Top-down racial biases in size perception: A registered replication and extension of Wilson et al. (2017)

Biases in the perception and judgment of members of race-based and ethnicity-based minority groups are prevalent, often resulting in detrimental outcomes for these individuals. One such bias is a threat-related stereotype, associating specific race and ethnicity-based social groups with aggressiveness, violence, and criminality. In the US context, Black men are often victims of such bias. Recent evidence suggests that threat-related stereotypes are also linked to biased perceptions, such that perceivers overestimate the body size of Black relative to White men, even in the absence of perceptual differences between them. That is, mere top-down social category information was sufficient to induce perceptual biases in size perception related to threat (Wilson et al., 2017, Study 7). Considering the novelty of this finding and its theoretical importance, we suggested a registered replication of this finding to assess its robustness across laboratories, participants, and social groups. We conducted a direct replication (Study 1, N = 280) of the effect reported by Wilson and colleagues, followed by a conceptual replication (Study 2, N = 280) that tested the generalization of the original findings to another population (Israeli residents) and a different target social group (Muslim Israelis) frequently stereotyped as threatening in this population. Participants did not overestimate the body size of Black or Muslim Israeli targets, pointing to a failed replication of the original effect. These findings suggest that the effects of purely top-down social category information on threat-related perception and judgment are less robust than previously assumed.