Prototype Theory and Prejudice (Cognitive)

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
1996, Vol. 70, No. 4, 727-739
Capyrighl 1996 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.

0022-3514/96/S3.00
Influence of Prototypes on Perceptions of Prejudice

Robert S. Baron
Mary L. Inman
University of Iowa
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
Trinity University
Two studies examined the influence of cultural stereotypes and personal factors (one's race, gender)
on perceptions of racial and gender discrimination. Overall, the data suggest that our perceptions of
prejudice are strongly influenced by specific expectations regarding who are the prototypic perpetrators and victims of prejudice. More general expectations regarding out-group conflict or regarding
only the characteristics of the perpetrator appear to have less of an impact on such perceptions.
Additionally, women were found to be more likely than men to perceive sexism directed against men
and racism directed at African Americans and Caucasians. Also, African Americans were more
likely than Caucasians to perceive racist events against Whites and Blacks. The implications of these.
data are discussed.
In 1956, if a male coworker offered a female colleague a

"courtly" compliment on her appearance (""You sure look
pretty today"), it would have been unlikely to be viewed as a
demeaning or a discriminating action and, indeed, may well
have been received with pleasure. Forty years later, however, this
same comment would be perceived by many individuals as
offensive and condescending. In short, as our norms and our
awareness of issues of role and power change, so do our definitions and concepts of prejudice and discrimination. This example illustrates the extent to which these conceptions are subtle
social constructions. Yet, up until quite recently (Baron, Burgess, & Kao, 1991; Vallone, Ross, & Lepper, 1985), there was
little research examining the factors affecting perception of
prejudice. This is unfortunate in our opinion. Noticing and correctly categorizing prejudiced action (i.e., discrimination) is a
key condition for changing such behavior, whether the change
occurs through legal means, by confrontation, or by self-monitoring of one's own actions. Failure to identify or rebut prejudiced behavior, when it occurs, often provides tacit support for
such activity. Similarly, it is important to identify the situations
when a person might be unjustly accused of biased intent in an
ambiguous setting in which no sexist or racist motives exist. The
present research explores the possibility that our expectancies
Mary L. Inman, Department of Psychology, Trinity University; Robert S. Baron, Department of Psychology, University of Iowa.
The second study was supported by a University of Iowa Students'
Research Grant. We are grateful to Brian Mullen for assistance with the
data analysis and Paula Raymond for her comments on an earlier draft
of this article. We would also like to thank Britain Scott, Fred Metzger,
Cherie Gerard, Joel Yoder, Dion Baylor, Gabrielle Eckley, and Maria
Valakos for their help in creating stimulus materials, running the studies, recruiting participants, and coding the data in Studies 1 and 2. We
appreciate the assistance from Deborah Doherty, Robert Montoya,
Catherine Adams, Kristin Weins, Letitia Bean, Anjanette Cureton, and
Roselle Garcia with Study 2.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Mary
L. Inman. Department of Psychology, Trinity University, 715 Stadium
Drive, San Antonio, Texas 78212. Electronic mail may be sent via the
Internet to minman@trinity.edu.
727
(i.e., stereotypes) regarding prejudice influence our tendency to

describe potentially biased behavior as an instance of prejudice.
Some acts, of course, would unanimously be considered as
prejudiced (e.g., the angry use of flagrant racial epithets), but
many other cases are more uncertain. The present research focuses on biased acts that contain a degree of ambiguity. By ambiguous, we mean the protagonist's motives are not clearly obvious or the victim does not know if such behavior is normative
of the protagonist. It is precisely these situations in which we
feel it is most likely that cultural stereotypes and personal schemas will influence the judgments of the protagonist.
Thus, technically, this investigation addresses how potential
prejudiced actions are perceived, rather than the failure to detect unambiguously prejudiced actions. For ease of expression,
however, we sometimes use the terms Whke-on- Black discrimination, Black-on-White discrimination, female-on-male discrimination, and so forth when describing our various conditions implying that the perpetrator's actions were clearly discriminatory, when in fact there was some degree of ambiguity
regarding this fact. As noted, we feel that stereotypes are most
likely to affect the perception of prejudice when some degree of
ambiguity is present.
There is good reason to believe that stereotypes affect interpretations of ambiguous actions given the numerous studies in
the social cognition literature that have demonstrated such
effects (Devine, 1989; Duncan, 1976; Sagar & Schofield, 1980;
Taylor, Fiske, Etcoff, & Ruderman, 1978). For example, Duncan and Sagar and Schofield showed that the racial status of
actors affected the extent to which their action was viewed as
hostile. A few studies (Baron et al., 1991) have extended these
findings by demonstrating that expectancies affect whether a
given action was labeled as an instance of prejudice. Specifically,
Baron et al. (1991) argued that people were more likely to detect prejudiced behaviors when the situation matched one's expectations (or stereotype) about prejudiced actions. In their
study, participants read a series of vignettes. Some of these stories described discriminatory action against women. Participants were asked in an open-ended format to describe the most
noticeable traits of the primary actor (the perpetrator) in each
vignette. These responses were coded in terms of whether they
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INMAN AND BARON
described the actor as prejudiced. The results showed that participants were far more likely to label discriminatory actions
against women as instances of discrimination when the perpetrator was an expected source (a man) than an unexpected
source (a woman) and that when participants perceived discrimination, female participants saw the perpetrator as displaying more sexist behavior than male participants. These findings
raise a number of other questions regarding the perception of
prejudice. For example, What is the nature of the cultural
stereotype! s) regarding prejudiced behavior? Do these expectancies affect other forms of prejudice (e.g., racism) in a similar
manner? Does belonging to a traditionally oppressed social
group (e.g., women, Blacks) influence perceptions of discrimination? The present studies attempt to answer these questions.
The present studies examine how cultural stereotypes affect
perceptions of racially based discrimination as well as genderbased discrimination. Though the content and nature of genderbased and racial discrimination may differ due to historical and
motivational factors, we think that the cultural stereotypes that
pertain to both may serve the same functions (e.g., rilling in
missing information, guiding attention) and will affect perceptions in a similar manner. That is, if influenced by these stereotypes, people should be more likely to perceive potentially prejudiced behaviors as instances of bias when they are committed
by those who are stereotypical ly expected to harbor such biases
(cf. Fiske & Taylor, 1991). One key question then involves identifying the precise nature of the cultural stcreotype( s) that seem
to influence the perception of prejudice. The two present studies examine three potential stereotypes regarding racism (Study
1) and sexism (Study 2) and attempt to delineate among them.
These three stereotypes, of course, provide three alternative explanations for the results reported by Baron et al. (1991). The
first explanation is that we expect certain types of prejudiced
acts to come from specific perpetrators (e.g., men) and to be
directed toward specific targets (e.g., women). The second view
is that we expect prejudiced actions to come from the victim's
out-group. The third view is that we expect prejudiced actions
to come from particular perpetrators (e.g., men, Whites) who
are intolerant of anyone violating established norms.
More specifically, the first explanation (referred to below as
the prototype view) assumes that our perceptions of bias are
affected primarily by our prototypic conceptions of prejudice
and discrimination (i.e., our images of the prototypic perpetrators and victims of sexism, racism, ageism, etc.). Given that the
prototypic case of sexism involves a man discriminating against
a woman' this view would suggest that we are particularly sensitive to this specific type of gender bias. This prototype view is
related to theoretical work in social cognition in which prototypes are conceptualized as the most typical instance of the category or the average of the category members (Fiske & Taylor,
1991, cf. pp. 105-121) that are abstracted from experiences
with examples of the category (Hayes-Roth & Hayes-Roth,
1977; Posner & Keele, 1968; Reed, 1972). In short, people extract out the most typical or average features of the category and
then decide if a new instance fits the category by assessing its
similarity to this (idealized or most typical) prototype (Fiske &
Taylor, 1991, p. 106). Instances that have such high prototypicality are presumed to be more likely to trigger stereotypic
effects in attention, memory, interpretation, and behavior (cf.
Fiske & Taylor, 1991) than are nonprototypic instances. The

