Those Wonderful People across the Sea: Positive Out-Group Bias by Caucasians toward Asians

While individuals often favor their in-group, they sometimes favor an out-group, such as when Caucasians positively stereotype Asians' quantitative abilities. It is unclear, however, whether positive stereotypes of Asians extend into other domains and create a generalized halo effect that influences judgments on other attributes. To examine this, three studies were performed. In Study 1, Asians and Caucasians were equally biased toward an Asian's response to a calculus problem. In Study 2, Asians, but not Caucasians, gave lower grades to essay writers they guessed were Asian. In Study 3, Caucasians rated their ethnic group with fewer positive terms and more negative terms than they rated Asians on general personality characteristics. Results suggest that Caucasians' views of Asians are more positive than self-judgments of each group, and that Caucasians’ judgments about Asians may be influenced by a generalized halo effect.