Perception of Discrimination: The Role of Statistical Information and Schematic Influences

Utilizing a newly developed theoretical framework of discrimination perception, this dissertation offers insights into the role of statistical information and contextual schematic influences in the perception of discrimination. Discrimination is often illustrated through statistical data, but how people perceive and process such information has been underexplored. This work addresses this gap by pursuing three main research aims across three chapters. First, the Summarized and Sequential Discrimination (SUSED) paradigm is developed and validated, which presents statistical information on discrimination and measures its perception. A total of six experiments (N = 1130) illustrate the effectiveness of the SUSED paradigm in experimentally varying the strength of statistical discrimination across multiple levels in a way that is perceivable by participants. Second, in a total of eight experiments (N = 970) it was observed that four known schematic influences on discrimination perception from previous methods persist in the presence of diagnostic statistical information. Third, insights into the driving forces behind the prototype effect in discrimination perception were provided in five experiments (N = 1168). Specifically, the research reveals support for the assumption that the prototype effect is primarily driven by individuals’ statistical expectations rather than moral evaluations. These findings provide a deeper understanding of the cognitive processes underlying discrimination perception, highlighting the importance of both statistical information and schematic influences. The insights gained from this dissertation offer a robust foundation for future research and underscore the importance of distinguishing between the statistical perception and the moral evaluation of discrimination.