Specificity and incremental predictive validity of implicit attitudes: studies of a race-based phenotype

Benedek Kurdi,Mahzarin R Banaji,Timothy J Carroll

doi:10.1186/s41235-021-00324-y

Benedek Kurdi, Mahzarin R Banaji + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-021-00324-y

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Abstract

Four studies involving 2552 White American participants were conducted to investigate bias based on the race-based phenotype of hair texture. Specifically, we probed the existence and magnitude of bias in favor of Eurocentric (straight) over Afrocentric (curly) hair and its specificity in predicting responses to a legal decision involving the phenotype. Study 1 revealed an implicit preference, measured by an Implicit Association Test (IAT), favoring Eurocentric over Afrocentric hair texture among White Americans. This effect was not reducible to a Black/White implicit race attitude nor to mere perceptual preference favoring straight over curly hair. In Study 2, the phenotype (hair) IAT significantly and uniquely predicted expressions of support in response to an actual legal case that involved discrimination on the basis of Afrocentric hair texture. Beyond replicating this result, Studies 3 and 4 (the latter preregistered) provided further, and even more stringent, evidence for incremental predictive validity: in both studies, the phenotype IAT was associated with support for a Black plaintiff above and beyond the effects of two parallel explicit scales and, additionally, a race attitude IAT. Overall, these studies support the idea that race bias may be uniquely detected by examining implicit attitudes elicited by group-based phenotypicality, such as hair texture. Moreover, the present results inform theoretical investigations of the correspondence principle in the context of implicit social cognition: they suggest that tailoring IATs to index specific aspects of an attitude object (e.g., by decomposition of phenotypes) can improve prediction of intergroup behavior.

Highlights

Four studies involving 2552 White American participants were conducted to investigate bias based on the racebased phenotype of hair texture
Implicit Association Tests (IATs), self trait judgments, and legal judgments were scored such that higher scores indicate higher levels of race bias against Afrocentric hair texture and/or African American targets
Study 1A established an implicit preference of considerable magnitude for Eurocentric hair texture over Afrocentric hair texture among White American participants

Summary

Introduction

Four studies involving 2552 White American participants were conducted to investigate bias based on the racebased phenotype of hair texture. Skin tone independently produces variation in judgment: dark-skinned Black targets evoke more negative cultural stereotypes in a free response procedure than lightskinned Black targets (Maddox & Gray, 2002), and priming police officers with crime increases the likelihood of their misremembering a Black target to be more Afrocentric in facial features (Eberhardt et al, 2004) In addition to such laboratory experiments, correlational work using archival data has provided evidence for a relationship between more Eurocentric features and better educational attainment (Keith & Herring, 1991) and between Afrocentric features and the probability of receiving a death sentence in criminal cases involving White victims (Eberhardt et al, 2006). Racial category membership and racial phenotypicality can become dissociated from each other and independently impact social behavior

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