University of Virginia researchers, Jordan Axt and Sophie Trawalter conducted a study with the goal of examining the “attitudes and prejudice concerns on race-related behavior” (Axt, Trawalter, 2016. 8). Their findings and conclusions were published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology as “Whites demonstrate anti-Black associations but do not reinforce them”. Previous research has determined that, while Whites are more likely to associate Blacks with negative outcomes, Whites also attempt to appear egalitarian and unbiased. To expound upon this investigation, Axt and Trawalter designed an experiment that presented subjects with information that either aligned or contrasted with the commonly help stereotype associating black skin …show more content…
The majority of participants initially chose a white face. For the Black = Reward condition, participants who measured higher for explicit preference for Whites over Blacks were less likely to select images of Blacks towards the beginning of the experiment. However, they began to select the Blacks as the experiment progressed. If Black = Penalty, most participants correctly associated Blacks with negative outcomes. Yet, they were less likely to strengthen this belief, possibly because they did not want to appear as being prejudiced. Through an analogous test involving puppies and spiders instead of black and white faces, the scientists determined that participants were able to strengthen selections that corresponded to their initial disposition. For the final experiment, participants were informed that the black photographs were of immoral people and that the white photographs wee of moral people. Nevertheless, participants were still unable or unwilling to strengthen the association between Blacks and negative outcomes. Following the experiment, Axt and Trawalter wonder whether the participants’ unwillingness to strengthen racially intolerant viewpoint was due to conscious
In Vernā Myers’ TED Talk “How to overcome our biases? Walk boldly towards them,” originally presented at TEDxBeaconStreet, diversity advocate Myers argues that peoples’ subconscious attitudes are affecting the prospering of black people in society. She also proposes three ideas on how to overcome our biases, which will open a world of possibilities where everyone no matters his or her ethnicity or race has equal opportunities to succeed in this constantly changing environment. According to Myers, the first step to overcome our prejudices is to acknowledge the biases that subconsciously influence our attitudes towards black people. According to Myers, “our default is white,” this demonstrates that people are more likely to trust white people
The Ho, Roberts and Gelman article ‘Essentialism and Racial Bias Jointly Contribute to the Categorizations of Multiracial Individuals’ examined the joint effects of cognitive biases and social biases on hypodescent. Loosely, hypodescent can be defined as individuals’ penchant to categorize mixed race individuals into solely the race of the minority category (Ho et al., 2015). While previous studies have examined the effects of cognitive biases and social motivation on hypodescence respectively, the authors were motivated by the dearth of available studies that examined the effects of cognitive biases and social motivations jointly. Since both cognitive biases and social motivations require higher levels of cognitive processes, it can be inferred that the researchers would endorse a top-down view of perception, especially when it comes to racial categorization (Psych 240 Lecture 9/14/15). The researchers hypothesized that subjects who exhibited essentialist thinking—the belief that individuals belong to specific discrete groups in which members share inextricable qualities—in conjunction with high levels of anti-black bias would exhibit hypodescence, by categorizing Black-White multiracial individuals into solely a Black racial category.
Despite global increases in diversity, social prejudices continue to fuel intergroup conflict, disparities and discrimination (Amodio, 2014). What exactly is prejudice tendencies and how can one avoid it? One of the most common types of prejudice is racial. Racial prejudice is based upon negative preconceived notions of select racial groups with the assumption that all members of a particular racial group can be categorized with the same negative characteristics (Gassner & McGuigan, 2014). To better understand prejudice I took the “Test Yourself for Hidden Biases” questionnaire on race. I have to say that I was not impressed with how this test was used to find out if you have unconscious prejudice towards African Americans. The test
Dovidio, Gaertner & Kawakami (2002) found that a shorter timed response of implicit prejudice predicted spontaneous nonverbal behaviors, such that there was a negative bias from Whites towards Blacks, despite explicit self-report measures by Whites indicating a more positive bias. However, studies have shown that individuals can employ implicit motivational tactics to control these implicit attitudes to such an extent that these associations and negative biases are non-existent. Glaser & Knowles (2008) found that those who had an implicit motivation to control prejudice did not show an association between weapons with Blacks (as opposed to Whites) and the Shooter Bias—being more likely to “shoot” the Black individual quicker than the White individual. That is, participants were equally likely to “shoot” both White and Black individuals. It might be noteworthy then, to investigate the effect priming has on more specific stimuli such as names. Namely, this study aims to investigate how likely White individuals are to match stereotypically Black or White names to a description of an individual after having been primed with hostile versus non-hostile behavior, and whether differences in frequency of matching are seen in individuals showing high versus low implicit prejudice. Thus, it is proposed that priming individuals with images of stereotypes characteristic of Black individuals (such as hostility) will facilitate the activation of implicit prejudices—high or
People also acquire attitudes by socializing with other groups, like teachers, television, parents and even religious groups. “Social learning approaches to stereotyping and prejudice suggest that attitudes and behavior toward members of minority groups are learned through the observation of parents and other individuals” (Myers, 1996). Investigators have found that differences in self-monitoring influence the link between attitudes and behavior. Individuals who are low in self-monitoring strive to make certain that their actions match their principals, values, and attitudes (Snyder, 1982).If a child that was raised in a white family that has negative attitudes towards blacks, will have principals, values and attitudes against black people.
