Sarah E Gaither
Biographic Data
| ID | 365619 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sarah E Gaither |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sarah E |
| FAMILY NAME | Gaither |
| SIGNATURE | GAITHER S E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Duke University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9833-9218 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 48 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 177 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 48 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Random Roommates, Broader Minds: Why Higher Ed Should Invest in Intergroup Contact
As U.S. campuses grow more diverse, university policy choices determine whether cross-group encounters produce connection or division. Drawing on decades of intergroup contact research, this paper highlights randomized roommate assignments as a scalable institutional policy to increase meaningful cross-group contact. We show that intergroup contact decreases prejudice, increases belonging, and boosts cognitive benefits to both students in the roo…
Enumeration or Exclusion? Demographic Forms and Latine Identity Threat
Four studies examine whether demographic forms elicit social identity threat and institutional exclusion for Latine Americans before and after the 2020 Presidential election and leading up to the 2024 election. Using a mock-Census form and widely used ethnicity/racial designations, we manipulated the framing of Latine identity through a two-item (category listed separately) versus a single-item (combined) format, and also varied the inclusion of …
Intergroup Context Moderates the Impact of White Americans’ Identification on Racial Categorization of Ambiguous Faces
We examined how the number of groups in a categorization task influences how White Americans categorize ambiguous faces. We investigated the strength of identity-driven ingroup overexclusion–wherein highly identified perceivers overexclude ambiguous members from the ingroup–proposing that, compared with dichotomous tasks (with only the ingroup and one outgroup), tasks with more outgroups attenuate identity-driven ingroup overexclusion (a dilution…
Cross-cultural perceptions of racial ambiguity: Testing the universality of the ingroup overexclusion effect
It's not what you say it's what you do: School diversity ideologies and adolescent mental health and academic engagement
This study examined the relation between schools' color-evasive versus multicultural diversity ideologies, school characteristics, and adolescent development. Across two datasets linking individual-level survey data (N = 1692) and administrative records (N = 300,063; M age = 12.4, 52% female, 48% male), schools' stated support for diversity (via a pro-diversity mission statement) was related to adolescent mental health and academic achievement, b…
Mixed-heritage individuals’ encounters with raciolinguistic ideologies
Mixed-heritage individuals (MHIs) are known to face high levels of social exclusion. Here, we investigate how raciolinguistic ideologies related to one’s heritage language abilities add to these exclusionary experiences. The results from 293 MHIs reveal frequent experiences of marginalisation from members of each of their heritage communities because their racial appearance and language practices are perceived as deviant and outside imagined ‘mon…
The rich get richer? Children’s reasoning about socioeconomic status predicts inclusion and resource bias
Children's socioeconomic status (SES) is linked to disparate access to resources and affects social behaviors such as inclusion and resource allocations. Yet it is unclear whether children's essentialized view of SES (i.e., believing SES is immutable) or subjective social status (SSS) influences behavioral biases toward high- versus low-SES peers. We measured 4- to 9-year-old children's SES essentialism and SSS to test whether these predict inclu…
Testing intergroup contact theory through a natural experiment of randomized college roommate assignments in the United States
Many colleges and universities seek to leverage the promise of intergroup contact theory by adopting housing policies that randomly assign first-year students to roommates, with the goal of increasing intergroup contact. Yet, it is unclear whether random roommate assignment policies increase cross-race contact, whether this (potentially involuntary, but sanctioned by authorities) contact improves racial attitudes or behaviors, or how these effect…
Categorizing a Face and Facing a Category: The Constructive Impacts of Ambiguity and Uncertainty in Racial Categorization
The past generation has seen a dramatic rise in multiracial populations and a consequent increase in exposure to individuals who challenge monolithic racial categories. We examine and compare two potential outcomes of the multiracial population growth that may impact people’s racial categorization experience: (a) exposure to racially ambiguous faces that visually challenge the existing categories, and (b) a category that conceptually challenges e…
