Washington, Dec 29 (IANS) Subtle patterns of non-verbal behaviour on popular TV shows promote racial bias among viewers, according to a new study.
“Today, racial bias is often revealed via more subtle means than outright racial slurs,” said study author Max Weisbuch, postdoctoral fellow in psychology at the Tufts University.

“We wanted to know how frequently people were exposed to those subtle patterns of racial bias via TV and what influence such exposure might have.”

“Sadly, we observed that non-verbal race bias is a typical pattern on scripted television shows. White (Caucasian) characters are treated better across the board and this has an impact on viewers,” said Weisbuch.

Black (African-American) characters elicit especially negative non-verbal responses, such as facial expressions and body language, from other characters, and viewers exhibit more racial bias after exposure to such negative responses, says the study.

The Tufts team studied the prevalence and impact of non-verbal race bias in 11 popular weekly scripted TV shows.

They found that characters on the shows exhibited more negative non-verbal behaviour toward black characters than to white characters of the same status, said a Tufts release.

Exposure to “pro-white” (vs. “pro-black”) non-verbal bias also increased viewers’ race bias, as assessed with reaction-time and self-report measures.

These findings appeared in Science.