**3.3 Survey**

This study was disseminated via the Qualtrics online survey platform. After informed consent, the participants were randomly presented one of 12 conditions based on manipulation of hero race (White Black Latinx Asian Arab Native American) and hero sexual orientation (Heterosexual Gay). Participants were asked questions about their perceptions of the hero's powers, character role (hero, villain, and sidekick), traits (intelligent, violent, rich, etc.), and socio-economic status.

#### **3.4 Measures**

#### *3.4.1 Validity of images with respect to racial identity*

To determine the extent to which participants accurately perceived the intended racial/ethnic identity of the hero characters, participants were presented with an item "What is the race of this superhero?"

Overall, 90% of participants accurately perceived the race of all superheroes. 5.7% of mistakes in race ascription confused the hero with a non-White racial group that was not their own, 1.1% of mistakes misattributed the hero as White when they were not, and 3% of incorrect responses were non-applicable or pointed out that the race of the hero was not stated. Within race conditions, 96.8% of participants correctly ascribed race to the White hero, 95.7% correctly ascribed race to the Black hero, 94.3% correctly ascribed race to the Asian hero, 93.3% correctly ascribed race to the Latinx hero, 85.1% correctly ascribed race to the Native American hero, and 77.8% correctly ascribed race to the Arab hero. The Native American hero's incorrect ascriptions were being mistaken as another Person of Color (13.4%), while the Arab hero was mistaken for another Person of Color (13.9%), as White (2.8%), and in other ways (5.6%) such as being thought of as multiracial.

#### *3.4.2 Stereotypes and attributes*

A list of stereotypic attributes was compiled based on previous stereotypes research [49]. Participants were presented with a list of 71 attributes (e.g. intelligent, peaceful, middle class, etc.) and were asked to indicate how they felt the attributes matched with the hero that they had viewed on a scale from 1 = Strongly Disagree to 7 = Strongly Agree. Cronbach's alpha for this index was.81.