Parent and self-socialization of gender intergroup attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors among ethnically and geographically diverse young children
Previous work has shown the robust nature of gender bias in both children and adults. However, much less attention has been paid toward understanding what factors shape these biases. The current preregistered study used parent surveys and child interviews to test whether parents' conversations with their children about and modeling of gender intergroup relations and/or children's self-guided interests about gender (self-socialization) contribute …
Psychological Science in the Wake of Covid-19: Social, Methodological, and Metascientific Considerations
The COVID-19 pandemic has extensively changed the state of psychological science from what research questions psychologists can ask to which methodologies psychologists can use to investigate them. In this article, we offer a perspective on how to optimize new research in the pandemic’s wake. Because this pandemic is inherently a social phenomenon—an event that hinges on human-to-human contact—we focus on socially relevant subfields of psychology…
Two or More: A Comparative Analysis of Multiracial and Multicultural Research
Most research has investigated Multiracial and Multicultural populations as separate topics, despite demographic and experiential overlap between these. This Element bridges that divide by reviewing and comparing Multiracial and Multicultural research to date—their origins, theoretical and methodological development, and key findings in socialization, identity negotiation and discrimination—to identify points of synthesis and differentiation to g…
Detecting biracial identity strength: Perceived phenotypicality is inaccurate
Past work on Black and Latinx individuals demonstrates that observers can accurately predict an individual’s racial identity strength based on the observers’ perceptions of the individual’s phenotypic prototypicality (how much someone looks like a prototypical member of their racial group). However, the growing Biracial demographic varies considerably in racial identification, suggesting a monoracial approach to infer racial identity strength may…
How Cross-Discipline Understanding and Communication Can Improve Research on Multiracial Populations
One of the strengths of Critical Mixed Race Studies is that it represents research methodologies and frameworks from multiple disciplines across the social sciences and humanities. However, if these disciplines are not in dialogue with each other, that benefit may be lost. Here, we use psychological and sociological research on Multiracial populations as examples to argue how strict disciplinarity and methodological trends may limit scientific pr…
Children’s cross-cultural categorizations of racially ambiguous faces in Taiwan and the U.S
Results suggest that hyperdescent over hypodescent for more commonly studied biracial Black/White faces generalizes in both cultural contexts. However, biracial Asian/White stimuli may be perceived in more fixed-like patterns in predominately Asian contexts, since only Taiwanese children showed increased outgroup categorizations once racial constancy beliefs were endorsed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
The good life in cultural context: Examining Asian young adults’ psychological well-being and narratives of negative experiences
Voter Evaluations of Biracial-Identified Political Candidates
Today, identity expression and acceptance represent an important area of political advocacy and representation. Yet, how responsive are voters to new racial identity cues promoted by political leaders? Using candidates with interracial backgrounds as a case study, we assess whether voters are responsive to candidates who assert a mixed-race identity or if voters primarily rely on other traits, such as the candidate's family background, in determi…
A Meta-Analytic Review of Hypodescent Patterns in Categorizing Multiracial and Racially Ambiguous Targets
Research addressing the increasing multiracial population (i.e., identifying with two or more races) is rapidly expanding. This meta-analysis ( k = 55) examines categorization patterns consistent with hypodescent, or the tendency to categorize multiracial targets as their lower status racial group. Subgroup analyses suggest that operationalization of multiracial (e.g., presenting photos of racially ambiguous faces, or ancestry information sans pi…
“Be a Man”: The Role of Social Pressure in Eliciting Men’s Aggressive Cognition