prototype view outlined above assumes that interactions as well
as people and objects can take on prototypic qualities. Given
the barrage of events depicted in the U.S. media that have been
historically labeled as sexist or racist, it seems likely that people
develop a prototype for sexist behavior that entails men oppressing women, whereas for racist behavior, the prototype undoubtedly involves Whites oppressing Blacks. If so, male-on-female
and White-on-Black discrimination should be more accessible
in memory as an instance of prejudice for the average individual
(as opposed to say, Black-on-Black discrimination) and, consequently, new events that match these instances are more likely
to be spontaneously considered as instances of prejudice (cf.
Cantor & Mischel, 1977; Medin, Altom,& Murphy, 1984).
The second explanation is based on the premise that stereotypes regarding intergroup conflict affect perceptions of prejudice. According to this view (referred to below as the out-group
conflict view), people assume that prejudiced actions are most
likely to stem from the victim's out-group. This explanation
suggests that people should be quite sensitive to any form of
prejudice directed between rival groups. This out-group conflict
view draws directly on work on Social Identity Theory (e.g.,
Tajfel & Turner, 1979/1985). In accordance with this view, various researchers have shown that people put into arbitrarily
based groups allocate more rewards (Allen & Wilder, 1975; Tajfel, 1970) and overestimate the performance (Sherif, 1966) of
in-group members and, overall, evaluate other in-group members more favorably (Brewer, 1979; Locksley, Ortiz, & Hepburn, 1980) than out-group members. In short, in-group bias
appears to be a fairly broad-based social phenomenon. We reasoned that general awareness of this in-group bias could affect
how people perceive others' actions, with people discounting the
possibility that in-group members would be malicious to each
other. Similarly, given the frequent media coverage of intergroup (rather than intragroup) conflict in our culture, it
1
As an initial step in this research, we assessed the extent to which
participants in our samples endorsed these various stereotypes regarding prejudice. The results from samples from Iowa and Texas support
both the out-group conflict and prototype view, depending on how the
questions were phrased. For example, Baron et al. (1991) asked pilot
participants to indicate, "Who was most likely to discriminate against
(various social groups)?" Their (largely Caucasian) participants
strongly expected (in 91% of participants) anti-Black prejudice to emanate from Whites, anti-White prejudice to emanate from Blacks (67%),
antifemale prejudice to emanate from men (88%), and antimale prejudice to emanate from women (93%). All chi-squares were significant at
the p < .05 level. These findings represent what we have termed an outgroup conflict expectancy.
However, in accord with the prototype view, when 17 additional racially mixed participants were asked to describe the most typical sexist
event, most participants (65%) described a man discriminating against
a woman. When asked to describe the most typical racist event, the
majority of these participants (over 60%) stated or implied a White
perpetrator derogating a non-White person. Responses did not differ by
participants' race. Together, these data appear most congruent with the
ideas that participants have strong perpetrator victim expectancies with
regard to racial prejudice in addition to their ideas regarding out-group
conflict. The issue then becomes which has the more pronounced effect
on the perception of prejudice.
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PREJUDICED PERCEPTIONS
seems plausible that expectancies of intergroup (rather than
intragroup) conflict would develop.
Finally, as a third explanation, it is possible that we expect
certain types of people (e.g., men, Whites, the wealthy) to be
generally intolerant of others who attempt to fill roles that are
not prescribed by society. This third stereotype, referred to as
the traditional oppressor view, assumes that people have strong
expectancies about the perpetrators of discrimination but
weaker or no expectancies about the victim. The traditional oppressor view seems most directly related to simple stereotyping
research (e.g., Devine, 1989; Duncan, 1976), in which a particular class of actors is expected to be more likely to commit
various (antisocial) behaviors regardless of the victim's (or
perceivers') characteristics. This research indicates that such
stereotypes lead to biases in interpretation and judgment closely
akin to those predicted in the present research.
In Baron et al.'s (1991) antifemale prej udice study, it was not
possible to fully evaluate these alternative views given that, in
the case of antifemale discrimination, all positions predict the
same (obtained) outcome. However, if one considers other cases
of discrimination (e^g., antimale, anti-Black, anti- White), distinctive predictions emerge (see below).
Predictions
What implications do the three explanations outlined above
have for perceptions of various types of prejudice (e.g., antimale,
anti-White, anti-Black)? If the out-group conflict stereotype influences perceptions of gender prejudice, then individuals should
be most sensitive to male-on-female and female-on-male forms of
prejudice. Similarly, when considering racial prejudice, the outgroup conflict hypothesis suggests that White-on-Black and Blackon-White discrimination will elicit more prejudiced responses
than White-on-White or Black-on-Black discrimination. Both
cases suggest a Perpetrator Race (or Gender) X Victim Race (or
Gender) interaction.
In contrast, the prototypic view suggests that whereas the gender
of the perpetrator should have a strong effect in cases of male-onfemale discrimination, gender of the perpetrator should have little
effect on perceptions of antimale prejudice because people have
few or weak expectancies regarding antimale actions given its nonprototypicality. As a result, male-on-female discrimination should
be more likely to lead to perception of prejudice than female-onmale, male-on-male, or female-on-female actions. Similarly, given
the assumption that White-on-Black discrimination is more representative of racial discrimination, the prototypic view would
predict that participants seeing White-on-Black discrimination
would be more likely to label that as prejudiced than any other
form of White-Black discrimination (White-on-White, Black-onBlack, Black-on-White), yielding a significant Perpetrator Race X
Victim Race interaction of a different kind. Finally, according to
the traditional oppressor view, male perpetrators of female-directed and male-directed prejudice should be labeled as prejudiced more often than female perpetrators (significant perpetrator
main effect). This prediction assumes that people expect men to
be more intolerant of people "bending" traditional gender roles.
Similarly, the traditional oppressor view would suggest that White
perpetrators should be called prejudiced more often than Black
perpetrators (yielding a perpetrator main effect). In short, these
alternative views each seem to make competing predictions in

cases of antimale and racial discrimination. Thus, it seemed possible to gain further insight regarding the processes underlying the
results reported by Baron et al. (1991) by examining perceptions
regarding antimale prejudice and racial prejudice. This was one
function of Studies 1 and 2.
A second goal of the present studies was to examine how individual difference variables (e.g., participant's gender, race)
affected perceptions of prejudiced behavior. Initial work by Baron
et al. (1991) found that, when participants perceived prejudiced
behavior, female participants reported it to be more negative than
male participants did. Thus, participant characteristics appeared
to have some impact on perceptions of prejudice. Three possibilities occurred to us. First, women may have been socialized to be
sensitive to other people's needs, including suffering (Pearson,
Turner, & Todd-Mancillas, 1985), making interpersonal exchanges central to their self-schema (see Markus, 1977). Consequently, compared with men, women should more readily interpret negative events directed toward themselves and toward others
as prejudiced. This prediction would yield a main effect of participant gender in racially based (Study 1) and gender-based (Study
2) discrimination. Second, it may be that frequent recipients of
discrimination have a well-developed schema (see Markus, 1977)
for dealing with events that are derogatory toward their own group
(due to group preservational concerns) but not other groups. This
prediction would be supported by a Victim Race (or Gender) X
Participant Race (or Gender) interaction. Third, frequently
targeted groups may be more sensitive to unfairness directed toward other targeted groups because such actions have implications
for their own group or because they can easily empathize with
other disadvantaged minorities. Historically, we have seen such
involvements (e.g., Jews participating in the civil rights marches),
with the nontargeted group inferring that they will be next in line
for the benefits or anger they observed. Thus, participant gender
and participant race main effects should occur for perceptions of
racism and sexism.
An additional factor that might influence how people interpret
prejudiced actions involves the semantic definitions of certain
words used to describe prejudiced actions. Specifically, it is possible that some individuals within our population assume that the
term sexist, like male chauvinist, is appropriately applied only to
male actors. Similarly, certain writers argue that, in the United
States, the term racist^ (or racist) should be reserved uniquely for
Caucasian acts directed against disenfranchised ethnic groups. If
so, actions performed by men (or White perpetrators) would be
disproportionately labeled as sexist (or racist) because only these
perpetrators can be labeled as such, given such a 4folk" definition.
This semantic bias could have serious implications, in that the
prejudiced actions of certain people (men, Whites) would be disproportionately labeled as biased. Thus, a third function of this
research was to further examine whether such semantic processes
affected individuals' reports of prejudice.
Study 1: Perceptions of Racial Bias
Method
Participants
Participants were recruited in one of two ways. First, 93 primarily
Caucasian students (51 women and 42 men) enrolled in lower level psy-
730
INMAN AND BARON
chology courses at the University of Iowa volunteered to participate in

