Study: Brilliant white male characters more believable, some viewers say

Brilliant characters often play key roles in movies and TV shows. However, when these characters are played by women and people of color, some audience members dismiss them as unrealistic, even if they portray real people and events, a recent study found.

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign communication professor Matea Mustafaj found that people who strongly endorsed racial and gender stereotypes about intelligence were more likely to believe that stories featuring brilliant Black or female protagonists, such as the mathematicians that helped launch the U.S. space program depicted in the film “Hidden Figures,” were unrealistic compared with those featuring white male protagonists, such as the Bobby Fischer character in the film  “Pawn Sacrifice.” 

The participants viewed one of four video clips from American TV shows or movies that featured brilliant main characters and were asked whether they were typical of people with these abilities. None of the participants reported having seen the shows or movies used in the study.

Viewers who endorsed intelligence-related stereotypical beliefs rated white male characters as more typical of geniuses in the broader population than Black people of either sex or white women. Mustafaj and co-author University of Michigan communication and media professor Sonya Dal Cin reported the findings in a paper published in the journal Media Psychology. 

“We found an association between intelligence-related stereotype endorsement and decreases in viewers’ perceived realism across three different social identities — Black women, Black men and white women — for which high-level intelligence is counter-stereotypical. In each of these cases, the relationship was mediated by viewers’ judgment that the character was atypical of geniuses in general,” Mustafaj said. 

The more strongly that study participants believed in intelligence-related stereotypes, the greater their perceptions that brilliant characters that were white women or Black people of either sex were atypical in real life. 

These individuals’ perceptions of atypicality — defined in the study as how common or usual a viewer believed an event or character representation was — strongly predicted whether they found counter-stereotypical characters realistic. However, it did not affect their perceptions of realism with brilliant white male protagonists, the researchers found.

The study population included 1,000 people, 53% of whom were women. The group was more than 73% white, more than 9% Black, more than 6% Hispanic and included other races and ethnicities. All participants were from the U.S. and ranged in age from 19 to 77. 

To assess viewers’ beliefs in stereotypes about intelligence, they were presented with photos of 16 different faces — four each of Black and white men and women — and were asked to indicate on surveys the extent to which each of the people could portray six different traits in a TV show. Two of the traits were related to intelligence — i.e., intelligent and logical — and the remaining four — assertive, friendly, hardworking and emotional — were not.

All the faces used in the study were in the perceived age range of 20 to 35 and slightly above average in attractiveness, the researchers wrote. 

Some prior studies suggested that entertainment media featuring diverse actors in counter-stereotypical roles offered opportunities to mitigate viewers’ existing biases and stereotypical beliefs. 

However, the potential to change viewers’ beliefs may be undermined if they dismiss the characters or the plot as unrealistic. This may be particularly relevant with fictional stories or characters that viewers know are not fact-based, Mustafaj and Dal Cin wrote.

“When people view entertainment media with counter-stereotypical representations that conflict with their beliefs, they will sometimes find ways to discount that information and not incorporate it into their understanding of people in the world in the way that theory might suggest,” Mustafaj said. 

The current study also explored whether viewers’ perceptions that shows or movies intended to persuade them to think a certain way created barriers to potential changes in their beliefs. Those who embraced intelligence-related stereotypes and viewed clips about characters from nonrepresentative groups associated persuasive intent with the brilliant Black male character only, the data indicated. 

However, viewers’ perceptions of persuasive intent diminished their sense of realism with the white female character only, the researchers found.

“While a viewer might perceive the inclusion of a counter-stereotypical character as an attempt to influence their beliefs, they may still find the character or story to be accurate,” Mustafaj said. 

Despite the plethora of entertainment media available today and greater use of diverse actors in nonstereotypical roles, consumers’ likelihood of exposure to content that conflicts with their views may not be greater, Mustafaj and Dal Cin found in a 2023 study that used a different online sample of adults.

In that paper, published in the Journal of Media Psychology, viewers who endorsed gender-based stereotypes about intelligence were less likely to choose shows with characters that subverted their stereotypical beliefs. 

This finding suggested that the people who might benefit the most from exposure to diverse representations were unlikely to choose to view them, Mustafaj said.