The Implicit Association Test (IAT) was done again in relation to race by Project Implicit or PI which supports a collaborative network of researchers interested in basic and applied research concerning implicit social cognition and hosts data collection for many online research projects worldwide, in addition to providing demonstration IATs, such as the Race IAT, for racial implicit biases for educational uses (Xu, et. al.). This test was taken online by 2 million people nationally and researchers suggest they are more liberal and younger demographic, indicating that if the older and more right wing Americans took the test at higher rates the results would differ. “The Project Implicit test takers trend younger than average, as well as towards liberal political beliefs and higher levels of education. But other research has suggested that older Americans past the age of 65, in particular, tend to have higher IAT (D) scores” (Xu). For unknown reasons the rate of racial bias was the highest in the southeast and eastern portion of the country, which could possibly come from the historical racial issues that occurred in these areas for decades, such as civil war history. The bottom line is that research suggests that white Americans including police officers have a high possibility of subconscious negative feelings towards minorities supported by a chart from The Reverse Racism Effect article by Lois James depicting the negative connotations felt by 96% of white participants in the IAT
Summary: The primary goal of this article is to explain the whole phenomenon of Black Americans disliking same-race peers for “acting White”. There has been little to no research of the “acting White” hypothesis and this study is hoping to fill the gap by providing the psychological framework for the types of traits and behaviors that Black young adults would likely view as such. The experiment used 2 target races and 2-target interest to further test this acting white hypothesis which ended up to be consistent with Saunders predictions.
Much of society would have us believe that racism is no longer prevalent in today’s world. But, if this is true, why is there still such a societal gap between black and white? One lasting aspect of racism comes from the association of “negative traits” with a
The first experiment conducted by Devine and colleagues conducted a well thought out experiment in terms of their technique. In all three studies the authors’ randomly assigned the participants to the experiments increasing the ability to generalize this sample to a larger population. In addition, the participants were asked to freely respond to the question, providing a more accurate knowledge of stereotypes because no cues were provided to influence the subjects’ knowledge. The anonymity of the participants also allows subjects to freely provide information without being judged resulting in an easier access to their private thoughts. Alternatively, in all three studies the authors recruited a number of white participants. This may produce bias in their results as stereotypes and prejudice towards blacks have historical roots in their culture. In the first study, the list of traits do not completely capture
Stereotypes, which can be positive tends to skew negative as people typically associate negative characteristics with individuals and groups and then evaluate them on it. The African American community throughout history has been on the negative spectrum in regards to stereotypes perpetuated of them by the media throughout film and television. It is widely known through investigations of race and crime history that people of color are often associated with criminality. Due to the media’s representation of the black community non-minority viewers use mediated stereotypes as a way to make preconceived judgments about them. Negative stereotypes presented by the media in reference to African Americans have detrimental impact that transcends generations.
Generally we want to approach decisions with placing ourselves in another’s shoes, however, seeing past how we view ourselves within our own racial group can again lead to stereotyping behavior.
Aversive racism can also be addressed with techniques aimed at its roots at both the individual and collective levels. At the individual level, strategies to combat aversive racism can be directed at unconscious attitudes. For example, extensive training to create new, counter-stereotypic associations with social categories (e.g., blacks) can reduce the insensible foundation of stereotypes, a factor of aversive racists’ negative attitudes. In addition, aversive racists’ conscious attitudes, which are already egalitarian, can be instrumental in motivating change (Aversive Racism - SUBTLE BIAS, COMBATING, 2011).
In order to develop a scale that examined not only the cognitive dimension, but also looked at the behavioral and affective dimension, she and her colleagues (Poteat & Spanierman, 2009) developed the White Privilege Attitude Scale. They felt that this type of research tool could contribute to the study and promotion of effective antiracist
Beyond Fazio et al.’s (1995) intention to introduce an unobtrusive method of measuring attitudes (in their case, prejudice against African Americans), they demonstrated the problems of reactivity and conceptual confounding present in the frequently used Modern Racism Scale (MRS). Such unreliability of explicit attitude measures puts the use of self-reports in social psychological research into question. Essentially, their study aimed not so much as to demonstrate how prejudice is expressed and manifested but to provide evidence for their own method of measuring attitudes as they are automatically activated.
After watching this study play out, it was obvious that children seem to be given messages about what is viewed as the good/positive race, and which is viewed as the bad/negative, race. Although it might be expected that each child would choose their respective race as the one they gravitate to for the ‘positive’ questions, and a different race for the ‘negative’ questions, what was unfortunate was that both White and Black children showed a bias towards Whites. Since children are so strongly influenced by their environments, and the people around them, we can assume that they are being exposed to implicit racism, and subconscious bias attitudes. As stated by Dr. Spencer, “We are still living in a society where dark things are devalued, and white things are valued.”