Priming Race in Biracial Observers Affects Visual Search for Black and White Faces

Racial identification is harder than ethnic identification for most people to avoid. To explain this, in “Racial Identities” in the

Defining someone by their skin color is an everyday phenomenon. Many people see a specific shade of skin and believe they know exactly how that person is going to speak, carry, and illustrate themselves. It seems to be embedded in one’s head at a young age to have specific views given by family, friends, and coworkers such as, believing interracial relationships are immoral, or it being acceptable to judge others according to their skin color. In the articles “Race is a Four Letter Word” by Teja Arboleda and “Mr. Z” by M. Carl Holman, the color of the authors skin plays a substantial role on how they are treated and perceived. Living in a society that doesn’t understand one’s culture can make their life extremely difficult.

The meaning, significance, and definition of race have been debated for centuries. Historical race concepts have varied across time and cultures, creating scientific, social, and political controversy. Of course, today’s definition varies from the scientific racism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that justified slavery and later, Jim Crow laws in the early twentieth. It is also different from the genetic inferiority argument that was present at the wake of the civil rights movement. However, despite the constantly shifting concepts, there seems to be one constant that has provided a foundation for ideas towards race: race is a matter of visually observable attributes such as skin color, facial features, and other self-evident

In Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s essay “Racial Formation”, we see how the tendency to assign each individual a specific race as misleading. This essay suggests that race is not merely biological, but rather lays more in sociology and historical perspective. Once we look at someone and say, “They’re white”, it brings forth all the stereotype’s that go along with that “race”, and once the race is assigned, it is assumed that we can know something about the person.

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

Disappointingly, this video draws out many valid points of how our society asserts one’s physical appearance or differences with what race they belong to. There’s this social norm to identify people by their physical features such as hair type, skin color,

The Cross-Race Effect is a well-documented situation that constantly occurs a large variety of memory tests_. In face memory and identification, The Cross-Race Effect has a serious impact on the criminal justice system, and due to eyewitnesses having an overwhelming amount of power on juries as well as the difficulty of cross-race face recognition, it has led to multiple common and devastating cross-race eyewitness errors_. When a witness is asked to make a cross-racial identification, the risk of incorrect or inaccurate identification is enhanced_. Significant problems such as Cross-Racial and Cross-Ethnic identification have resulted in high rates of false-positive cross-racial identifications_ and _states that eyewitnesses are worse at recognising cross-race faces rather than same-race faces, due to the fact that same-race faces are likely to be recognised more accurately than cross-race faces, due to how they are represented in memory. There is a large percentage of convicted people who have been wrongfully imprisoned for crimes that they have not committed, due to cross-race eyewitness misidentifications being the determining factor_.

I totally agree with the assertion of A. Blemenfeld that those identification aspects that capture my attention are the targets of others people’s attention that is reflected back to me (Blumenfeld, 2010). Even though, I was always open-minded and had a friendly relationship with almost anybody, I felt that my racial identity was a part of a problem. As I was the only student of color, I felt alienated sometimes.

For instance, 9 out of 10 White respondents took more time to distinguish lovely words(such as peace and heaven) as "great" when given Black-sounding names, for example, (Latisha and Darnell) instead of with White-sounding names(such as Katie and Ian). Morever, individuals who all the more rapidly connect great things with White names or faces likewise are the snappiest to see outrage and evident risk in Black face.

In adults, three variables were used to test the other-race effect on facial recognition: orientation, face type and ethnicity. Adults at least 18 years of age and older (N = 64) were asked to recognize upright and inverted adult and infant faces. Recognition was tested using a forced-choice procedure. 4 slides were shown during a trial to make sure participants understood the instructions. Next, participants viewed 48 slides with faces alternating between adult female and infant faces; first segment each face was upright, second segment faces were inverted. The results of the study found that there was no significance between race and facial recognition. Other research conducted has shown that race does in fact have a significant effect on facial recognition.

Biracial Self-Identification: Impact on Trait anxiety, social anxiety and depression is a journal article that discusses the causes of social anxiety and depression amongst biracial individuals. This scientific study was designed to determine if the ethnicity that biracial individuals chose to identify themselves as impacted their psychological test scores. This study was also designed to observe if the pressure from other individuals of which race is accepted upon a biracial person causes high or low test scores on the psychological test. This article discusses the different affects that being pressured to choose an identity has on a biracial individual.

The article Psychological Advantages of Strong Identifying As Biracial introduces the idea of multiracial people and what they identify themselves as.The article Psychological Advantages of Strong Identifying As Biracial uses facts to explain how they fit in with people that are not multiracial. Multiracial people have flexible identities is a powerful example that illustrates biracial people have no problem blending into our society. Another important idea from the article Psychological Advantages of Strong Identifying As Biracial is “Multiracial people are proud to be multiracial which demonstrates they are proud of who they are and have no problem expressing it. The examples found in the article Psychological Advantages of Strong Identifying

The steady increase of biracial children has raised questions about the possible unique phases of identity development for these individuals. Since the social acknowledgement of biracial people, numerous researchers have posed questions about whether or not the experience of identity development for biracial persons is unique. Because biracial people do not fit into any one racial category, their racial identity and racial status differs from other minority or non-White groups. There are many factors that influence the process of forming a biracial identity including race, culture, ethnicity, family, and the social and historical contexts biracial people are born and raised within. According to Stone’s article (2009), race, culture, and ethnicity may sometimes be difficult to negotiate for mixed race individuals and their

The experiments design was conducted well. Since the experimenters chose all Caucasian newborn infants, it was a good idea to use Caucasian faces because that is a face they are most used to. Also, it was a good idea to use female faces instead of males faces because the newborn infant spend months in their mothers stomach and have a connection with females since the females are the parents who care for the newborn infants the most and are more likely to stay at home with them. For example, females breast feeding newborn infants and staying at home with the newborn infant longer after their maternity leave is over. Once it was known that attractive faces are preferred over unattractive faces, seeing if the orientation of the face changes the looking time is important.

Overly, the model provides coherent explanation of many kind of information about faces and how they relate to each other. It provides evidence about significant differences in processing of familiar and unfamiliar faces. Nonetheless there are limitations. For instance, there is not enough information about processing unfamiliar faces. Burton et al. (1999)