Race and ethnicity categories cue cognitive control as evidenced by transfer

Abstract

Learning-guided reactive control is the flexible biasing of attention that is triggered by external cues, such that more focused control settings are retrieved and executed in response to cues predicting higher attentional demands. We investigated whether race/ethnicity is harnessed as a cue to guide control using a social Stroop task in which participants named the race/ethnicity of a face (e.g., Asian) while ignoring a superimposed word that was congruent (e.g., Asian) or incongruent (e.g., White). In the first four experiments, we manipulated item-specific proportion congruence. Faces of some races/ethnicities (e.g., Asian, Black) were mostly congruent, and faces of others (e.g., White, Latina) were mostly incongruent. We observed the item-specific proportion congruence effect showing a smaller Stroop effect for mostly incongruent faces. Critically, we found transfer of the effect to faces of each race/ethnicity that were 50% congruent, indicating control at the more abstract, category level (i.e., more focused control setting retrieved and executed for racial/ethnic categories associated with higher attentional demands). Individuating faces did not disrupt category-level control but recategorisation of the faces into racially/ethnically diverse teams did, as indicated by the lack of transfer. In a final experiment, we associated proportion congruence (attentional demands) with the conjunction of two social categories (race/ethnicity and gender) and found novel evidence of conjunctive learning-guided control. The findings demonstrate that race/ethnicity (and conjunctions with gender) cues control adjustments, people transfer learned control settings to other members of race/ethnicity categories, and recategorisation creates an important boundary condition for transfer.