this study as partial fulfillment of course credit. Due to the low number
of African American students in the lower level classes, an additional
23 African American participants (12 women and 11 men) who were
recruited by friends of the research team and by posters were paid $4
for their participation. Participants did not know of the two ways in
which they could have been recruited.
Thus, a total of 119 participants completed a series of questionnaires
privately (101 in the lab, 18 in their dorm rooms). Nearly all participants were run by an experimenter of the same race. Analyses revealed
that the effects of location (lab vs. field) and experimenter race did not
influence any of the key variables (lowest p = . 11).
Procedure
Participants were told that the experimenters were interested in their
perceptions of various written interpersonal interactions. They were
told that they would read a series of stories and then provide reactions.
They were told that even though the stories were fictitious, to pretend
that they were there in the situation watching the comments and behaviors as they happened. Participants then read over each story and then
indicated, in their opinion, the strongest qualities or traits exhibited by
the actor (perpetrator) in the episode. The actor or actress was always
designated as the person whose name was spelled in capital letters. This
open-ended question was followed by three lines. Participants were
asked to write two traits and limit themselves to three traits. After they
wrote two or three traits, they rated the extent to which the actor displayed those traits on a 7-point scale that ranged from slightly displayed
(1) to extremely displayed (7) ? This open-ended response format was
used to minimize the strong experimental demand that would have resulted from using a trait-rating index that included "How racist?" as a
target trait. The seven filler stories were used to further minimize such
problems of demand. Participants were then fully debriefed, thanked,
and dismissed.
Materials
Critical and filler stories. Fifteen stories were constructed. Eight
critical vignettes described conflict between two men and seven filler
vignettes described amenable interactions between 2 men or 2 women.
Stimulus vignettes were designed to contain elements of prejudice as
well as varying elements of ambiguity regarding actor motivation and
chronicity. As a check on these qualities, approximately 90% of pilot
participants rated our critical stimulus vignettes as highly prejudiced
when they were asked directly "How prejudiced is this behavior?" Filler
stories, in contrast, were rated as being significantly less prejudiced,
F( 1,45) = 174.8, p < .001. Perceived prejudice, however, dropped dramatically when such direct questions were replaced with an open-ended
format in which participants were asked instead to indicate what traits
were exhibited by the actor. When participants' responses were coded,
prejudice was mentioned in less than 50% of cases. This finding indicates that the stories did, in fact, entail a good deal of ambiguity regarding their prejudiced content.
The critical vignettes described such things as a man who was promised a hotel room over the phone and was later denied the room when
he showed up in person, a man auditioning as a guitarist in a rock band
who was turned away because he was not the right type, and a carload
of boys being harassed by a police officer on a Saturday night. The filler
vignettes in Baron et al.'s (1991) study that elicited the least amount of
prejudiced reactions were used in this study. See the Appendix for a
brief description of each story. The vignette numbers in the Appendix
refer to the story's position in the stimulus booklet.
Actor's race was manipulated by attaching photocopied yearbook pictures of selected college seniors (from a 2-year-old yearbook) next to each
story. Only those pictures that were rated (from pilot testing) as mildly
attractive (range of 2 to 4) on a 21-point scale ranging from extremely
unattractive ( - 1 1 ) to extremely attractive (11) were used. Each story contained one of four race permutations (White perpetrator/Black victim
[ W / B ] , White perpetrator/White victim [W/W], Black perpetrator/
White victim [B/ W], or Black perpetrator/Black victim [B/B]), yielding
four versions of the same story (and consequently, four versions of the stimulus booklets). Within each of the four booklet versions, two Black pictures and two White pictures with the same approximate attractiveness
ratings were used for a given story. The pictures associated with the filler
stories were always the same across stimulus booklets. Within a specific
booklet, a participant never saw the same photo repeated across stories.
In short, the materials were presented in a Latin square design. Each
participant read all 15 stories, including two critical vignettes with each
permutation (W/W, W/B, B/W, B/B) and seven filler vignettes. The order of the stories was held constant in all conditions, with a filler story at
the beginning of the booklet.
Results
Interrater Reliability
Participants' open-ended responses were coded in terms of
whether they perceived racist or prejudiced behavior on the part of
the perpetrator. Two independent raters (blind to the experimental
hypotheses) and conditions were instructed, "Based on your own
personal experience, indicate those responses where you think the
subject perceives the actor as behaving in a racist or prejudiced
manner." Traits were coded by two independent raters as 1, indicating perceived prejudice, or 0, failing to perceive the perpetrator
as biased.3 A reliability check on 21 randomly selected questionnaires indicated that coders generally agreed on what was considered prejudiced. Interrater agreement, correcting for chance
agreement, was 87% according to a modified version of Cohen's
kappa, AT =.87.
Furthermore, we conducted internal analyses testing the seman-
* We had intended to explore the idea that participants may make

stronger attributions (see perpetrators as displaying a strong degree of
discrimination) when perpetrators confirmed (rather than disconfirmed)
their expectancies. We did not include these analyses, however, because
when we selected only those participants who perceived prejudice in the
critical stories for a given replication (two stories in Study 1, three stories
in Study 2), the sample size was reduced from 119 to 20 (yielding low
power). Keeping all participants in the analyses (with no prejudiced responses receiving a 0) made the intensity data redundant with the frequency data, so we omitted the intensity data entirely.
3
In these studies, participants' responses must be coded considering
the content of the item (cf. Baron et al., 1991). In a noncritical item,
terms such as unfair, biased, and so forth could easily refer to nonsexist
or nonracist behavior (e.g., say failing to pay for your half of the pizza,
claiming Mom loves you best, etc.). On the other hand, consider a situation in which a participant describes someone as biased after learning
that person refused to hire a qualified and experienced applicant because of his or her gender (or race). In this case, it seems at least highly
likely that the participants' verbal response indicates a perception of
prejudice. Asa result, coders were aware of which vignette participants
were responding to. They were kept blind with respect to conditions by
coding responses after the actors' pictures were removed from the story
(Study I) or referring to the critical vignettes by vignette number and
by placing their hand over the story while viewing the participants' responses (Study 2).
tic explanation. Raters were instructed to code stories in which
the participant wrote racist and no other word describing biased
behavior (e.g., unfair, prejudiced) differently from situations in
which participants described the biased actions with other, less semantically loaded descriptors (e.g., unfair, prejudiced, biased).
This coding allowed us to conduct a subanalysis of the data excluding responses that used only this semantically loaded word
racist. The primary analyses reported below include racist responses, because the results were largely unchanged when this
term is excluded.
Analyses
Recall that each participant read eight critical stories, two with
each race permutation (B/W, W/B, W/W, B/B). Thus, for a
particular story (e.g., teenagers harassed by a police officer), a particular participant only received one perpetrator-victim race permutation, although across participants all four race permutations
were paired with each story. To hold story content constant, the
responses to the two stories that shared the same race permutation
(for a given participant) were combined and compared across participants (see Table 1). As a result, story content is held constant
given that this analysis averages over story content as well as participants. Thus, the four race permutations were treated as a 2
(perpetrator race) X 2 (victim race) between-subjects variable.
Analyzing the data in this way yielded four replications (or tests)
of our hypothesis. Replication 1 contained Stories 3 and 11, Replication 2 contained Stories 2 and 10, Replication 3 contained Stories 5 and 13, and Replication 4 contained Stories 7 and 15. The
frequency-dependent variable reflected the number (from 0 to 2)
of critical stories in a given replication in which the participant
described the actor as prejudiced (by calling the perpetrator "biased," "prejudiced," "racist," etc.). Due to large number of significance tests, an alpha level of .01 was adopted, with results with
p values greater than .01 interpreted with caution.
Frequency data: Number of perpetrators labeled as prejudiced.
It was expected that if stereotypes affect perceptions of prejudice,
then according to both the prototype view and the out-group conflict view, the Perpetrator Race X Victim Race interaction should
be significant (but show a different pattern of means). To test this
prediction, a 2 (perpetrator race) X 2 (victim race) X 2
(participant gender) X 2 (participant race) between-subjects analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted on the number of stories
(from 0 to 2) seen as prejudiced for each of the four replications.
For all four replications, none of the four-way interactions
(lowest p > .28) were significant, nor were any of the three-way
interactions, with one exception.4 Most crucially, the expected Perpetrator Race X Victim Race interaction was the only two-way
interaction that was consistently significant in three of four replications: Replication 1, F{ 1, 97) = 13.1, p < .001; Replication 2,
F(l, 97) = 15.3,p< .001; Replication 3 , F ( 1 , 97) = 13.5,p<
.001; Replication 4, F( 1,97) = 2.5, p = .12. Furthermore, a priori
tests (testing the prototype view) comparing perception rates in
the White/Black condition versus all others revealed that in three
of four replications, participants who observed potential Whiteon-Black discrimination were significantly more likely to label the
perpetrator as biased than participants in the remaining three race
permutations (p < .01, see Table 1). Moreover, this same tendency
was present but nonsignificant in Replication 1. In addition, fol-
731
low-up comparisons indicated that the remaining three conditions