Threatening a man’s manhood—but not a woman’s womanhood—elicits aggression. In two studies, we found evidence that this aggression is related to the social pressure men experience to “be a man.” In Study 1a, we conducted an exploratory factor analysis to isolate participants’ ( N = 195; M age = 19.92) differential motivations for conforming to gender norms. Study 1b then showed that pressure to be masculine moderates the relationship between gend…
Social Class Identity Integration and Success for First-Generation College Students: Antecedents, Mechanisms, and Generalizability
Social class bicultural identity integration research demonstrates that integrated social class identities are linked with better health, well-being, and academic performance among first-generation students. Here, we demonstrate that exposure to college graduates in students’ home neighborhoods before college is positively related to higher social class bicultural identity integration (Study 1), that the effect of identity integration on academic…
“Mixed” Drinking Motivations: A Comparison of Majority, Multiracial, and Minority College Students
Social exclusion is associated with substance use, but the specific link between majority and minority racial group membership and substance use is unknown. We examined how social exclusion among racial majority (White), Multiracial, and racial minority (Native American, Latino, Asian, and Black) college students relates to self-reported alcohol use and motivations. Using the AlcoholEdu for CollegeTM survey, Study 1a reports five factors related …
Perceptions and experiences of (people with) unconventional identities
Psychology has long focused on social identities and their critical role in defining the self. However, the majority of identity-related findings stems from research on traditional identities (monoracial, cisgender, heterosexual). Considering the relative dearth of research from the full range of identities encompassed in society (e.g., multiracial, transgender, bisexual), this special issue (a) highlights the experiences and perceptions of peopl…
Not Quite White or Black: Biracial Students’ Perceptions of Threat and Belonging Across School Contexts
Stereotype threat posits that students who are members of negatively stereotyped groups in school should feel more threat and less belonging, especially in schools with large achievement disparities and low racial/ethnic minority representation. This research has focused primarily on the experiences of negatively stereotyped monoracial minority students, but for a biracial Black/White student who claims both a negatively stereotyped (e.g., Black)…
Intra-race intersectionality: Identity denial among dual-minority biracial people
How Policies Can Address Multiracial Stigma
Twenty years ago, Multiracial Americans completed the U.S Census with the option to indicate more than one race for the first time. As we embark on the second anniversary of this shift in Multiracial recognition, this article reviews the research related to known sources and systems that perpetuate Multiracial-specific stigma.
Black Racial Stereotypes and Victim Blaming: Implications for Media Coverage and Criminal Proceedings in Cases of Police Violence against Racial and Ethnic Minorities
Posthumous stereotypical media portrayals of Michael Brown and other racial and ethnic minority victims of police violence have sparked questions about the influence of racial stereotypes on public opinions about their deaths and criminal proceedings for their killers. However, few studies have empirically investigated how the specific type of information released about a victim impacts opinions surrounding such incidents. Participants ( N = 453)…
Psychophysiological Stress Responses to Bicultural and Biracial Identity Denial
Bicultural and biracial individuals (those who identify either with two cultures or two races) are often denied membership in the groups with which they identify, an experience referred to as identity denial. The present studies used an experimental design to test the effects of identity denial on physiological and self‐reported stress, and naturalistic behavioral responses in a controlled laboratory setting for both bicultural (Study 1; N = 126)…
Fluid racial presentation: Perceptions of contextual “passing” among biracial people
Living with an other-race roommate shapes Whites' behavior in subsequent diverse settings
When the half affects the whole: Priming identity for biracial individuals in social interactions
Black + White = Not White: A minority bias in categorizations of Black-White multiracials
How Policies Can Address Multiracial Stigma
Twenty years ago, Multiracial Americans completed the U.S Census with the option to indicate more than one race for the first time. As we embark on the second anniversary of this shift in Multiracial recognition, this article reviews the research related to known sources and systems that perpetuate Multiracial-specific stigma.
