Black faces more likely to be seen as threatening
A research team led by psychologist Jenessa Shapiro of the University of California, Los Angeles conducted a preliminary study and three experiments to determine whether whites are more likely to perceive facial expressions as threatening if the face in question belongs to an African-American male. Their disturbing results are detailed in their paper “Following in the Wake of Anger,” which was published online Tuesday in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
In the key experiment, 36 white American college students viewed an online slide show in which pairs of faces appeared on a screen in succession. All were of men between 18 and 35 years of age. The first face had either an angry or a neutral expression; the second had a neutral expression. Participants were asked to rate each in terms of how threatening the person came across, on a scale of one to nine. Read…
This is an interesting experiment, but I really don’t think it adds that much to what people already know.
I think it would be much more useful if instead of just white students, there were other groups given the exact same test:
- a group of 36 African-American college students
- a group of 36 recently arrived Chinese or Indian foreign college students
Racism among white people is not studied enough, but internalized racism is studied even less. I think it’s important to teach people that racism is not just “something that some bad white people do” but is much more complicated.
but it does help argue for the importance of broad based media representations of people of color, and it helps show the psychological harm that can be done by absorbing stereotypical depictions of minority people
Yep. I was about to write the same analysis (if less coherently). I tire of the attention that facile “studies” get.
ITA with you Atlasien. Internalized racism is a biggie.
It reminds me of the debate on Dr. Chip Gates and how I kept saying how can an old man who walks slowly with the aide of a cane be threatening or abusive to the police if he did not attempt to hit them and did not threaten them with harm?