(Black-on-White, Black-on-Black, and Whiteon-White) did not
reliably differ across the four replications (see Table 1). Stated
differently, in three of four replications (i.e., Replications 2
through 4), participants were significantly more likely to label
White-on-Black potential discrimination as prejudice than the
same situation in which Blacks derogate Whites. Taken together,
these results support the prototype view over the out-group conflict view.
Furthermore, the results supporting the traditional oppressor
view seem to be primarily due to perceptions of White-on-BIack
prejudice. That is, the perpetrator main effect was significant in
Replications 2 and 4: Replication 1, p > . 19; Replication 2, F( 1,
97) = 7.4, p < .01; Replication 3, p > .11; Replication 4, F( 1,
97) = 4.4, p < .04, showing that participants occasionally found
White perpetrators more prejudiced (M = 1.13, A/ = .74) than
Black perpetrators (M = .81, M~ .46). However, closer inspection of the data (see Table 1) suggests that this effect was primarily due to the high numbers in the White-on-Black conditions,
with the other three conditions not differing from each other
(contrary to the traditional oppressor view).
It is important to note that in three of four replications, this
data pattern remained statistically significant even when the
loaded term racist was excluded from the analysis. In Replications 2 through 4, more White-on-Black critical vignettes were
labeled as prejudiced (Ms = 1.04, .85, and .88, respectively)
than vignettes with all other race permutations (highest Ms =
.73, .61, and .50, respectively): Replication 2, F( 1,115) = 5.94,
p < .01, one-tailed; Replication 3, F(\, 115) = 3.28,p < .05,
one-tailed; Replication 4, F( 1, 115) = 9.3, p < .005, one-tailed.
Furthermore, in this supplementary analysis, none of the other
three race permutations (B/W, B/B, W / W ) significantly
differed from one another, ps = ns. In the fourth replication
(Replication 1), none of the perception rates differed from one
another,/? = .61. In summary, because the results were generally
similar whether the emotionally charged term racist was included or omitted from the analyses, it appears that the semantic explanation does not fully explain the present results.
Participant variables. The participants' gender also influenced
perceptions. In two of the four replications, participants' gender
was statistically significant, Replication 2, F(\, 97) = 6.8, p <
.012, and Replication 3, F( 1, 97) = 7.9, p< .007, indicating that
female participants were more likely to label an action as prejudiced ( M =1.16 and M ~ 1.03, respectively) than male participants(M= J6andM ~ .69). Furthermore, there was a tendency
for participants of a different race to perceive potentially preju-
4
The Subject Race X Perpetrator Race X Victim Race interaction
was marginally significant in one instance, Replication 2, F( 1, 97) =
4.9, p < .03, showing a tendency for Black participants(M = 1.22) more
than White participants (M = .71) to label Black-on-White prejudice
as unfair, p< . 10. The perceptions of Black and White participants did
not significantly differ for the other perpetrator and victim race conditions, p = ns. This pattern also occurred (though nonstatistically) in
two of the three other replications. Though we have speculations regarding this finding (e.g., perhaps Black participants may have more
exposure to anti-White comments, which affects their expectancies and
perceptions), we'd like to see thisfindingreplicated to bolster our confidence that this difference is reliable.
732
INMAN AND BARON
Table 1
Study I (Racism Study): Mean Number of Stories Labeled as Prejudiced by Race of
Perpetrator and Race of Victim for Each Replication
Race of perpetrator/race of victim
Replication no. and
measure
Replication 1
(Stories 3 and 11)
M
n
Replication 2
(Stories 2 and 10)
M
W/B, B/W, B/B, and W/W

linear contrast p value
White/Black
Black/White
Black/Black
White/White
1.13.
32
0.89^
28
0.54h
26
0.56 b
27
<.0014
1.61.
28
O.88b
26
0.74 b
27
0.72b
32
<.0001
1-37.
27
0.8 8b*
32
0.7 l b
27
0.5V
<.000l
1.00.
26
0.48 h
27
0.44 b
32
0.50,
28
<.0049
Replication 3
(Stories 5 and 13)
M
n
Replication 4
(Stories 7 and 15)
M
26
Note. Means could range from 0 {no stones labeled prejudiced) to 2 (all stories labeled prejudiced). Story numbers refer to the position of the story
in the stimulus booklet. Means with different subscripts differ at p < .01. W = White; B = Black.
*p<.05.
diced acts differently, Replication 1,F(I,97) = 3.4, p< .07; Replication 2, F( 1,97) = 3.9, p = .05, with Black participants calling
more stories prejudiced (Replication 1, M = 1.05; Replication 2,
M= 1.15) than White participants (Replication 1, M = .74; Replication 2, M = .95). None of the Gender X Participant Race interactions were significant, lowest p > .48.
Discussion
The aforementioned results are consistent with the notion
that both African American and Caucasian participants have
specific (prototypic) expectancies about the characteristics of
the perpetrator and victim of racial prejudice and these expectancies influence their perceptions of potentially racist actions.
Specifically, in every analysis, all participants were more likely
to label prejudiced actions by Whites against Blacks as prejudiced than when the same actions involved Black-on-White,
White-on-White, or Black-on-Black discrimination (see Table
1). These results are inconsistent with the traditional oppressor
view because the characteristics of the victim interacted with
perpetrators' characteristics. Nor do the results support the outgroup conflict hypothesis because, according to this view, participants should have perceived Black-on-White actions as prejudiced as White-on-Black actions. As noted, this did not occur.
The present results increase our confidence that a prototypic
stereotype (regarding racism, at least) is present and is affecting
our participants' perceptions of prejudice (see also Footnote 6
for additional data supporting this view). One goal of Study 2
was to examine if such prototypes were present and influenced
perceptions of gender bias.
The results of Study 1 also suggest that men and Caucasian participants were less likely to see potentially prejudiced events as
such, as compared with women and African American partici-
pants. This is a particularly interesting finding, as all the recipients