Essentialist thinking predicts decrements in children’s memory for racially ambiguous faces
Past research shows that adults often display poor memory for racially ambiguous and racial outgroup faces, with both face types remembered worse than own-race faces. In the present study, the authors examined whether children also show this pattern of results. They also examined whether emerging essentialist thinking about race predicts children's memory for faces. Seventy-four White children (ages 4-9 years) completed a face-memory task compris…
Monoracial and Biracial Children: Effects of Racial Identity Saliency on Social Learning and Social Preferences
Children prefer learning from, and affiliating with, their racial in-group but those preferences may vary for biracial children. Monoracial (White, Black, Asian) and biracial (Black/White, Asian/White) children (N = 246, 3-8 years) had their racial identity primed. In a learning preferences task, participants determined the function of a novel object after watching adults (White, Black, and Asian) demonstrate its uses. In the social preferences t…
Intra-race intersectionality: Identity denial among dual-minority biracial people
Resolving racial ambiguity in social interactions
Reframing anxiety to encourage interracial interactions
Identity Questioning: Antecedents and Consequences of Prejudice Attributions
Many ethnic minorities in the United States hold both an ethnic minority and national American identity. Yet, they often encounter identity questioning when asked questions such as, “Where are you really from?,” which may operate as an ambiguous threat to their national identity. Because varied motivations (curiosity versus exclusion) create ambiguity, targets likely vary in their tendency to view identity questioning as prejudicial. Study 1 exam…
Experiences with microaggressions and discrimination in racially diverse and homogeneously white contexts
Living in a racially diverse context may have positive benefits for racial minorities, and White individuals do not necessarily experience greater instances of discrimination or microaggressions in diverse contexts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved
Priming White identity elicits stereotype boost for biracial Black-White individuals
Psychological threat experienced by students of negatively stereotyped groups impairs test performance. However, stereotype boost can also occur if a positively stereotyped identity is made salient. Biracial individuals, whose racial identities may be associated with both negative and positive testing abilities, have not been examined in this context. Sixty-four biracial Black-White individuals wrote about either their Black or White identity or …
Voter Evaluations of Biracial-Identified Political Candidates
Today, identity expression and acceptance represent an important area of political advocacy and representation. Yet, how responsive are voters to new racial identity cues promoted by political leaders? Using candidates with interracial backgrounds as a case study, we assess whether voters are responsive to candidates who assert a mixed-race identity or if voters primarily rely on other traits, such as the candidate's family background, in determi…
Not Quite White or Black: Biracial Students’ Perceptions of Threat and Belonging Across School Contexts
Stereotype threat posits that students who are members of negatively stereotyped groups in school should feel more threat and less belonging, especially in schools with large achievement disparities and low racial/ethnic minority representation. This research has focused primarily on the experiences of negatively stereotyped monoracial minority students, but for a biracial Black/White student who claims both a negatively stereotyped (e.g., Black)…
Testing intergroup contact theory through a natural experiment of randomized college roommate assignments in the United States
Many colleges and universities seek to leverage the promise of intergroup contact theory by adopting housing policies that randomly assign first-year students to roommates, with the goal of increasing intergroup contact. Yet, it is unclear whether random roommate assignment policies increase cross-race contact, whether this (potentially involuntary, but sanctioned by authorities) contact improves racial attitudes or behaviors, or how these effect…
It's not what you say it's what you do: School diversity ideologies and adolescent mental health and academic engagement
This study examined the relation between schools' color-evasive versus multicultural diversity ideologies, school characteristics, and adolescent development. Across two datasets linking individual-level survey data (N = 1692) and administrative records (N = 300,063; M age = 12.4, 52% female, 48% male), schools' stated support for diversity (via a pro-diversity mission statement) was related to adolescent mental health and academic achievement, b…
Mixed-heritage individuals’ encounters with raciolinguistic ideologies
Mixed-heritage individuals (MHIs) are known to face high levels of social exclusion. Here, we investigate how raciolinguistic ideologies related to one’s heritage language abilities add to these exclusionary experiences. The results from 293 MHIs reveal frequent experiences of marginalisation from members of each of their heritage communities because their racial appearance and language practices are perceived as deviant and outside imagined ‘mon…
