The social world is stratified. Social hierarchies are known but often disavowed as anachronisms or unjust. Nonetheless, hierarchies may persist in social memory. In three studies (total N > 200,000), we found evidence of social hierarchies in implicit evaluation by race, religion, and age. Participants implicitly evaluated their own racial group most positively and the remaining racial groups in accordance with the following hierarchy: Whites > Asians > Blacks > Hispanics. Similarly, participants implicitly evaluated their own religion most positively and the remaining religions in accordance with the following hierarchy: Christianity > Judaism > Hinduism or Buddhism > Islam. In a final study, participants of all ages implicitly evaluated age groups following this rule: children > young adults > middle-age adults > older adults. These results suggest that the rules of social evaluation are pervasively embedded in culture and mind.
BerryJ. W.KalinR. (1979). Reciprocity of inter-ethnic attitudes in a multicultural society. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 3, 99–112.
2.
BettencourtB. A.DorrN.CharltonK.HumeD. L. (2001). Status differences and in-group bias: A meta-analytic examination of the effects of status stability, status legitimacy, and group permeability. Psychological Bulletin, 127, 520–542.
3.
CampbellK. E.MarsdenP. V.HurlbertJ. S. (1986). Social resources and socioeconomic status. Social Networks, 8, 97–117.
4.
EaglyA. H.MladinicA.OttoS. (1991). Are women evaluated more favorably than men? An analysis of attitudes, beliefs and emotions. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 15, 203–216.
5.
EbnerN. C. (2008). Age of face matters: Age-group differences in ratings of young and old faces. Behavior Research Methods, 40, 130–136.
6.
FiskeS. T.CuddyA. J. C.GlickP.XuJ. (2002). A model of (often mixed) stereotype content: Competence and warmth respectively follow from perceived status and competition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 878–902.
7.
GawronskiB.BodenhausenG. V. (2006). Associative and propositional processes in evaluation: An integrative review of implicit and explicit attitude change. Psychological Bulletin, 132, 692–731.
8.
GrahamJ.HawkinsC. B.NosekB. A. (2012). [Ideology 2.0 data set]. Unpublished raw data.
9.
GreenwaldA. G.NosekB. A.BanajiM. R. (2003). Understanding and using the Implicit Association Test: I. An improved scoring algorithm. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 197–216.
10.
HagendoornL.DrogendijkR.TumanovS.HrabaJ. (1998). Inter-ethnic preferences and ethnic hierarchies in the former Soviet Union. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 22, 483–503.
11.
HagendoornL.HrabaJ. (1987). Social distance towards Holland’s minorities: Discrimination against and among ethnic groups. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 10, 120–133.
12.
HrabaJ.HagendoornL.HagendoornR. (1989). Foreign, different, deviant, seclusive and working class: Anchors to an ethnic hierarchy in the Netherlands. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 12, 441–468.
13.
JostJ. T.BanajiM. R.NosekB. A. (2004). A decade of system justification theory: Accumulated evidence of conscious and unconscious bolstering of the status quo. Political Psychology, 25, 881–919.
14.
KahnK. B.HoA. K.SidaniusJ.PrattoF. (2009). The space between us and them: Perceptions of status differences. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 12, 591–604.
15.
KennyD. A.La VoieL. (1984). The social relations model. In BerkowitzL. (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 18, pp. 141–182). Orlando, FL: Academic Press.
16.
KesslerR. C.MickelsonK. D.WilliamsD. (1999). The prevalence, distribution, and mental health correlates of perceived discrimination in the United States. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 40, 208–230.
17.
Kleinspehn-AmmerlahnA.Kotter-GruhnD.SmithJ. (2008). Self-perceptions of aging: Do subjective age and satisfaction with aging change during old age?Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences & Social Sciences, 63, P377–P385.
18.
LangnerO.DotschR.BijlstraG.WigboldusD. H. J.HawkS. T.van KnippenbergA. (2010). Presentation and validation of the Radboud Faces Database. Cognition & Emotion, 24, 1377–1388.
