Does Hypodescent Exist in a Racially Harmonious Society?: The Development of Multiracial Categorization in Singapore.

• In Event: Cognition and Bias

Abstract

With interracial marriages becoming more commonplace, it is important to understand how the categorization of multiracial individuals develops. Hypodescent, a categorization bias where multiracials are categorized as members of their lower-status race (e.g., categorizing Black-White multiracials as Black), is common in the U.S. (Ho et al., 2011). However, cross-cultural variation in multiracial categorization biases exists and moreover may stem from differences in attitudes towards racial diversity (e.g., Chen et al., 2018). Indeed, it is well-documented that psychological science tends to be U.S. centric (Cheon et al., 2020). In Singapore, racial harmony and equal racial status are emphasized for the local races: Chinese, Malay, and Indian. In two studies, we ask: will Singaporeans show hypodescent when categorizing multiracials?

Using a locally familiar multiracial target, Chinese-Indian, Study 1 examined the development of multiracial categorization in Singapore. One hundred and thirty-two Chinese Singaporeans (44 preschoolers, 44 primary-schoolers, and 44 undergraduates) engaged in a categorization task adapted from Roberts and Gelman (2015). Participants were shown a target girl (Chinese, Indian, or Chinese-Indian Multiracial) and pictures of a Chinese girl, an Indian girl, and a red curtain as response options. As in Roberts and Gelman (2015), the red curtain was used to avoid perceptual matching. For each target, participants were asked, “Where is the girl that is the same kind as this one?” and were either shown the girl’s parents or not.

With age, participants become more likely to categorize Chinese-Indian multiracials as neither wholly Chinese nor wholly Indian. Only undergraduates demonstrated a marginal tendency to categorize Chinese-Indian multiracials as more Indian than Chinese when parent information was absent, unlike American adults in Roberts and Gelman (2015), in which Black-White targets were categorized. See Table 1.

Study 2 extended Study 1’s findings by investigating Singaporeans’ multiracial categorization in less locally familiar multiracials: Black-White and Chinese-White multiracials. Eighty-eight Chinese Singaporean undergraduates completed one of two categorization tasks. Half the participants completed the same task as U.S. participants in Roberts and Gelman (2015), where the multiracial targets were Black-White; the remaining participants completed an adapted task, where the multiracial targets were Chinese-White.

An omnibus analysis including the undergraduates from Study 1 indicated that Singaporean undergraduates were more likely to categorize Chinese-Indian and Black-White multiracials as neither wholly one race nor the other race than Chinese-White multiracials. Further, Singaporean undergraduates were more likely to demonstrate a bias when categorizing Chinese-White multiracials compared to categorizing Chinese-Indian and Black-White multiracials. Namely, Singaporean undergraduates were more likely to categorize Chinese-White multiracials as Chinese relative to White. See Table 2. All together, these findings suggest that hypodescent varies across societies and may be dependent on a society’s attitude towards racial diversity.

Authors

• Michelle Cheng, Rutgers University - New Brunswick
  Presenting Author

• Peipei Setoh, Nanyang Technological University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Steven Othello Roberts, Stanford University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Susan A Gelman, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
  Non-Presenting Author