Introducing the Sociopolitical Motive x Intergroup Threat Model to Understand Intergroup Relations: Multiracial Categorization as a Case Study

Researchers have used social dominance, system justification, authoritarianism, and social
identity theories, to understand intergroup phenomena ranging from racial categorization to
political movements. The result has been a growing understanding of how particular
sociopolitical motives and contexts impact intergroup relations, without a unifying perspective to
integrate these insights. Using research on multiracial categorization as a case study, I review
evidence supporting each theory’s predictions concerning how monoracial perceivers categorize
multiracial people that combine their ingroup with an outgroup, with attention to the moderating
role of perceiver group status. I find most studies in the multiracial categorization literature
cannot arbitrate between theories of intergroup relations and reveal additional gaps in the
literature. To advance this research area, I introduce the Sociopolitical Motive x Intergroup
Threat (SMIT) Model of Intergroup Relations that 1) clarifies which sociopolitical motives
interact with which intergroup threats to predict categorization and 2) highlights the role of
perceiver group status. Moreover, I consider how the SMIT model can help understand
phenomena beyond multiracial categorization.