of the prejudiced actions in Study 1 were (Black and White) men.
Thus, the simple explanation that people are more responsive to
discrimination directed toward their own group does not seem
viable because male participants did not readily label the actions
as prejudiced. The results seem more consistent with what might
be deemed the "sensitive victim" explanation. Specifically, participants who belong to traditionally oppressed groups (Blacks,
women) may be more sensitive to potential prejudice. Perhaps
their own concerns regarding discrimination make the issue of
prejudice more accessible and central than is true for others. Certainly, the fact that women seemed more sensitive to various forms
of potential racism is congruent with this view, as is the fact that
African American participants were more likely to label both antiBlack and anti-White actions as instances of racism.
In summary, the results of Study 1 support the view that perceptions of prejudice are strongly affected by prototypic perpetrator victim expectancies and replicate and extend prior reports
(Baron etal., 1991) that women were more responsive5 to potentially discriminating behavior than men. Study 2 examined the
extent to which the three possible stereotypes affected perceptions
of gender discrimination and examined the semantic explanation
more closely.
Study 2: The Sexism Sorting Study
Overall Design
Participants in Study 2 read and formed impressions about
derogatory actions directed at both women and men. These ac5
Baron et al. (1991) found that female participants did not label
antifemale actions as prejudiced more often than male participants, but
when all participants did perceive an act as prejudiced, women were
733
tions emanated from either male or female perpetrators. In addition, to test the semantic explanation, we asked participants
to sort the perpetrators of each story into piles having shared
characteristics and to label and diagram how they sorted their
piles. This procedure circumvents problems raised by the semantic hypothesis (i.e., that certain verbal labels are only used
for certain categories of people, e.g., men), because participants
could register their perception of prejudice on the part of (say)
a woman by placing her in a sexist pile despite their not using
that term to describe her. After this sorting was completed participants labeled their piles. If participants placed both men and
women in piles that they later labeled as sexist, the data would
further contradict the semantic bias explanation (that such
terms were reserved for men).
Study 2 also examines the extent to which the three possible
stereotypes discussed above influence perceptions of genderbased prejudice. If the prototypic view is operating, then potentially biased male-on-female actions should be labeled as prejudiced more often than female-on-male actions, female-on-female actions, or male-on-male actions. If the out-group conflict
view is operating, then potentially biased female-on-male and
male-on-female actions should be described more often as prejudiced behavior than male-on-male and female-on-female actions. Finally, if the traditional oppressor view is operating, then
potentially biased male-on-female actions and male-on-male
actions should be more likely to be labeled as prejudiced than
female-on-male and female-on-female actions.6
Method
Participants
Sixty-two (24 men and 38 women) primarily Caucasian undergraduate students enrolled in introductory psychology classes at a private liberal arts university in Texas participated for extra credit in their psychology courses. Participants received instructions in groups of 3 and
completed Ihe tasks privately in separate rooms.
Procedure
Participants were told there were three parts to the experiment. In the
first part, participants heard the same cover story as in Study 1 informing them that they would be reacting to various written interpersonal
interactions (or stories). Participants then read the 19 vignettes, reacting to each in turn. As in Study 1, participants wrote two or three of the
"strongest qualities or traits exhibited by the actor in (that) episode"
and rated the extent to which the actor displayed that behavior on a 7point scale ranging from slightly displayed (\) to extremely displayed
(7). Participants wrote their responses on post-its (gummed labels) and
attached the post-it onto the corresponding story.
After reading and rating all of the vignettes, participants were instructed to sort the vignettes into piles based on any similarities he or
she saw in the actors' behaviors. They were told
You do not have to group the stories according to the verbatim words
you wrote on the post-its, but on the similarities and differences that
you sec in the actors' behaviors or traits. For example, if you see a few
"friendly" actors, you may want to put them into a pile. Furthermore,
more likely to say that the perpetrator displayed more extreme sexism
than men perceiving the same act.
you may opt (but do not have) to make subcategories of piles. For
example, some friendly people might have beenflirtatious,so those
actors or actresses would be put into a separate pile. There are no
right answers here. Just group them as you see them.
After sorting the stories, participants were asked to draw a diagram
representing their piles, placing very different piles away from each
other, and writing verbal labels next to their piles, so that a person could
determine how they represented their piles schematically. The particular story number associated with the pile was also indicated. Furthermore, if they fell that there were subcategories within the piles, they
were to include these subcategories on the diagram using hierarchical
branches. They were also given a sample diagram and emphatically told
that this was only a general example to aid in denning their task.
Materials
Participants randomly received one of two forms of the story booklets. Six of the 19 stories described actions demeaning women (3 with a
male perpetrator and 3 with a female perpetrator). These were taken
from Baron et al.'s (1991) study. Similarly, 6 of the stories described
actions demeaning men (3 with a female perpetrator and 3 with a male
perpetrator). These were created from discussion groups of over 25 people using procedures similar to those used in Study 1. When asked directly how sexist these stories were, 43 pilot participants rated them as
moderately to extremely sexist (range of 7.1 to 8.1 on a 9-point scale),
although when an open-ended response format was used only approximately 65% of the 12 critical vignettes were labeled as prejudiced, confirming that the stories were, in fact, somewhat ambiguous. See the Appendix for a brief description of the stories.
In the second form of the booklet, the perpetrators' gender was reversed from thefirst,thus allowing us to examine the effects of perpetrator gender holding story content constant. The sevenfillervignettes
(involving men and women) that were least likely to elicit prejudiced
responses in prior studies were adopted. As in the prior studies, the gender of the protagonist in thefillerstories was constant across booklet
forms and the filler stories were interspersed throughout the stimulus
booklet, with the restriction that two filler stories were placed at the
beginning of the booklets.
Results and Discussion

Interrater Reliability
As in the prior studies, two independent raters who were blind
to perpetrator gender were instructed to give each critical story
6
An initial study (Inman & Baron, 1992) investigating these three
stereotypes was conducted with 144 primarily Caucasian participants
who readfillerstories and six stories describing a male or female perpetrator demeaning a man (the same stories used in Study 2). The results
showed that instances of fe male-on-male discrimination were labeled as
biased more frequently (M = 2.26 of 3) than the same actions involving
male-on-male discrimination (M = 1.85 of 3) in one of the two analyses, Replication f , f < 1, ns, Replication 2, p< .015. It's important to
note that the average effect size (.019) of the perpetrator gender main
effect was not as large in this study as the perpetrator gender main effect
size involving antifemale discrimination (r = .293, Baron et ah, 1991).
Furthermore, female participants in the antimale study were more
likely (M = 2.25 of 3) than male participants (M = 1.9 of 3) to see
antimale actions as prejudiced,;? < .023, p = .03, with no other significant effects. Study 2 (in the text) was conducted to minimize the problems associated with comparing antimale and antifemale perception
rates across studies.
734
INMAN AND BARON
a 1 if they thought the participant perceived some unfairness or

