Social Identity Complexity Moderates the Valence and Emergence of Intersectional Stereotypes

Social identity complexity (SIC), the perceived overlap among one’s social group memberships, has been linked to reduced prejudice. We extend this work by investigating how SIC shapes both personal (Study 1) and perceived societal (Study 2) stereotypes of intersectional targets across two pre-registered experiments. Participants described targets who shared either two (Double Ingroup), one (Single Ingroup), or no (Double Outgroup) identities with them. Participants provided four traits they personally associate (Study 1) or believe most Americans would associate (Study 2) with each target. Stereotypes were analyzed using valence and emergence coding. Across both studies, targets sharing fewer identities were stereotyped more negatively and with more emergent traits. Higher SIC was associated with less positive personal stereotypes of Double Ingroup targets but did not significantly buffer against negative stereotypes of Double Outgroup targets. Additionally, individuals high in SIC perceived societal stereotypes as more negative and more emergent across all conditions. These findings suggest that individuals with complex social identities are less prone to ingroup favoritism and may be more attuned to emergent content in stereotypes, reflecting heightened awareness of societal bias without endorsing it personally.