The insidious (and ironic) effects of positive stereotypes

► Positive stereotypes are especially detrimental to egalitarian social perception. ► Exposure to a positive stereotype led to increased essentialism. ► Exposure to a positive stereotype led to increased application of prejudicial beliefs. ► These results were relative to baseline and negative stereotype exposure conditions. a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f o The present research demonstrates that positive stereotypes – though often treated as harmless, flattering and innocuous – may represent an especially insidious means of promoting antiquated beliefs about social groups. Specifically, across four studies (and one replication), the authors demonstrate that exposure to positive stereotypes towards African Americans (i.e., they are superior athletes) are at once both especially unlikely to arouse skepticism and emotional vigilance while also especially likely to produce antiquated and harmful beliefs towards members of the target group (compared to both baseline conditions and exposure to negative stereotypes), including beliefs in the biological (or " natural ") underpinnings of group differences and, ironically, the application of negative stereotypes. Introduction In the heat of the 2008 primaries, Barack Obama was asked to comment on Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison's declaration that former president Clinton was the first " Black president… blacker than any other actual Black person who could be elected during our children's lifetime. " After a measured and unsurprisingly evasive response, Obama concluded his remarks by quipping that he would have to more carefully investigate " Bill's dancing abilities and some of this other stuff before I accurately judge whether he was actually a brother. " The crowd erupted with laughter and everyone moved on. But imagine, for a moment, if rather than claiming he needed to see President Clinton's dancing skills in order to assess his " Blackness, " Obama asked to see Clinton's IQ score or his criminal record. Would people still have viewed his remarks with such side-splitting humor? Unlikely. Instead, his joke certainly would have been seen for what it actually was: an example (albeit one offered in jest) of social stereotyping, one that almost assuredly would have been decried as shocking, inappropriate and racist. This (hypothetical) asymmetry in the public response to positive relative to negative stereotypical remarks may seem reasonable, inso-far as expressed negative stereotypes can be assumed to be much more likely to negatively impact broad social beliefs — for example, capable of breeding prejudiced and …