People tend to stereotype sexual minorities and black men as unusually young, driven by common cultural beliefs that these groups lack traditional values. This overlapping set of perceptions works to portray certain demographics as unique threats to social order. The study was published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
In the early 1970s, sociologist Stanley Cohen popularized the term “folk devils” to describe groups targeted by media-driven moral panics. Cohen analyzed how dominant institutions focused on youth subcultures and turned them into symbols of social decline. Through these depictions, young people were portrayed as actively rejecting established norms and threatening existing social structures.
Jamie L. Napier, a psychology researcher at New York University in Abu Dhabi, and his colleagues suspected that similar social forces are shaping modern stereotypes about adult minority groups. They predicted that other marginalized people would also be age-related stereotyped because of parallel cultural assumptions about their core values.
Previous psychological research has often focused on one component of identity at a time, considering race and gender separately. This idiosyncratic approach overlooks the subtle ways in which multiple social categories overlap to form disparate public expectations. For example, the behavioral characteristics that people associate with broad racial categories may largely match expectations for men, but cannot account for cultural stereotypes that apply to women of the same race.
To get a complete picture of public bias, the research team examined the combined effects of gender, sexual orientation, and race on age-related assumptions. Throughout a series of experiments, researchers asked participants to rate a standardized list of 99 personality traits. Participants indicated which characteristics they believed belonged to cultural stereotypes of different demographic profiles.
These profiles ranged from general categories such as young people and men to very specific intersections such as gay Asian men and straight black women. To ensure the analysis reflected broader cultural narratives rather than hidden personal biases, the researchers explicitly asked respondents what they thought the average American thought.
The researchers first established a baseline assessment of exactly what the public believes defines a typical young person and a typical adherence to traditional American values. Traits highly associated with young people included naivety, impulsiveness, loudness, and hedonism. Traits associated with high traditionalism included descriptors such as conservative, traditional, nationalistic, and loyal to family ties. The researchers then mapped these baseline assessments to specific characteristics selected for various racial and sexual minority groups.
In the first set of tests, the team compared traits assigned to gay targets to traits assigned to straight targets and individuals without a specific sexual orientation. They found that participants consistently judged gay men and lesbian women to have more characteristics associated with youth than straight men. Statistical modeling reveals that this overlapping stereotype is almost completely explained by a lack of traditional values.
Because the general public views sexual minorities as nontraditional, they casually associate sexual minorities with chaotic and energetic traits typically characteristic of young people. Labeling the targets as heterosexual was counterproductive and reinforced characteristics associated with aging and high traditionalism.
The researchers then introduced racial categories into the experiment and asked a new group of participants to select stereotypical characteristics of white and black groups. The results demonstrated that black men without a specific sexual orientation already possess as many characteristics associated with youth as gay white men. Black men are already burdened with cultural stereotypes of youthful misfits, so explicitly identifying the black man in question as gay did not change perceptions of his youth beyond an already high baseline.
This finding provides a missing link in old psychological research on implicit bias. Previous research has shown that the public tends to associate black men with aggression and danger, but that these biases diminish when participants are shown photos of older black men. New research suggests that cultural default assumptions about black men are inherently youthful.
A perceived lack of traditional values contributes to this overlap. The public tends to stereotype both homosexuals and black men as different from traditional American norms, leading to assuming that they share youthful characteristics.
When researchers took a closer look at the specific characteristics of these stereotypes, they found that there are subtle differences. Youthful stereotypes applied to gay men were largely driven by assumptions of nonconformity and high extroversion. In contrast, youthful stereotypes associated with black men were clearly associated with a perceived lack of integrity.
The final study expanded the experimental design to include Asian targets. Unlike other profiles, Asian men and women without a specific sexual orientation were assigned features that were much older than younger. Their cultural stereotypes were largely aligned with traditional values and framed them as a kind of anti-folk demon.
This reflects a historical media narrative that has routinely portrayed Asian Americans as a model minority defined by hard work, quietness, and strict conventions. In the mid-20th century, American media often emphasized the achievements of the Asian community, subtly suggesting that social struggles in the African American community were a cultural failure rather than the result of systemic racism. The model minority concept was structurally opposed to the folk devil. By associating Asian demographics as a whole with older, traditional characteristics, the public is distancing them from the youth-centered panic that defines other minority groups.
Even for this highly conventionalized group, the introduction of a minority sexual orientation radically changed their stereotypical profile. Once Asian targets were classified as gay or lesbian, participants’ choices rapidly shifted away from older, traditional characteristics and toward younger, nontraditional characteristics. Minority sexual orientation effectively erased the presumed traditionalism of racial categories.
The authors note that the current study has several limitations. The overwhelming majority of those surveyed were white and heterosexual, meaning that the data primarily capture the cultural perspective of the dominant social group. Future research should recruit more diverse sample populations to determine whether members of marginalized groups hold the same age-related stereotypes about themselves and their peers.
The researchers also noted that statistical models were generally less effective at explaining stereotypes applied to women compared to men. Lesbian targets were seen as younger than heterosexuals, but this change was not easily explained by a lack of traditional values. This shows that society’s expectations of femininity can complicate these rapid cultural judgments.
Experiencing these cultural assumptions can have real consequences for the targeted communities. The persistent association of minority and youthful characteristics contributes to the well-documented anxieties surrounding aging within the gay community and can lead to isolation and distress as individuals grow older. If society expects gay men to stay young forever, older men may feel less socially relevant. A deeper understanding of how society conflates stereotypes of sexual orientation, race, and age may help clinical psychologists support patients navigating layers of discrimination through disparate stages of life.
The study, “Folk Devils? Perceived lack of traditional values explains stereotypes of sexual minorities and black men associated with youth,” was authored by Jaime L. Napier, Maria Laura Bettinsoli, Rosandra Coladonato, Magdalena Formanowicz, and Andrea Carnaghi.