Parent and self-socialization of gender intergroup attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors among ethnically and geographically diverse young children
Previous work has shown the robust nature of gender bias in both children and adults. However, much less attention has been paid toward understanding what factors shape these biases. The current preregistered study used parent surveys and child interviews to test whether parents' conversations with their children about and modeling of gender intergroup relations and/or children's self-guided interests about gender (self-socialization) contribute …
Living with an other-race roommate shapes Whites' behavior in subsequent diverse settings
When the half affects the whole: Priming identity for biracial individuals in social interactions
Honk if you like minorities: Vuvuzela attitudes predict outgroup liking
The 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa generated extensive controversy over spectators' use of the African vuvuzela trumpet. We asked 123 White American participants about their opinions of vuvuzelas as well as their attitudes towards a variety of racial/ethnic minority groups including immigrants, African Americans, and Latinos. We found that the less participants liked vuvuzelas, the less positively they also tended to feel toward minority gro…
Essentialist thinking predicts decrements in children’s memory for racially ambiguous faces
Past research shows that adults often display poor memory for racially ambiguous and racial outgroup faces, with both face types remembered worse than own-race faces. In the present study, the authors examined whether children also show this pattern of results. They also examined whether emerging essentialist thinking about race predicts children's memory for faces. Seventy-four White children (ages 4-9 years) completed a face-memory task compris…
Monoracial and Biracial Children: Effects of Racial Identity Saliency on Social Learning and Social Preferences
Children prefer learning from, and affiliating with, their racial in-group but those preferences may vary for biracial children. Monoracial (White, Black, Asian) and biracial (Black/White, Asian/White) children (N = 246, 3-8 years) had their racial identity primed. In a learning preferences task, participants determined the function of a novel object after watching adults (White, Black, and Asian) demonstrate its uses. In the social preferences t…
“Mixed” Results: Multiracial Research and Identity Explorations
Multiracial individuals report that the social pressure of having to “choose” one of their racial groups is a primary source of psychological conflict. Yet because of their ability to maneuver among their multiple identities, multiracials also adopt flexible cognitive strategies in dealing with their social environments—demonstrating a benefit to having multiple racial identities. The current article reviews recent research involving multiracial …
Caught in the Middle: Defensive Responses to IAT Feedback Among Whites, Blacks, and Biracial Black/Whites
This study used archival data to examine how White, Black, and biracial Black/White people respond to implicit attitude feedback suggesting that they harbor racial bias that does not align with their self-reported attitudes. The results suggested that people are generally defensive in response to feedback indicating that their implicit attitudes differ from their explicit attitudes. Among monoracial White and Black individuals, this effect was pa…
Thinking Outside the Box: Multiple Identity Mind-Sets Affect Creative Problem Solving
Rigid thinking is associated with less creativity, suggesting that priming a flexible mind-set should boost creative thought. In three studies, we investigate whether priming multiple social identities predicts more creativity in domains unrelated to social identity. Study 1 asked monoracial and multiracial participants to write about their racial identities before assessing creativity. Priming a multiracial’s racial identity led to greater creat…
Priming White identity elicits stereotype boost for biracial Black-White individuals
Psychological threat experienced by students of negatively stereotyped groups impairs test performance. However, stereotype boost can also occur if a positively stereotyped identity is made salient. Biracial individuals, whose racial identities may be associated with both negative and positive testing abilities, have not been examined in this context. Sixty-four biracial Black-White individuals wrote about either their Black or White identity or …
Reframing anxiety to encourage interracial interactions
Examining the Effects of I-Sharing for Future White-Black Interactions
Research shows that I-sharing, or sharing subjective experiences with an outgroup member, positively shapes attitudes toward that outgroup member. We investigated whether this type of social experience would also promote a positive interracial interaction with a novel outgroup member. Results showed that White and Black participants who I-shared with a racial outgroup member (vs. I-sharing with a racial ingroup member) expressed more liking towar…
Loss and loyalty: Change in political and gender identity among Clinton supporters after the 2016 U.S. presidential election
How do voters’ identities change after a candidate’s defeat? A longitudinal, within-subjects study used Hillary Clinton’s loss in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to explore social identity theory’s (SIT) tenet that threats to self-relevant groups motivate further connection to and affirmation of the group. Two independent samples (university students and adults on Mechanical Turk) were assessed before and after the 2016 U.S. presidential elec…
