a socio-historical approach helps to understand how Asian Americans have been positioned against affirmative acti…
Identity Safety Cues in the Context of Confronting Prejudice
Environmental identity safety cues (ISCs), such as safe space posters, are used to signal support for marginalized groups. While environmental ISCs increase belonging and reduce identity threat, less is known about how they function alongside higher‐cost ISCs such as prejudice confrontations. Across two experimental studies with Black Americans ( n = 272), and Asian Americans ( n = 279), we examined how environmental ISCs and confrontations joint…
Pervasive and pernicious underestimation of Asian Americans' support for affirmative action
Polling data show that 69% of Asian American voters favor affirmative action. However, Asian Americans were featured prominently by the organization Students for Fair Admissions, which played a central role in the Supreme Court's decision to overturn affirmative action. This may distort people's estimates of Asian Americans’ support for affirmative action. Two studies ( N = 695) found that people, even Asian Americans, underestimated Asian Americ…
Power and the confrontation of sexism
The confrontation of prejudicial acts and comments promotes multiple benefits, most notably the prevention of future prejudicial remarks and the reduction of stereotype use. Research, however, consistently shows low rates of confronting prejudice, particularly regarding sexism. Here, we examine whether personal sense of power, known to increase action and activate the behavioral approach system, increases the likelihood of confronting a sexist re…
Asian American Women’s Workplace Experiences
Asian American women, who make up a growing proportion of the workforce, face unique intersectional forms of workplace discrimination and bias based on being both a racial and gender minority. In this review, we take an intersectional approach, applying social psychological research on gendered race theory and Wong and McCullough’s Intersectional Prototypicality Model, to document as well as explain how race and gender concomitantly inform the ch…
Race and the Mental Representation of Individuals Diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder
Introduction: This research investigates the possible role of racial and gender stereotypes in diagnosing children with Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD). ODD is diagnosed more readily in boys and Black children, although the factors producing differential diagnosis rates are unclear. The authors conducted six studies investigating the possibility that overlap between racial and gender stereotypes with ODD diagnostic criteria might contribute t…
Person Perception, Meet People Perception
Groups, teams, and collectives —people—are incredibly important to human behavior. People live in families, work in teams, and celebrate and mourn together in groups. Despite the huge variety of human group activity and its fundamental importance to human life, social-psychological research on person perception has overwhelmingly focused on its namesake, the person, rather than expanding to consider people perception. By looking to two unexpected…
The Face of Social Networks
We examined whether, even at zero acquaintance, observers accurately infer others’ social network positions—specifically, the number and patterning of social ties (e.g., brokerage—the extent to which a person bridges disconnected people) and the trait impressions that support this accuracy. We paired social network data ( n = 272 professional school students), with naive observers’ ( n = 301 undergraduates) judgments of facial images of each pers…
The Breadth of Confrontations as a Prejudice Reduction Strategy
Past research on prejudice confrontations as a prejudice reduction tool has only examined bias that was implicated in the confrontation, such as the use of negative Black stereotypes after being confronted for using negative Black stereotypes. Examining the breadth of prejudice confrontations, we hypothesize that confronted individuals should subsequently use fewer negative and positive stereotypes about other racial minority groups, and fewer st…
The straight categorization bias
For 70 years, the field of social perception has concluded that perceivers can determine others' social category memberships with remarkable accuracy. However, it has become increasingly clear that accuracy is only part of the story, as social category judgments are often systematically biased toward one category over another. For example, when categorizing sexual orientation, perceivers label others as straight more often than gay. This straight…
Threat in the Company of Men
Everyday, we visually perceive people not only in isolation but also in groups. Yet, visual person perception research typically focuses on inferences made about isolated individuals. By integrating social vision and visual ensemble coding, we present novel evidence that (a) perceivers rapidly (500 ms) extract a group’s ratio of men to women and (b) both explicit judgments of threat and indirect evaluative priming of threat increase as the ratio …
Categorization by Sex
But that was meant to be a compliment!”
Past research on confronting racial prejudice has largely examined negative racial stereotypes. In the present work, we investigate perceiver and target perspectives associated with the evaluative costs of confronting positive racial stereotypes. We demonstrate that, in general, Asian Americans and African Americans who confront positive racial stereotypes suffer higher evaluative costs compared to targets who confront negative racial stereotypes…
Gendered race in mass media
Gendered race prototypes
Gendered race prototypes
Gendered race in mass media
The straight categorization bias
For 70 years, the field of social perception has concluded that perceivers can determine others' social category memberships with remarkable accuracy. However, it has become increasingly clear that accuracy is only part of the story, as social category judgments are often systematically biased toward one category over another. For example, when categorizing sexual orientation, perceivers label others as straight more often than gay. This straight…
But that was meant to be a compliment!”
