Stereotypes of Social Class and Race in the United States: A Social Sampling Account

Across five studies (N = 7,075) we use the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to document a stereotype linking White Americans to the trait “rich” and Black Americans to the trait “poor” among Americans of various racial groups. Building on an unexpected finding of stronger White–rich/Black–poor stereotyping among third-group individuals (e.g., Latine and Asian Americans) relative to Black and White Americans, we hypothesized that biased social sampling from network homophily might produce this stereotype. Supporting this possibility, we observed that (a) contact with Black people explained racial group differences in stereotyping and, crucially, (b) exposing participants to counterstereotypic (Black–rich and White–poor) exemplars decreased the degree of stereotyping across a number of procedural variations and to similar degrees across racial groups. Overall, these findings suggest that social relationships are critical to understanding how individuals form and maintain stereotypes about groups that are unequal in wealth and status.