Using Intersectionality to Enhance and Mitigate Group Threats

Much of the research studying stereotypes and prejudice focuses on a single social category (e.g., race or gender). Intersectionality research allows for multiple social categories to be evaluated together. The current work investigates whether emotions that are linked to outgroup threats (Cottrell and Neuberg, 2005) can be manipulated by intersecting different groups with one another. I proposed two hypotheses derived from a single theory. The Threat Enhancement Hypothesis of Intersectionality predicts that intersections comprised of categories that share a threat profile will be more threatening than either of the individual categories. The Threat Mitigation Hypothesis of Intersectionality predicts that intersections comprised of categories whose stereotypes counter one another will be less threatening than either of it’s individual categories. Additionally, these hypotheses predict that intersections with the same threat profile will be more (hypothesis 1) threatening than intersections comprised of groups with different threat profiles, and that intersections whose stereotypes counter one another (hypothesis 2) will be less threatening than intersections comprised of groups with different threat profiles. Results indicated social categories cannot be added (hypothesis 1), nor can they fully mitigate a threat below individual categories (hypothesis 2). However, threat-specific combinations better manipulate perceived threat levels.