Mental Representations of Middle Eastern Versus Ethnically Unspecified Women and Men Reveal How Ethnicity and Gender Constrain Each Other

Mental representations of other people are informed by their intersecting social identities. In two experiments (N total = 1,592 participants), we tested whether ethnicity and binarized gender interact to shape how Middle Eastern (vs. ethnically unspecified) women and men are mentally represented. Results revealed that spontaneously generated character and facial appearance representations of Middle Eastern women differed from those of Middle Eastern men (i.e., more trustworthy and less dominant in character and facial appearance) and ethnically unspecified women (i.e., less trustworthy in character and facial appearance, less dominant in character but more dominant in facial appearance). Notably, these results differed somewhat from self-reported impressions, suggesting some, but not complete, correspondence between spontaneous and deliberate reactions to these groups. This work complements growing evidence that mental representations of ethnicity and gender constrain each other.