Mohammad S. Wiswall
Research
Intro.
Here is an overview of my research program. The goal of my work is to constantly work toward applied solutions based in social psychological research. Hence, the lines of research here are constantly fluid and evolving. Feel free to contact me with any questions you may have.
Social Categorization of Racial Ambiguity
One of the most salient pieces of information in social interactions is the face. But what cognitive process, prior experiences, and beliefs shape our interactions with faces that are considered ambiguous? Here I examine how perceivers make sense of racially ambiguous individuals. However, my work redefines who is considered to be racially ambiguous beyond just Multiracial individuals—the traditional proxy to studying racial ambiguity. The theoretical (re)-definition I work from is: people who are hard to classify, generally. Specifically, I include pan-Asian ethnic groups (e.g., South Asian) and Latine groups. However, this definition is meant to be more universal to the experiences of actual people who may not prototypical of a racial category (e.g., lighter skinned Black individuals). My theoretical review, for this new definition, is to be published in Advances in Group Processes in November 2025.
Stereotype Misattribution and Meta-Stereotypes
Stereotyping is thought to be a clear process. Targets are placed into discrete social categories (e.g., Asian Man) and stereotypes are activated (e.g., Asian men are highly competent). Moreover, these stereotypes are influential in social decision-making (e.g., hiring) and interracial interactions (e.g., out-group avoidance, contact anxiety). However, most stereotyping research focuses on the discrete racial categories, and not the actually racial diversity and ambiguity that exists.
My research finds that racially ambiguous targets may receive mis-categorizations (e.g., a South Asian face is seen as Latine) and miss-attributed stereotypes (e.g., South Asian face also receives Latine stereotypes). In theory, this motivates a needed redefinition of racial ambiguity. In application, we may not be measuring the real lived experiences of racially ambiguous people who may be facing the consequences of stereotypes that are applied to their actual identity in addition to what they are mis-categorized. So racially ambiguous people may be dealing with additive discrimination and stereotyping, all in which may be consequential in social decision-making (e.g., hiring). In the next step of this work, I will examine how racial ambiguity intersects with leadership fit and contextualized to leadership domain (e.g., political, corporate, etc.).
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In line misperceptions, my work also examines the meta-stereotype incongruences between East Asian, South Asian gender groups and White people. We found that East Asian groups were more accurate about White people's stereotype expectations, whereas South Asian groups were not. Moreover, we identified unique meta-stereotype concerns for Asian groups such as appearance, cultural orientation, and affect. This is some of the first work to account for pan-Asian ethnic and gender differences in stereotypes and meta-stereotypes that may lead to intergroup contact behavior (e.g., out-group avoidance, contact anxiety). The next steps of this research will be to examine the meta-stereotypes between Asian American groups and other minority groups within the USA.
Racial Diversity, Identity Denial, Multiracial Identity and Wellbeing
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Currently under data collection, here we are testing the question: does exposure to racially diverse contexts (I.e., Hawaii) or racially homogenous context (i.e., the US Mainland), predict the psychological well-being of Multiracial Asian people? Moreover, we are measuring for Multiracial specific microaggression like identity denial experiences, and who is perpetuating the identity denying: ingroup members or out-group members. In some preliminary analysis, we have found that Multiracial people have experience more identity denial from ingroup members than out-group members, but higher stress is predicted by identity denial from out-group members. We theorize this may be due to Multiracial people being habituated to identity denial from ingroup members excluding and questioning their identity. Although out-group identity. denial may be less common, it may be more novel and thus Multiracial people may not know how to cope.