injustice in the situation (see Footnote 3). If the participant did
not perceive any unfairness, the raters were instructed to give
him or her a 0. As in Study 1, loaded responses such as sexist
or chauvinist were scored separately, to examine the semantic
hypothesis. A reliability check on 15 randomly selected questionnaires indicated that coders agreed on their ratings. Interrater agreement, correcting for chance agreement, was 94%,
using Cohen's kappa, K = .94, p< .001.
Analysis
As in Study 1, to hold story content constant, stories with
similar perpetrators (3 men and 3 women for the male victim
stories; 3 men and 3 women for the female victim stories) were
grouped and responses were compared across participants.
Thus, there were two replications of our design for the male
victim stories and two for the female victim stories. Perception
ratings could range between 0 (no stones labeled as prejudiced)
to 3 (all stories labeled as prejudiced).
Frequency Data: Number of Stories Labeled Prejudiced
Initial analyses conducted separately on nonloaded prejudiced responses (e.g., biased, unfair) and loaded responses
(sexist, chauvinist) did not show any reliable differences. In addition, there was no consistent tendency for male perpetrators,
as opposed to female perpetrators, to be disproportionately labeled as sexist or chauvinistic. As a result, the data were combined and reported below.
Four 2 {perpetrator gender) X 2 (participant gender)
ANOVAs were conducted on the number of critical stories (03) in a given replication labeled as prejudiced. The results
shown in Table 2 replicate results reported by Baron et al.
(1991) and Inman and Baron (1992) (see Footnote 6), exactly,
with the only exception being the participant gender main effect
for the male victim analyses (see below). The data are most
consistent with the prototype view, with very weak support for
the out-group conflict view, and no support for the traditional
oppressor view.
For the two analyses involving female victim stories, neither
of the Perpetrator Gender X Participant Gender interactions
were statistically significant (lowest p > .4) nor were the participant gender main effects (lowest p > . 14). Moreover, as shown
in Table 2, in both replications, male perpetrators of femaledirected prejudice were more likely to be labeled as prejudiced
{M- 2.31, M= 2.07) than female perpetrators performing the
same behavior (M = 1.43, M- 1.62); perpetrator main effects,
Replication 1, F{ 1, 55) = 14.17, p < .001, and Replication 2,
F(l,55) = 4.5, p< .04, yielding an average effect size7 of .165.
The results of the male victim stories were less consistent.
This weaker effect replicates Inman and Baron (1992, see Footnote 6). That is, as shown in Table 2, there was a tendency for
participants to be more likely to label female-on-male actions
as prejudiced (M = 2.62) than in the case of male-on-male actions (M = 2.23), and this occurred in only one of two replications: Replication 4, F( 1, 55) = 3.7, p = .06; and Replication 3,
F(l, 55) = .075, p> .70, yielding an average effect size of .063.
The finding that the average perpetrator gender effect size was
significantly larger in the female victim replications (.165) than

in the male victim replications (.063), x 2 (3) = 15.2, p < .01,
one-tailed, was also present in the earlier studies. Baron et al.
(1991) found a stronger perpetrator gender main effect (average
effect size = ,293) with their female victim stories than Inman
and Baron (1992) did with their male victim stories (average
effect size = .019), z = 1.83,7? = 03, one-tailed.
The present analyses failed to show statistically significant
Perpetrator Gender X Participant Gender interactions for the
male victim stories, p > .60, p > ,30, respectively. Surprisingly,
nor were the participant gender main effects significant, p = .27
in Replication 1, p - .30 in Replication 2. Whereas Inman and
Baron (1992) found female participants more readily labeled
antimale discrimination as prejudiced than male participants
(p < .023, p < .03), women in this study tended to do the same
in one replication (M = 2.49 for women, M = 2.21 for men),
but this tendency reversed in the second replication (M = 2.54
for men, M - 2.34 for women).
Schematic Diagrams
Schematic diagrams were analyzed to examine the verbal labels participants attached to their categories and to examine
if certain (expected) perpetrators were overrepresented in the
prejudiced piles.
Semantic labels attached to piles. Participants' diagrams
were coded to determine four things: (a) what word(s) they
used to describe most prejudiced actions, (b) if the actions by
male and female perpetrators were grouped together, (c) how
participants labeled subcategories of prejudiced actions, and
(d) if participants created different subcategories for male and
female perpetrators.
The results strongly suggest that certain words were not reserved for particular perpetrators. Specifically, of the 33 participants who used the words sexist or chauvinist to describe actions (either as a global category or as a subcategory), only 2
(6%) drew diagrams indicating that only male perpetrators
were sexist (female perpetrators were traditional). In addition,
counter to the semantic hypothesis, the vast majority of participants (94%) who labeled their piles as sexist or chauvinist
grouped male and female perpetrators together. Furthermore,
the majority of participants (85%) who described prejudiced
actions with nonloaded words (e.g., prejudiced, biased, discriminating, stereotyping) grouped male and female perpetrators together. Taken together, these data suggest that the semantic view is not a viable explanation.
We computed effect sizes for each replication based on Rosenthal

and Rosnow's (1991, p. 317) formula effect size = r}2/( 1 - V2)* where
i}2 is the proportion of variance accounted for in the dependent variable
by group membership (i.e., the independent variable). We then averaged the effect sizes for the two male victim replications in Study 2 and
repeated the process for the two female victim replications in Study 2.
The effect sizes reported for Baron et al.'s (1991) and Inman and Baron's (1992) findings were computed the same way. The significance tests
(reported in the text) comparing the effect sizes for the male victim and
female victim studies are based on Rosenthal and Rosnow's (1991, p.
493) and Strube's (1985) work. The interested reader should see their
discussion for more on comparing results across studies.
735
Table 2
Study 2 (Sorting Study): Mean Number ofStones Labeled as Prejudiced as a Function of
Perpetrator and Victim Gender by Replication
Gender of perpetrator
Male
Replication no. and measure
Female
Perpetrator main
effect, p
1.43b
<.00l
l-62b
<.O4
2.33
>,70
Replication 1
Female victim (Stories 3, 11, and 15)
M
n
2.3l a
29
30
Replication 2
Female victim (Stories 6, 12, and 19)
M
n
2.07a
30
29
Replication 3
Male victim (Stories 7,9, and 18)
M
n
2.41
29
30
Replication 4
Male victim (Stories 4, 13, and 16)
M
n
2.23b
30
2.62B
.06
29
Note. Numbers could range from 0 (no stories labeled prejudiced) to 3 (all stories labeled prejudiced).
Story numbers refer to position of story in stimulus booklet. Means with different subscripts differ at p <
.01.
Frequency data ofthe piles. A second key issue was the relative frequency with which critical vignettes were placed in
prejudiced piles as a function of perpetrator or victim gender.
Each participant encountered three instances, each of potential
male-on-female discrimination, female-on-female discrimination, male-on-male discrimination, and female-on-male discrimination. Our interest was in how many vignettes of each
type would end up sorted into a category that was subsequently
labeled by the participants as prejudiced (or some synonym).
Fifty-nine of the 62 participants used such labels. We expected
that a greater proportion of male-on-female discrimination
would be seen in the piles than female-on-female discrimination. This prediction was supported. On average, there were
more vignettes with male perpetrators (M = 1.966 of 3) placed
in the prejudiced pile when the victim was a woman than female-on-female stories (M = 1.299), /(58) = 4.71, p < .001.
Furthermore, based on the effect sizes reported above and Inman and Baron's (1992) results, we did not expect more female-on-male vignettes to be placed in prejudiced piles relative
to male-on-male vignettes. This prediction was also supported:
When the victim was a man, the average number of vignettes
placed in the prejudiced pile did not differ by perpetrator gender: male perpetrator (M = 2.102), female perpetrator (M =
2.203), /(58) = -.81, p = .42. In short, these results closely
paralleled the frequency data presented in Table 2. That is, the
perpetrator's gender affected perceptions of prejudice in cases
of antifemale but not in cases of antimale discrimination.
Finally, we expected that of those participants who separated
their prejudiced piles by intensity (mildly, moderately, and extremely prejudiced), a higher frequency of male-on-female discrimination would be seen as extremely prejudiced than female-on-male discrimination if the prototype hypothesis was
correct. The data supported this hypothesis. Of the 14 partici-
pants who separated prejudiced piles by intensity, more maleon-female potentially prejudiced acts were placed in the severely or harshly prejudiced piles {M = 2.07) than female-onmale potentially prejudiced acts (M= 1.14), f( 13) = 2.88, p<
.01, one-tailed.
General Discussion
These two studies, manipulating the social category of the perpetrator and the victim, showed that perceptions of prejudice were
moderated by characteristics about the perpetrator, the victim,
and the participant. We found that participants were more likely
to label certain perpetrator and victim configurations as prejudiced than others: Participants were most likely to call a potentially
prejudiced action an instance of prejudice if it involved a specific
kind of perpetrator and specific kind of victim (Whites derogating
Blacks, Study 1; men derogating women, Study 2) than if the same
actions came from Blacks directed toward Whites (Study 1) or
derogatory actions by women toward men (Study 2). Furthermore, cases of Black-on-White (Study 1) and women-on-men
(Study 2) discrimination tended (albeit nonsignificantry) to provoke more frequent perceptions of prejudice from participants
than cases of in-group discrimination (in six of eight replications).
Finally, women and Black participants more readily labeled potential acts of racism as instances of prejudice in Study 1, whereas
in Study 2 women were more likely than men to label prejudice
acts involving potential antimale sexism (see also Inman & Baron,
1992) as discrimination than male participants.
Nature ofthe Cultural Stereotypes

