MULTIPLE SOCIAL CATEGORIZATION AND THE PERCEPTION OF MULTIPLE SOCIAL IDENTITIES THROUGH THE LENS OF INTERSECTIONALITY

Abstract

Intersectionality theory can provide a useful research tool for social psychologists studying multiple social identities and social categorization. The overarching goal of this set of studies was to test the theory of intersectionality by investigating the perception of multiple social identities and category activation using quantitative methods traditionally employed in social psychological research. Study 1's major finding was that intersecting social identities accounted for nearly twice the amount of variance in overall impression ratings than did singular identities. Specifically, Study 1 examined how different combinations of three social identities based on race, gender, and sexual orientation differentially affected evaluation of overall impression and personality ratings. Different combinations of target race, target gender, and target sexual orientation affected overall impression ratings and personality ratings of honesty, emotionality, and openness. Notably, the combination of these social identities did not differentially affect personality ratings of extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. The goal of Study 2 was to investigate the possibility of simultaneous category activation, but did not yield significant results and therefore did not provide support for intersectionality theory. In Study 2, participants were primed with race, gender, or race and gender combined, and they subsequently completed a lexical decision task to measure category accessibility. There were no significant differences in mean lexical decision latencies by condition, indicating that the priming technique employed in this study was not effective. Implications and future directions for using intersectionality theory in psychological research are discussed.