FACIAL CUES TO RACE AND GENDER INTERACTIVELY GUIDE AGE JUDGMENTS

Social identities are inherently intersectional, and some of these intersections bias social perception. For example, overlapping stereotypes about race and gender categories enable perceivers to efficiently judge Black targets as male and Asian targets as female. Here, we extend these intersections to a third fundamental social category dimension-age. Two studies revealed that facial cues to race and gender interactively guide age judgments, such that Black targets are judged to be masculine and therefore older whereas Asian targets judged to be feminine and therefore younger than age-matched White controls. These effects were most pronounced for male targets, which is consistent with affordance theories proposing that intersecting race, gender, and age cues are particularly salient for men due to stereotypical associations with threat. Collectively, the present findings provide new theoretical information and highlight future research directions related to intersectional categories in social perception.