Past research on confronting racial prejudice has largely examined negative racial stereotypes. In the present work, we investigate perceiver and target perspectives associated with the evaluative costs of confronting positive racial stereotypes. We demonstrate that, in general, Asian Americans and African Americans who confront positive racial stereotypes suffer higher evaluative costs compared to targets who confront negative racial stereotypes…
Asian American Women’s Workplace Experiences
Asian American women, who make up a growing proportion of the workforce, face unique intersectional forms of workplace discrimination and bias based on being both a racial and gender minority. In this review, we take an intersectional approach, applying social psychological research on gendered race theory and Wong and McCullough’s Intersectional Prototypicality Model, to document as well as explain how race and gender concomitantly inform the ch…
Gendered race prototypes
Gendered race in mass media
Categorization by Sex
But that was meant to be a compliment!”
Past research on confronting racial prejudice has largely examined negative racial stereotypes. In the present work, we investigate perceiver and target perspectives associated with the evaluative costs of confronting positive racial stereotypes. We demonstrate that, in general, Asian Americans and African Americans who confront positive racial stereotypes suffer higher evaluative costs compared to targets who confront negative racial stereotypes…
Threat in the Company of Men
Everyday, we visually perceive people not only in isolation but also in groups. Yet, visual person perception research typically focuses on inferences made about isolated individuals. By integrating social vision and visual ensemble coding, we present novel evidence that (a) perceivers rapidly (500 ms) extract a group’s ratio of men to women and (b) both explicit judgments of threat and indirect evaluative priming of threat increase as the ratio …
The straight categorization bias
For 70 years, the field of social perception has concluded that perceivers can determine others' social category memberships with remarkable accuracy. However, it has become increasingly clear that accuracy is only part of the story, as social category judgments are often systematically biased toward one category over another. For example, when categorizing sexual orientation, perceivers label others as straight more often than gay. This straight…
The Breadth of Confrontations as a Prejudice Reduction Strategy
Past research on prejudice confrontations as a prejudice reduction tool has only examined bias that was implicated in the confrontation, such as the use of negative Black stereotypes after being confronted for using negative Black stereotypes. Examining the breadth of prejudice confrontations, we hypothesize that confronted individuals should subsequently use fewer negative and positive stereotypes about other racial minority groups, and fewer st…
Person Perception, Meet People Perception
Groups, teams, and collectives —people—are incredibly important to human behavior. People live in families, work in teams, and celebrate and mourn together in groups. Despite the huge variety of human group activity and its fundamental importance to human life, social-psychological research on person perception has overwhelmingly focused on its namesake, the person, rather than expanding to consider people perception. By looking to two unexpected…
The Face of Social Networks
We examined whether, even at zero acquaintance, observers accurately infer others’ social network positions—specifically, the number and patterning of social ties (e.g., brokerage—the extent to which a person bridges disconnected people) and the trait impressions that support this accuracy. We paired social network data ( n = 272 professional school students), with naive observers’ ( n = 301 undergraduates) judgments of facial images of each pers…
Race and the Mental Representation of Individuals Diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder
Introduction: This research investigates the possible role of racial and gender stereotypes in diagnosing children with Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD). ODD is diagnosed more readily in boys and Black children, although the factors producing differential diagnosis rates are unclear. The authors conducted six studies investigating the possibility that overlap between racial and gender stereotypes with ODD diagnostic criteria might contribute t…
Pervasive and pernicious underestimation of Asian Americans' support for affirmative action
Polling data show that 69% of Asian American voters favor affirmative action. However, Asian Americans were featured prominently by the organization Students for Fair Admissions, which played a central role in the Supreme Court's decision to overturn affirmative action. This may distort people's estimates of Asian Americans’ support for affirmative action. Two studies ( N = 695) found that people, even Asian Americans, underestimated Asian Americ…
Power and the confrontation of sexism
The confrontation of prejudicial acts and comments promotes multiple benefits, most notably the prevention of future prejudicial remarks and the reduction of stereotype use. Research, however, consistently shows low rates of confronting prejudice, particularly regarding sexism. Here, we examine whether personal sense of power, known to increase action and activate the behavioral approach system, increases the likelihood of confronting a sexist re…
Asian American Women’s Workplace Experiences
Asian American women, who make up a growing proportion of the workforce, face unique intersectional forms of workplace discrimination and bias based on being both a racial and gender minority. In this review, we take an intersectional approach, applying social psychological research on gendered race theory and Wong and McCullough’s Intersectional Prototypicality Model, to document as well as explain how race and gender concomitantly inform the ch…
Asian Americans and Affirmative Action
In 2023, the Supreme Court of the United States effectively ended race-based affirmative action in college admissions with their decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard . Asian Americans were featured prominently in the case and broader discourse, even though a majority (69%) of Asian Americans support such policies. Here, a socio-historical approach helps to understand how Asian Americans have been positioned against affirmative acti…
Identity Safety Cues in the Context of Confronting Prejudice
Environmental identity safety cues (ISCs), such as safe space posters, are used to signal support for marginalized groups. While environmental ISCs increase belonging and reduce identity threat, less is known about how they function alongside higher‐cost ISCs such as prejudice confrontations. Across two experimental studies with Black Americans ( n = 272), and Asian Americans ( n = 279), we examined how environmental ISCs and confrontations joint…
Psychology (13 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (10 works) · Social Psychology (9 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (5 works) · Perception (5 works) · Gender Diversity and Inequality (4 works) · Gender Studies (4 works) · Social perception (4 works) · Sociology (4 works) · Cognition (3 works)