Black Racial Stereotypes and Victim Blaming: Implications for Media Coverage and Criminal Proceedings in Cases of Police Violence against Racial and Ethnic Minorities
Posthumous stereotypical media portrayals of Michael Brown and other racial and ethnic minority victims of police violence have sparked questions about the influence of racial stereotypes on public opinions about their deaths and criminal proceedings for their killers. However, few studies have empirically investigated how the specific type of information released about a victim impacts opinions surrounding such incidents. Participants ( N = 453)…
Racial/ethnic socialization for White youth: What we know and future directions
Mere Membership in Racially Diverse Groups Reduces Conformity
Three studies assessed the impact of White individuals’ mere membership in racially diverse or homogeneous groups on conformity. In Study 1, White participants were randomly assigned to four-person groups that were racially diverse or homogeneous in which three confederates routinely endorsed clearly inferior college applicants for admission. Participants in diverse groups were significantly less likely to conform than those in homogeneous groups…
The multiplicity of belonging: Pushing identity research beyond binary thinking
To date, research has primarily used a singular identity framework for investigating how social identity shapes behavior. Thus, research has also largely ignored the role that having multiple, simultaneous identities may play in our lives. This paper reviews work that pushes that singular identity framework beyond either/or binary constructs of identity. Specifically, through exploring racial identity flexibility for biracial populations and acti…
Black + White = Not White: A minority bias in categorizations of Black-White multiracials
Fluid racial presentation: Perceptions of contextual “passing” among biracial people
Resolving racial ambiguity in social interactions
Identity Denied: Comparing American or White Identity Denial and Psychological Health Outcomes Among Bicultural and Biracial People
Because bicultural and biracial people have two identities within one social domain (culture or race), their identification is often challenged by others. Although it is established that identity denial is associated with poor psychological health, the processes through which this occurs are less understood. Across two high-powered studies, we tested identity autonomy, the perceived compatibility of identities, and social belonging as mediators o…
Identity Questioning: Antecedents and Consequences of Prejudice Attributions
Many ethnic minorities in the United States hold both an ethnic minority and national American identity. Yet, they often encounter identity questioning when asked questions such as, “Where are you really from?,” which may operate as an ambiguous threat to their national identity. Because varied motivations (curiosity versus exclusion) create ambiguity, targets likely vary in their tendency to view identity questioning as prejudicial. Study 1 exam…
Experiences with microaggressions and discrimination in racially diverse and homogeneously white contexts
Living in a racially diverse context may have positive benefits for racial minorities, and White individuals do not necessarily experience greater instances of discrimination or microaggressions in diverse contexts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved
Psychophysiological Stress Responses to Bicultural and Biracial Identity Denial
Bicultural and biracial individuals (those who identify either with two cultures or two races) are often denied membership in the groups with which they identify, an experience referred to as identity denial. The present studies used an experimental design to test the effects of identity denial on physiological and self‐reported stress, and naturalistic behavioral responses in a controlled laboratory setting for both bicultural (Study 1; N = 126)…
“Mixed” Drinking Motivations: A Comparison of Majority, Multiracial, and Minority College Students
Social exclusion is associated with substance use, but the specific link between majority and minority racial group membership and substance use is unknown. We examined how social exclusion among racial majority (White), Multiracial, and racial minority (Native American, Latino, Asian, and Black) college students relates to self-reported alcohol use and motivations. Using the AlcoholEdu for CollegeTM survey, Study 1a reports five factors related …
Perceptions and experiences of (people with) unconventional identities
Psychology has long focused on social identities and their critical role in defining the self. However, the majority of identity-related findings stems from research on traditional identities (monoracial, cisgender, heterosexual). Considering the relative dearth of research from the full range of identities encompassed in society (e.g., multiracial, transgender, bisexual), this special issue (a) highlights the experiences and perceptions of peopl…
Psychology (46 works) · Social Psychology (39 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (36 works) · Sociology (29 works) · Racial and Ethnic Identity Research (28 works) · Social Psychology (27 works) · Developmental psychology (22 works) · Gender Studies (22 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (17 works) · Gender Studies (14 works)