Perceivers' ability to use multiple sources of information when forming impressions—including top-down, perceiver-level features, and bottom-up, target-level features—is a hallmark of social cognition. We investigate this primary foundation by examining the role of perceiver-level and target-level variation in perceived racial prototypicality in the U.S. In Study 1 (200 unique faces; 2608 raters), we quantified contributions of perceiver- and target-level effects to perceived racial prototypicality. Perceiver- and target-level contributions varied across racial category (Asian, Black, Latine, Middle Eastern, and Multiracial), with Multiracial and Middle Eastern prototypicality being more perceiver-driven. Although several appearance features (e.g., perceived ambiguity, skin tone) related to perceived prototypicality, there were distinctions in how perceivers used them (e.g., some people strongly used skin tone to infer Black prototypicality, while others used this less or not at all). A second study ( = 511) experimentally manipulated race essentialist beliefs. While there was no impact on perceived racial prototypicality, regardless of the category (Asian, Black, Latine, Middle Eastern, Multiracial, and Native American), Middle Eastern, Multiracial, and Native American prototypicality were generally more perceiver-driven than other categories, converging with Study 1. Further, perceivers' social dominance orientation, but not several other individual differences, were associated with less use of each of these categories. Taken together, findings suggest perceived racial prototypicality may originate less from stable individual differences like attitudes and instead reflects both i) differences in perceptions of target features and ii) differences in how people use particular target features in making racial prototypicality judgments.

中文翻译：

---

情人眼中的种族：分解感知者和目标层面感知种族原型的差异


感知者在形成印象时使用多种信息源的能力（包括自上而下的感知者级特征和自下而上的目标级特征）是社会认知的标志。我们通过研究美国感知者水平和目标水平变化在感知种族原型中的作用来调查这一主要基础。在研究 1（200 个独特的面孔；2608 名评估者）中，我们量化了感知者水平和目标水平效应对感知种族原型的贡献。种族原型。感知者和目标层面的贡献因种族类别（亚洲人、黑人、拉丁人、中东人和多种族）而异，其中多种族和中东原型更受感知者驱动。尽管有几个外观特征（例如，感知模糊性、肤色）与感知原型相关，但感知者如何使用它们存在差异（例如，有些人强烈使用肤色来推断黑人原型，而其他人则较少使用或根本不使用） 。第二项研究（= 511）通过实验操纵了种族本质主义信仰。虽然对感知的种族原型没有影响，但无论类别如何（亚洲人、黑人、拉丁人、中东人、多种族和美洲原住民），中东人、多种族和美洲原住民原型通常比其他类别更受感知驱动，与研究 1 一致。此外，感知者的社会支配取向（而不是其他一些个体差异）与这些类别的较少使用相关。 总而言之，研究结果表明，感知到的种族原型可能较少源于态度等稳定的个体差异，而是反映了 i) 对目标特征的看法的差异，以及 ii) 人们在做出种族原型判断时如何使用特定目标特征的差异。