ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2022
Minority salience and the overestimation of individuals from minority groups in perception and memory.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed.
- Reply to Kardosh and Sklar: Prioritizing domain-general explanations of misperception.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- The cognitive underpinnings of minority overestimation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- A reverse hierarchy theory of social perception.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Review
- Reappraising intuitions about consciousness.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Exploring Genetic Counselors' Experiences with Indigenous Patient Populations.Journal of racial and ethnic health disparities · 2025Article
- Judgment of crowds as emotional increases with the proportion of black faces.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Interracial contact shapes racial bias in the learning of person-knowledge.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- Humor as a window into generative AI bias.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Morality in the anthropocene: The perversion of compassion and punishment in the online world.PNAS nexus · 2024Review
- Identity and inequality misperceptions, demographic determinants and efficacy of corrective measures.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Asymmetric cognitive learning mechanisms underlying the persistence of intergroup bias.Communications psychology · 2024Article
- Do we know our visual preferences?Journal of vision · 2023Article
- Beliefs about minority representation in policing and support for diversification.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Reply to Gayet et al.: Minority salience as a social and cognitive phenomenon.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- No evidence for social factors in the overestimation of individuals from minority groups.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Amplification in the evaluation of multiple emotional expressions over time.Nature human behaviour · 2022Article
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5 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Our cognitive system is tuned toward spotting the uncommon and unexpected. We propose that individuals coming from minority groups are, by definition, just that—uncommon and often unexpected. Consequently, they are psychologically salient in perception, memory, and visual awareness. This minority salience creates a tendency to overestimate the prevalence of minorities, leading to an erroneous picture of our social environments—an illusion of diversity. In 12 experiments with 942 participants, we found evidence that the presence of minority group members is indeed overestimated in memory and perception and that masked images of minority group members are prioritized for visual awareness. These findings were consistent when participants were members of both the majority group and the minority group. Moreover, this overestimated prevalence of minorities led to decreased support for diversity-promoting policies. We discuss the theoretical implications of the illusion of diversity and how it may inform more equitable and inclusive decision-making.
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