We examined whether three possible stereotypes, applicable
to sexism and racism, influenced perceptions of discrimination.
736
INMAN AND BARON
Our preferred explanation for the above results is that participants' perceptions regarding prejudice are being primarily
affected by specific cultural expectations regarding the prototypical perpetrators and victims of racism and sexism (i.e., participants feel that the most typical forms of sexism and racism
involve men who discriminate against women and Whites who
discriminate against Blacks, respectively). The strongest evidence for this view stems from Study 1, in which White-onBlack discrimination provoked the strongest perceptions of
prejudice; the rinding that perpetrator gender effects in Study 2
are more reliable in cases of antifemale discrimination (effect
size = .165) than in cases of antimale prejudice (effect size =
.063, see Footnote 7); and by the frequency results of the sorting task in Study 2. The results did not show that other cases of
intergroup conflict (e.g., Blacks against Whites, women against
men) provoked the same amount of prejudiced responses, refuting the out-group conflict hypothesis. Nor were actions by
male or White protagonists consistently labeled as prejudiced,
disconnrming the traditional oppressor view.
We are not entirely ruling out the out-group conflict and
other stereotypes that may be operating in other prejudice-relevant situations (e.g., when blatant racist or sexist symbols are
present but the intent or the identity of the perpetrator is
unclear). For example, Kirby, Willis, Chandler, and Hill (1994)
reported that White participants were most likely to see a racial
slur (e.g., nigger, honkie) as most biased and prejudiced when
the comment came from an out-group member (i.e., a White
derogating a Black or a Black derogating a White), and least
likely when the slur came from the victim's in-group.
Where Do Prototypical Expectancies Come From?

Given that our data (based on perceptions of ambiguously racist
and sexist actions) are reliably consistent with the notion that people react most vigorously to the "classic" (i.e., prototypical) instances of prejudice, one might ask how do these prototypical expectancies develop? We think a general principle that may underlie
expectancies about racism, sexism, and other forms of prejudice
is that high-status groups may be seen as prototypical perpetrators
of prejudice and low-status groups as its victims. Stated differently,
we form prototypical expectancies about who will be the perpetrators and victims of discrimination based on traditional status
differences (e.g., Blacks, women, people with stigmas, and elderly
people will be expected to be victims because they have traditionally held low-status positions, whereas White men are expected to
be the perpetrators because they historically have held powerful
positions in the United States). At least two versions of this status
explanation are possible. First, there could be a general expectancy
in which people expect potentially derogatory comments and actions from group members who have held high-status positions in
most situations and expect such behavior to be directed at any
lower status member (e.g., Whites derogate Blacks, Whites derogate Mexicans, etc.). Second, status expectancies may be shaped
by the historical context of a particular situation (e.g., women may
be perceived as high-status individuals in situations involving child
care). This specific status expectancy view predicts that people
belonging to groups that have historically had power in a particular
situation should provoke more prejudiced responses in perceivers
(when directed at subordinates) than when the perpetrator be-
longs to a historically low-status group (for that situation) or when

the victim belongs to a historically high-status group. These views
also predict that perceivers have no or weak expectancies regarding
prejudice directed against high-status groups. Current research is
investigating the adequacy of these two views.
Indeed, naive raters who examined the nature of our vignettes
found most (five of six) of antifemale stories described situations
in which men historically have been in positions of power (hiring
decision, group leader or decision maker) and some (three of six)
antimale stories described situations in which women have traditionally held power (e.g., kindergarten teacher, tending to a child's
wound), which are consistent with the perpetrator effects that we
found in most (10 of 12 cases) of our male victim and female
victim stories. Similarly, these naive raters said many (five of eight)
of the stories in Study 1 contain situations in which White men
have held powerful positions, and the perpetrator effects for each
story (found in Study 2) support these expectancies in six of eight
cases. Admittedly, Studies 1 and 2 do not test the status explanations directly, as we did not systematically set out to select stories
with clear or ambiguous historical precedents.
Participant Factors Influencing Perceptions

As noted, there is some evidence to suggest that female participants were more likely than male participants to label potentially prejudiced actions as biased. Similar, albeit largely
nonsignificant, trends were observed in Study 2. This participant gender main effect now has been found regarding the perception of potentially discriminating actions against women
(Baron etal., 1991), men (Inman& Baron, 1992), and African
American and Caucasian men (Study 1). Moreover, our African American (male and female) participants were more likely
to label potentially racist actions directed at Blacks and Whites
as racist than White participants were (Study I).
One explanation for these results is that for members of traditionally oppressed groups, the issue of prejudice is generally more
central and accessible than it is for other individuals. This heightened accessibility may be associated with concerns of self-interest
(in that discrimination must be detected if it is to be protested),
but it also may be associated with a general feeling of empathy for
other oppressed minorities as well. Supplementing this mechanism, women may have a heightened sense of interpersonal sensitivity due to their socialization (Pearson et al., 1985), consequently leading them to notice interpersonal infringements of all
kinds more readily than men. These gender and racial differences
may be moderated to some extent by individual difference variables such as the extent to which participants are self-schematic
as activists (e.g., feminists, ethnic militants, etc.). For example,
Gutierrez and Hirsch (1973) found differential perception of prejudice in reaction to a given (police action) vignette on the part of
more ethnically active Latino participants (self-described
Chicanos) as opposed to presumably less active participants (selfdescribed Mexican Americans).
Other Factors Influencing Perceptions

One might argue that the data patterns in Tables 1 and 2 are
due to other factors (e.g., the severity of the prejudiced actions
or degree to which the actions themselves match prototypical
737
prejudiced behaviors) than the characteristics of the perpetrator, victim, or participant. We acknowledge that these factors
may also affect perceptions of prejudice (in addition to the perpetrator's, victim's, and participant's characteristics), but given
the way we designed our study and the results of the (following)
post hoc analyses, these two explanations cannot, by themselves, explain the present data patterns.
For example, one might argue that perhaps more extremely
prejudiced stories were used in the antifemale vignettes, yielding the stronger male-on-female discriminationfindingsand the
weaker female-on-malefindings(see Table 2). Indeed, given the
need to embed our instances of gender bias in an appropriate
cultural context, the content of the gender bias vignettes was not
held constant across cases of antimale and antifemale discrimination. To test this explanation, we asked naive pilot participants to rate the harmfulness (or severity) of the prejudiced
actions described in each of our male victim and female victim
stories, with the gender of the perpetrators omitted. We found
no differences between male victim and female victim ratings,
p- ns. Most pilot participants (at least 75% in every case) considered the male victim and female victim actions somewhat
harmful or extremely harmful.
Furthermore, note that in Study 1 (the racism study), the
actions were identical for each perpetrator or victim permutation, and we still found evidence that the characteristics of the
actors in the situation influenced perceptions. To test the extremity explanation more directly, however, we asked these naive pilot participants to rate the harmfulness of each racism
story in Study 1, and we categorized stories as not harmful or
extremely harmful. We then examined the p value associated
with the Perpetrator Race X Victim Race interaction for each
racism story and compared the average/* value across prerated
extreme stories to the average/? value across nonextreme stories
and found no significant difference between p values, t(6) = 1.2,
ns. Taken together, these twofindingssuggest that the degree of
harm described in the stories is not responsible for our data
patterns in the main studies.
The second explanation contends that the prototypicality of
the prejudiced actions (not the characteristics of the actors) influenced perceptions. In other words, actions that are more prototypical of sexist actions should be called prejudiced more than
nonprototypical ones. This explanation does not explain why
we obtained the significant perpetrator gender effects (Study 2)
or any perpetrator and victim differences (Study 1) when story
content was held constant. Alternatively, one could argue that
stories containing more prototypically sexist or racist actions
led participants to call the action prejudiced only when the
characteristics of the perpetrator and victim matched expectancies (yielding the perpetrator and victim results in the main
studies). In other words, prototypically prejudiced actions are
necessary (yet not sufficient) for eliciting a prejudiced response.
The data from the following analyses suggest that the prototypicality of the action (like severity) is unimportant too.
We asked the same pilot participants to indicate the extent to
which the actions in all our stories "matched a typically prejudiced event," while we omitted the characteristics of the perpetrator. Thus, raters were just judging the action, ignoring the
characteristics of the actor. If the aforementioned explanation
is valid, the female victim stories should be rated as containing
more prototypically prejudiced actions than male victim stories