19.
LinN.EnselW. M.VaughnJ. C. (1981). Social resources and strength of ties: Structural factors in occupational status attainment. American Sociological Review, 46, 393–405.
20.
LivingstonR. W. (2002). The role of perceived negativity in the moderation of African Americans’ implicit and explicit racial attitudes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 405–413.
21.
MinearM.ParkD. C. (2004). A lifespan database of adult facial stimuli. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 36, 630–633.
22.
MullenB.BrownR.SmithC. (1992). Ingroup bias as a function of salience, relevance, and status: An integration. European Journal of Social Psychology, 22, 103–122.
23.
NosekB. A.BanajiM. R.GreenwaldA. G. (2002). Harvesting implicit group attitudes and beliefs from a demonstration website. Group Dynamics, 6, 101–115.
24.
NosekB. A.Bar-AnanY.SriramN.AxtJ. R.GreenwaldA. G. (2014). Understanding and using the Brief Implicit Association Test: I. Recommended scoring procedures. Unpublished manuscript, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA.
25.
NosekB. A.HansenJ. J. (2008). The associations in our heads belong to us: Searching for attitudes and knowledge in implicit evaluation. Cognition & Emotion, 22, 553–594.
26.
NosekB. A.HawkinsC. B.FrazierR. S. (2011). Implicit social cognition: From measures to mechanisms. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 15, 152–159.
27.
NosekB. A.HawkinsC. B.FrazierR. S. (2012). Implicit social cognition. In FiskeS.MacraeC. N. (Eds.), Handbook of social cognition (pp. 31–53). New York, NY: Sage.
28.
NosekB. A.SmythF. L.HansenJ. J.DevosT.LindnerN. M.RanganathK. A.. . . BanajiM. R. (2007). Pervasiveness and correlates of implicit attitudes and stereotypes. European Review of Social Psychology, 18, 36–88.
29.
OverbeckJ. R.JostJ. T.MossoC. O.FlizikA. (2004). Resistant vs. acquiescent responses to ingroup inferiority as a function of social dominance orientation in the USA and Italy. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 7, 35–54.
30.
RudmanL. A.GoodwinS. A. (2004). Gender differences in automatic ingroup bias: Why do women like women more than men like men?Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 494–509.
31.
SidaniusJ.LevinS.LiuJ. H.PrattoF. (2000). Social dominance orientation and the political psychology of gender: An extension and cross-cultural replication. European Journal of Social Psychology, 30, 41–67.
32.
SidaniusJ.PrattoF. (1999). Social dominance: An intergroup theory of social hierarchy and oppression. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
33.
SirinS. R. (2005). Socioeconomic status and academic achievement: A meta-analytic review of research. Review of Educational Research, 75, 417–453.
34.
SriramN.GreenwaldA. G. (2009). The Brief Implicit Association Test. Experimental Psychology, 56, 283–294.
35.
TajfelH. (Ed.). (1978). Differentiation between social groups: Studies in the social psychology of intergroup relations. London, England: Academic Press.
36.
TajfelH. (1982). Social psychology of intergroup relations. Annual Review of Psychology, 33, 1–39.
37.
TajfelH.TurnerJ. C. (1986). The social identity theory of intergroup behavior. In WorchelS.AustinW. G. (Eds.), The psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 7–24). Chicago, IL: Nelson-Hall.
38.
U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2013). Labor force statistics from the Current Population Survey. Retrieved from http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat37.htm
39.
VerkuytenM. J. A. M.HagendoornL.MassonK. (1996). The ethnic hierarchy among minority and majority youth in The Netherlands. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 26, 1104–1118.
40.
WilliamsD. R.YuY.JacksonJ. S.AndersonN. B. (1997). Racial differences in physical and mental health: Socio-economic status, stress and discrimination. Journal of Health Psychology, 2, 335–351.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
