The role of Afrocentric features in person perception: judging by features and categories

Four studies were conducted to test the hypothesis that group-related physical features may directly activate related stereotypes, leading to more stereotypic inferences over and above those resulting from categorization. As predicted, targets with more Afrocentric features were judged as more likely to have traits stereotypic of African Americans. This effect was found with judgments of African Americans and of European Americans. Furthermore, the effect was not eliminated when a more sensitive measure of categorization processes (category accessibility) was used or when the judgement context made category distinctions salient. Of additional interest was the finding that category accessibility independently affected judgment, such that targets who could be more quickly categorized as group members were judged more stereotypically.