(given the stronger perpetrator gender main effects with female
victim stories). Pilot participants did not say the actions in female victim stories were more prototypical (five of six stories
were) than actions in male victim stories (four of six), %2{ 1) =
.44, ns, however. In addition, we did notfindstronger perpetrator and victim effects with racism stories in Study 2 that were
prerated as containing prototypically racist actions (average/?
value - .049) than ones containing nonprototypical actions
(average p value = .066), ;(6) = .005, ns. Nevertheless, we
would agree that examining the interactions among the situation's, perceiver's, and protagonist's characteristics is worthy of
further research.
Social Implications
Besides these conceptual issues, these data have important pragmatic implications. In general, participants were more likely to
label an action as biased when a man derogated a woman or when
a White person derogated a Black person. Thisfindingsuggests
that a good many prejudiced actions will go undetected, and therefore, uncorrected if it involves in-group-in-group discrimination
or discrimination from prototypical victims against either other
victims or prototypical perpetrators. One is reminded of prejudice
and discrimination between disadvantaged minority groups (e.g.,
Latinos and Italians against African Americans; African Americans against Koreans) that goes unrecognized, untreated, and ignored by the media for years until it erupts into such violence (in
locations such as Howard Beach and Crown Heights in New York
City), that its presence can no longer be ignored. A complementary point is that these data also raise the possibility that those
perpetrators who are expected to have prejudiced motives will be
perceived to have prejudiced motives when none may exist. Obviously, false suspicions of bias are extremely dysfunctional in a wide
range of organizational, social, and educational settings. Given
these perceptual distortions and the limited attentional resources
often available during a busy day, these data suggest that out-group
members, particularly members of traditionally dominant social
categories (men and Whites), need to exercise care in what they
say and do if they are to avoid the resentment, low morale, and
interpersonal friction when biased motives are assumed.
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739
Appendix
Stories Used in Studies 1 and 2
Descriptions of Vignettes Used in Study 1 (Racism Study)

Vignette numbers refer to the story's position in the stimulus booklet
Filler Vignette 1: One coworker teases another for working so hard
and making him look bad.
Critical Vignette 2: A man jabs his feet into Steve's back at a rock
concert and comments that he doesn't know why they let people like
Steve into the concert.
Critical Vignette 3: An employer interviews and hires the best candidate for the job and comments about affirmative action.
Critical Vignette 5: The host at a restaurant tells a customer that the
restaurant will close early due to a slow night and then tells a friend on
the phone that it will be a busy night at the restaurant.
Critical Vignette 7: Two men waiting for the same job interview are
chatting when one says, "I wouldn't worry about it [the interview], I
don't think they will hire someone like you."
Critical Vignette 10; After reserving a motel room over the phone,
Ron drives to the motel to hear the desk clerk tell him there are no
vacancies, his reservation must have been a mistake.
Critical Vignette 11; A car salesman comments that he is surprised
that this customer knows about cars (given people like him) and comments that he expects this customer to be a feisty negotiator.
Critical Vignette 13: A man is turned down (despite his stellar
performance) as a bass guitarist in a rock band because he wasn't the
right type.
Critical Vignette 15: A police officer harasses a few males out on a
joy ride.
Critical Vignettes Used in Study 2 (Sorting Study)

Male Victim Stories
Vignette 4: Though qualified for the job, Mr. Johnson is told that the
company he is applying for is pressured to hire minorities. He is then
dismissed.
Vignette 7; A neighbor testifies that the children should be placed
with the mother because women take better care of their children.
Vignette 9: The perpetrator comments that men know nothing about

wedding arrangements.
Vignette 13: A neighbor enters the victim's house to tell him and his
spouse that their child was hurt playing in the backyard. As the father
goes to the aid of the child, the neighbor responds, ". . . (she's) really
upset. I think it's going to take a woman's touch to handle this one."
Vignette 16: A parent plans to switch her child from Mr. Jones's class
to Miss Tompson's class because women are naturally better able to care
for children.
Vignette 18: Mike, who is interested in applying for a job as a floral
arranger, is refused a job unless he wants to deliver flowers.
Female Victim Stones

Vignette 3: A house guest comments that the hostess ought to get in
the kitchen and "rattle those pots and pans, girl."
Vignette 6; When delegating assignments on a group project, the perpetrator comments that the women should take secretarial jobs and the
men should take the executive jobs.
Vignette 11; Whenfindingout that Larry's girlfriend is pregnant, the
perpetrator responds, "That dumb b
! She's really ruined his
chance to go to medical school now. How could she have let this
happen?"
Vignette 12: The car salesperson tells the wife about the color scheme
of the cars (and the easy-to-operate rear door), while he/she directs
negotiation matters to the husband.
Vignette 15: A chemistry major is advised to change her major to
nursing (and give up her ideas of medical school) during a family
reunion.
Vignette 19: A physical education professor comments that today's
class discussion will be about variables affecting coordination and
strength, a topic that the girls mayfinda bit frustrating and tedious, but
the boys will enjoy.
Received July 19, 1994

Revision received October 1, 1995
Accepted November 16, 1995

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Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

1996, Vol. 70, No. 4, 727-739

Capyrighl 1996 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.

Influence of Prototypes on Perceptions of Prejudice

In 1956, if a male coworker offered a female colleague a

(i.e., stereotypes) regarding prejudice influence our tendency to

INMAN AND BARON

Fiske & Taylor, 1991) than are nonprototypic instances. The

alternative views each seem to make competing predictions in

INMAN AND BARON

chology courses at the University of Iowa volunteered to participate in

* We had intended to explore the idea that participants may make

low-up comparisons indicated that the remaining three conditions

INMAN AND BARON

W/B, B/W, B/B, and W/W

pants. This is a particularly interesting finding, as all the recipients

Results and Discussion

INMAN AND BARON

a 1 if they thought the participant perceived some unfairness or

significantly larger in the female victim replications (.165) than

We computed effect sizes for each replication based on Rosenthal

Replication no. and measure

Nature ofthe Cultural Stereotypes

INMAN AND BARON

Where Do Prototypical Expectancies Come From?

longs to a historically low-status group (for that situation) or when

Participant Factors Influencing Perceptions

Other Factors Influencing Perceptions

more prototypically prejudiced actions than male victim stories

1NMAN AND BARON

intergroup violence: Testing the lower limits of stereotyping of Blacks.

Pearson, J. C , Turner, L. H., & Todd-Mancillas, W. (1985). Gender &

Descriptions of Vignettes Used in Study 1 (Racism Study)

Critical Vignettes Used in Study 2 (Sorting Study)

Vignette 9: The perpetrator comments that men know nothing about

Female Victim Stones

Received July 19, 1994

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