Unintentional Racial Discrimination Research

In this study, participants had to distinguish between hand tools and guns. The catch was that while distinguishing between each object participants were faced with either a white face or black face. There were two trials were participants took their own time decide and then they had only about a few seconds. Participants were not supposed to look at race while making their decisions. Results showed

Kwame Anthony Appiah's article “Racisms”, claims racism to be a view of racialism which are the “heritable characteristics, possessed by the members of our species, that allow us to divide them into smaller sets of races… these races share certain traits…” (Appiah). Appiah argues that humans need a definition of

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

The environment in which one is born in has a way of embedded certain ideas into one’s head. Through socialization and personal experience, these ideas are formed and many people are never consciously aware of where these ideas stemmed from. Implicit bias is an unconscious thought process that many individuals are never aware of due to its intrinsic nature. The United States of America, which may be a country rich in diversity and culture, is also a place that is struggling to overcome a history of racism, oppression, and prejudice that has been prevalent since its founding. Over time, we have experienced less explicit racial discrimination and bias but implicit racial biases seems to be a vast concern worth exploring in the

Moule, J. (2009). Understanding Unconscious Bias and Unintentional Racism. The Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 90, Issue 5, 320-326.

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.

Prejudice and Discrimination are an all to common part of our cognitive social being, but many social psychologists believe that it can be stopped, but only with the help of social conditioning.

I believe that all human beings are born unequally, with some who are given a life of privilege and the others a lack of thereof. These advantages or disadvantages may carry onto physical characteristics and reflect our ability of moral judgement as well, resulting in a sort of essential judgement indicator. Extrinsic racism runs on our tendency to judge for security; we, as logical beings, will interpret certain cultural or physical attributes as either inferior or superior. Translating and rationalizing a correlation between the physical characteristics of an ethnic group and their ability to make rational moral judgement is in itself irrational, proving racism to be an invalid method of analysis (Appiah 697-698). Kwame Anthony Appiah writes in his article Racisms that the immanent irrationality of the extrinsic beliefs that shape racism is what makes them truly invaluable. Many people use these extrinsic

Although race and ethnicity are delicate topics which are seldom discussed, it is vital in doing so as these two concepts are crucial since they shape much of our everyday interactions. A racial stereotype can be defined as generalizations associated with a specific race, nationality, or skin color. Prejudice is defined as the preconceived ideas of someone due to their group membership. Once these preconceived ideas begin to affect the way an individual is treated be it positive or negative, discrimination ensues. While racism is the belief that members of each race possess certain characteristics, or attributes that are superior or inferior, institutional racism transpires when the treatment of individuals based on their race becomes manifest in institutions (Steckley,2014). The

This has been documented by social psychologists for years. It is often assumed that processes such as visual perception work in the same ways however the paradigmatic understanding of the automatic stereotyping process highlights the mere presence that a person can lead one to think about the concepts with which that person’s social group has become associated. The presence or view of a Black man, for instance, can elicit thoughts that he is violent and criminal. Simply thinking about a Black person renders these concepts more accessible and can lead people to misremember the Black person as the one holding the razor. Merely on the sight of blacks can lead people to evaluate ambiguous behavior as aggressive, to miscategorize harmless objects as weapons, or to shoot quickly, and, at times,

For centuries, racism has become the universal epitome of culture, despite the efforts of various civilizations, such as the Western and European to combat these indifferences among people. A race is specific social group that can be differentiated through various ways, from facial features and hair textures, to social norms and habits that constitutes to that group. These differences contribute to our uniqueness and humanity. Because people can be grouped by any number of differences, Man, lead by his ignorance, perpetuated the issue once social-hierarchies began to develop, splitting society to its various groups. As a result, social disparity from one’s upbringing became the common tendency to look down, or look up at people of other

There has been decades of research examining what it referred to as “automatic categorization” (Nelson, 2005. p. 207). Researchers describe this as an essential trait in humans that is a primal response to physical characteristics, such as race, gender, and age, that automatically prompts emotional responses and prejudices. This type of categorization sets the

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)

The importance of the amygdala in social cognitions has been examined in both primate and human studies. Use of primates to study the social brain suggests that the amygdala contributes to social cognition. Kluver and Bucy made large bilateral lesions in monkey brains made across the amygdala, temporal neocortex, and surrounding structure. After the lesion, the animals engaged in hypersexual behaviors, unusual tameness, and a lack of knowledge about emotional stimuli. Lesions exclusively targeting the monkey’s amygdala resulted in similar, but more subtle impairments. This suggest that the amygdala may play a role in emotions elicited by social cues. Studies of the amygdala’s role in human social cognition suggest that the temporal lobes process socially relevant facial information from humans. Emotions from facial expressions, in particular fear are projected to the amygdala. Studies using FMRI to examine typical subjects and subjects with amygdala damage support this theory. Individuals with amygdala damage have difficulty recognizing facial expressions, specifically negative emotions such as fear.

Another attribute that leads to racial discrimination is the way that people find means to justify their actions by degrading the actions of others. For instance, during the Vietnam War, American soldiers assumed that civilians of small villages were aiding the Vietcong. Based on presumption, the soldiers felt justified to torture the villagers and destroy their homes. “If we are able to convince ourselves that another group is inferior, immoral, or dangerous, then we can feel justified in discriminating against them, enslaving them, or even killing them”. The American soldiers deemed the torturing of the village people reasonable by convincing themselves that it would help destroy the Vietcong. Self-justification is apparent even in today’s society. Humans are always searching for excuses to justify our actions towards one another.