On 27 Sep 2011 at 8:27, Mike Palij wrote: > A blog on the Wall Street Journal website summarizes a doctoral > dissertation research which was recently published in the journal > "PLoS One". The research shows that how one perceives the race of a > man depends partly on the clothes he is wearing, with well-dressed men > being perceived as being "White" and work clothes dressed men being > perceived as being "Black".
I think there's a problem with the general methodology of studies of this kind (of which there are many), or perhaps with their interpretation. The assigned task is not about perception. The subject is required to assess the race of a person whose skin colour is ambiguous. In the task, the experimenter severely limits the amount of information available to the rater, who will try to use the little that is available. I hope there's no dispute that, in general, socioeconomic status is higher for whites than for blacks. Consequently, if all you know about a person is that he has high socio-economic status (wears a business suit), then he is more likely to be white rather than black. So all a subject is doing is paying attention to this fact in labeling individuals who a) have ambiguous skin colour; and b) wear a business suit. They're just playing the probabilities with what they've been given. Reasonable, but less likely to get you an article in the Wall Street Journal than instead claiming that it's about perception and stereotypes, and that the research will help to reduce racism amd prejudice. If they really want to do that, perhaps they should work instead to ensure that socioeconomic status is as high for blacks as it is for whites. (I notice that only 1 out of 34 undergraduates who participated in Experiment 1 labeled themselves as black. Perhaps they thought this racial imbalance would lead to a larger effect, because blacks would tend to be less prejudiced against their own race. Contrariwise, I'd think that the results they found would be the same with black subjects. Unless they guess what the study is really about, which, come to think of it, should be readily apparent.) Stephen -------------------------------------------- Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada e-mail: sblack at ubishops.ca --------------------------------------------- --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=13040 or send a blank email to leave-13040-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
