Posted on 06/09/2014 6:45:51 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Both common sense and a bunch of social-psychological literature suggest that when resources are scarce, folks tend to get more territorial and possessive, to stick with people whom they view as members of their in-groups more tightly than they usually would. An interesting new study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences used face-morphing to show that white people, in one experiment at least, actually perceive black people differently when primed to think about situations in which resources are scarce.
The study mostly revolved around getting a group of white respondents to react to a range of faces generated by morphing the features of a stereotypically Caucasian face with a stereotypically African-American one. Here are some of them, from most white (left) to most black (right):
The researchers sum up their findings:
Together, our results provide strong converging evidence for the role of perceptual biases as a mechanism through which economic scarcity enhances discrimination and contributes to racial disparities. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that perceptions of scarcity, whether based on one’s economic beliefs or manipulated nonconsciously, increased subjects’ tendency to view mixed-race faces as “Blacker.” Studies 3 and 4 revealed that when resources were framed as scarce (versus neutral), decision makers’ mental image of African American faces became “Blacker,” and this perceptual shift was sufficient to cause a disparity in the allocation of resources. These findings demonstrate that socioeconomic context can shape perceptions of minority racial group members, introducing a novel perspective on the widening of racial disparities during economic stress.
The second study is probably the most interesting. In it, the researchers quickly flashed positive, neutral, or scarcity-related words, then flashed a face that was 100 percent black or white, or somewhere along the spectrum at 25 percent intervals. (The word-flashing thing is an established way of detecting bias when people might be reluctant to admit it, and forms the backbone of respected so-called implicit association tests.) Respondents were asked to determine the race of the face.
Those who had been primed with the scarcity words were more likely to see middle-of-the-road faces as black — on average, faces were identified as black if they were only 35 percent to the right on the spectrum, as compared to 40 percent for the neutral and negative groups (interestingly, there was no difference between these groups). This suggests that in-group/out-group perceptions — which we know are correlated with all sorts of not-good aspects of human nature — were heightened when the white subjects were made to think about scarcity, to the point where they were identifying faces that were more white than black (stereotypically speaking, at least) as black. Another one of the studies carried this a little further, showing that people divvied up hypothetical money-pies less equitably to a fictional black co-player in a game when scarcity-priming was used.
The standard caveats apply: This was a lab setting; in real life people make these sorts of decisions differently; and so on. But given previous research on race, scarcity, and bias, it's a useful data point, and a useful reminder that scarcity has a lot of negative effects on human behavior — some of them a bit surprising.
Sun rises in the East because racism.
This explains why blacks live in fear of being beaten down or frequently killed and raped by whites if they get caught outside after dark, or in the wrong neighborhood.
Maybe this horrible economy has made taxpayers hostile toward the Takers for very good reason.
In our country’s recent history we’ve celebrated diversity in our population as if it were a good thing. However, one look at world history will show you that no country with a diverse population of different races, languages, and religion has long survived.
Countries don’t naturally form with a diverse population, and when in the past they’ve occurred it’s usually been as a result of armed conquest. These unnaturally formed countries have either melded together into a single population made up of one mixed race with one language and one religion or they’ve come apart, and they’ve usually come apart with extreme violence. The longer these diverse populations are forced to coexist with one another without mixing and becoming one, the more the hatred grows among them and the more violently they break apart, but break apart they will, or genocide will settle the issue once and for all.
Why is this and why can’t we all just get along? The truth of the matter is that we (the human race) just aren’t as civilized as we would like to think we are. Our species, Homo-sapiens-sapiens, isn’t that long “out of the trees” and the veneer of civilization is very thin, to non-existent, upon us all. We’re all carrying the genes that got us here and some of those genes carry a very basic survival instinct that has allowed us to survive thus far.
This most basic of all survival instincts is self preservation and it’s the one that warns us to be very wary of those who are different than us, our family, and our tribe. Those who possessed this survival instinct survived and reproduced, and those who had no fear/distrust of strangers didn’t survive. Over the years, this survival instinct has been referred to as tribalism, nationalism, ethnocentrism, racism, and various other isms, but it’s an inborn instinct carried in our genes whether we like it or not.
Scarcity causde by government intervention doesn’t help
Well put. Humans survived that banded together in groups. We’re pre-wired to associate those that look like us and fear those that don’t.
I’ve spent way to many nights/days on drinking adventures between both hard core “redneck” bars and the “hood”, and everything in between.
My ex-girl and I wanted to experience real life.
In the hood, we seemed to get along but were advised on multiple occasions that we needed to leave, for our own safety.
At the so-called redneck bars, everything was good until my ex-girl got so drunk and obnoxious that they wanted to beat ME up, just for being with her. I was always able to extract ourselves, but in the “hood” bars, there was always a sense of uncertainty. It was like “everything is cool”, “you guy’s are cool”, but you need to leave now if you value your life.
What you said.
Everyone knows this but have to pretend it's not true.
Acknowledging the truth is racist.
Very well put, FRiend.
Now if only more of our species knew some biological history, and had some common sense...
There’s no feeling quite like the flesh-crawling one you get when you realize you’ve wandered into to wrong neighborhood at the wrong time of day.
Exactly.
I always knew when it was time to leave one particular black bar in Oakland. Everything was cool when my white landlord and I went to lunch. (He had, after all, set up the black owner in business. ) If I stayed past 3 o’clock, though, I was sure to hear the words “Who’s the f’n honky?”. I took that as a pretty clear signal that it was time to depart (quickly).
There’s no feeling quite like the flesh-crawling one you get when you realize you’ve wandered into to wrong neighborhood at the wrong time of day.
Yes, and then there are those times when that feeling wasn’t instituted by your own self awareness, but by the awareness of others.
Now that will drive you to sobriety.
The article basically states the hard truth.
People are racist, and that is all there is to it.
In situations where people have little or nothing, such as in prison, it is the only thing that matters at all.
When I was surveying, my two running buddies who worked with were black and the other Native American/Mexican, during work we could sometimes argue race and race politics all day long (both were smart guys), with them attacking white racism, but every evening when it was time to go in our work clothes to a working class Houston bar, I would win the argument with asking them which redneck bar do we go to, black, or Mexican, they always insisted on the white one as we would shop the various bars in that part of town.
Did I dig at them and ask them “but why? those are redneck Texas cowboy and construction types”, “wouldn’t we be safer as a mixed race trio in the black or Mexican bar?” at that they would laugh, and if I pushed it they would flat out beg that it might cost all of us our lives.
Wonder what happened when they showed white faces to black people. {crickets}
people bad
desert tortoise good
And, no, being stopped and questioned by the police is NOT the same thing.
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