Hard to Classify: Toward an Inclusive Framework of Racial Ambiguity

PurposeTo date, research on racial ambiguity has primarily focused on Multiracial individuals as its central example. Here, we reconceptualize racial ambiguity as encompassing both Multiracial and monoracial individuals who are difficult to racially categorize, arguing that ambiguity arises not only from multiple heritages but from perceptual uncertainty in classification. Methodology/approachWe applied the dynamic and interactive theory of person construal (Freeman & Ambady, 2011) as a guiding theory to analyze how both Multiracial and monoracial sources of racial ambiguity can disrupt the person-perception process. By reviewing norming data from several facial-stimuli databases, we argue that racial ambiguity—arising from either source—is a dynamic feature of person perception (Chen et al., 2021; Lakshmi et al., 2021; Ma et al., 2021; Meyers et al., 2024). Research limitations/implicationsGiven the lack of a clear operationalization of racial ambiguity in existing literature, the current framework defines it as the perceptual difficulty of categorizing a person’s race based on visible or contextual cues.Originality/value of paperMost research on social perception and identity assumes that perceivers’ categorizations accurately reflect a target’s identity. By reconceptualizing racial ambiguity, we challenge this assumption and position ‘miscategorization’ as a meaningful outcome of disruptions in the person‑perception process. This perspective opens new avenues for research linking racial ambiguity to downstream consequences in stereotyping, intergroup dynamics, and identity formation, ultimately advancing how scholars understand the construction and interpretation of race in social cognition.