Racial biases likely to cloud economic decisions
April 26th, 2011 - 3:57 pm ICT by IANSWashington, April 26 (IANS) Psychologists have found that people may make economic and sensitive decisions based on unintentional racial biases.
“Decisions in the worlds of business, law, education, medicine and even more ordinary daily interactions between individuals, all rely on trust,” wrote researchers led by Elizabeth Phelps, professor at the New York University.
“In an increasingly globalized economy, that trust must be forged between individuals who differ in background, shared experiences and aspirations,” they added, the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports.
“These results provide evidence that decisions we may believe to be consciously determined are, in fact, not entirely so, and suggest that this may have a very real cost for individuals and society,” they note, according to a New York statement.
Employing a commonly used Implicit Association Test (IAT), researchers asked 50 racially diverse participants to rate the trustworthiness of individuals depicted in just under 300 photographs of black, white, Asian, Hispanic, and mixed race men on a scale from one (not-at-all trustworthy) to nine (extremely trustworthy).
The participants were instructed to report their initial “gut impressions”. Researchers found the participants’ implicit race attitudes, measured in a subsequent test, predicted disparities in the perceived trustworthiness of black and white faces.
Individuals whose tests demonstrated a stronger pro-white implicit bias were more likely to judge white faces as more trustworthy than black faces, and vice versa, regardless of that individual’s own race.
-Indo-Asian News Service
st/pg/vt
- Subconscious racial biases likely to shape trust decisions - Apr 27, 2011
- People with low self esteem more prejudiced - Feb 24, 2011
- People with low self-esteem 'more likely to be biased' - Feb 24, 2011
- Language also shapes our attitudes - Nov 17, 2010
- Language influences our implicit preferences: Study - Nov 04, 2010
- Indian-American student triggers Harvard probe - Feb 03, 2012
- Interracial marriages on the rise in US - Feb 17, 2012
- 'Looks may decide whether to trust a person' - May 16, 2012
- Blacks more likely than whites to die from live cancer: Study - Dec 21, 2010
- Teaching people to distinguish between faces of individuals of different races may help reduce racia - Jan 21, 2009
- Parent intervention protects kids against smoking initiation - May 03, 2011
- Non-verbal cues on TV shows promote racial bias - Dec 29, 2009
- US birth rates decline amid recession - Oct 14, 2011
- '1-drop rule' still persists for biracial individuals in our society - Dec 09, 2010
- New York, Washington, 44 more US cities not white any more (Lead) - Apr 15, 2011
Tags: asian news, business law, disparities, economic decisions, globalized economy, implicit association test, implicit association test iat, journal proceedings, judge white, law education, mixed race, national academy of sciences, new york university, proceedings of the national academy, proceedings of the national academy of sciences, race men, racial biases, sensitive decisions, trustworthiness, white faces