; I invite you to an implicit association tests (IAT test in English) developed by researchers in psychology from Harvard. In
Ditto for tests of the same kind as that of people of African origin. Are we all racists? Maybe not. While this experiment demonstrates the deep roots of automatic mental not very glorious. But researchers who have developed these tests were mainly intended to highlight two aspects of our intelligence. On one side there is what one chooses to believe the values that have adhered deliberately, intentionally. Of course there are racists, but (we hope) most people defend themselves from any racial bias. But this social consciousness is not of much use when judging a situation in the blink of an eye. In case of danger for example, there is no time to deliberate internally, you must choose quickly, with crude criteria. Discrimination is thus a natural mechanism of our unconscious instinctively associating certain words and images to the stereotypes it allows us to react correctly in most situations. In consideration of this reactivity, underground level, instinctive, is not very sensitive reasoning, or moral. He forged on the basis of prejudice ambient, including the less glorious, sexist or racist. The additional time to make some associations would measure therefore not the substance of our thinking, but the effort that we need to inhibit non-conscious bias. Besides more than half of black Americans who took the test IAT also expressed an automatic preference for whites.
This is actually not surprising that the hooligans were recruited from among people of all that is normal. The automated underground resume quickly when the above control Social relaxes or under the influence of alcohol. The crowd is inherently hateful, even if the individuals who compose it are not. Going back to racism, does not mean to be racist not be rid of his prejudices, but being able to put them deliberately muted in all circumstances. According to this hypothesis, anti-racism is not a state but a permanent control over oneself. To get rid of his prejudices should be constantly bathed in a very mixed social environment, where everyday constantly belie prejudices: not easy to implement.
Blond is beautiful
American psychologists have shown many children drawn characters, different from each other only by their skin color, and asked which he preferred, what was the sweetest, most wicked and so on. They are mostly associated with black characters and villains designated whites as being more friendly and beautiful products. Reflex community identification, suggested a mother (white) collapse of guilt? Not even: black children exhibit the same racial prejudices.
Since neither the family environment, or the reflex community are involved, it remains only to understand the cultural environment that detestable unanimously. We must recognize that most celebrities, business leaders, politicians and other media heroes are white or fiction. Yannick Noah, Obama and Nelson Mandela-cons are clear examples but too few to change this trend: black girls prefer Barbie dolls to black skin.
One can imagine the discomfort that may cause this discrepancy between his ideal of beauty and his own skin color. Especially as this preference is self-reinforced: we sell more dolls blond, blond hair and is associated with more beauty and more we sell dolls blond. The stereotype of the beautiful white skin is so strong that even in countries where they would be useful, we seldom find dressing for dark black skin. Our language has in fact crystallized this symbolic, since the "black" is a negative connotation (one day "black," hour "dark" magic "black", the "dark" side of the force, the funds' black "etc..) as opposed to what is white (mark with a stone "White", "white" as snow, etc..).
From stereotype to self-discrimination
The phenomenon is more dangerous than a mere matter of taste. In the 1990s, American psychologists have engaged in a particularly interesting experience : they passed the same test several groups of American students, white and black in different experimental conditions. In the absence of indication, black students received equivalent results to those of whites. If they were told that the tests were designed to measure their intelligence, their performance were significantly worse (while those of white students were identical). Finally, if they were asked to indicate their color on the copy, the performance of black students became downright bad. According to researchers, these results confirm how the mere prospect of racial bias may unconsciously penalize black students. When asked why they failed, students relied on their sense issue of not being up to par, but never could have the strange feeling they cause the mention of their color on the copy. How
discrimination talks
latest An experiment illustrates this phenomenon of self-maintenance of stereotypes and discrimination. Students were recruited in 2005 at an American university to play by computers on the role of employers and employees. In the group designated as employees, each was assigned a random color (green or purple) for the duration of the game Each round took place in several phases:
- First each employee chooses to buy or not training. It costs him money, but allows him to succeed more easily pre-employment test.
- then the employee must pass pre-employment (which is a random selection of two dice). It is more likely to pass this test if it was trained.
- Finally, each employer is proposing to hire an employee (random) and must make his choice based solely on its color and test results of pre-employment (he will not know if that was formed after having possibly hired).
At the end of each round is its accounts and statistical results are displayed for each color (% of% of trained and hired). A new round can begin. The goal of each player is receive as much money. Employers gain when they hire an employee who actually trained and they lose otherwise. Employees earning more money when they are hiring until they are denied employment. They must decide each turn whether to spend money in training is worth it or not.
the first round, the color information is obviously of no use for employers who rely solely on the test results for their hiring choices. It turns out that (by chance) the greens were slightly more educated than the purple. In the second round employers are spontaneously began to favor the hiring of green on purple. The phenomenon was then self-reinforced: noting that they were less than the green recruit to test performance equal, violets are more easily given up investing in training, giving reason to distrust of employers towards . Conversely, the green-to-close some stowaways have seen growing interest in training and have therefore increasingly invested in it, reinforcing the prejudice in their favor:
arbitrary and spontaneous discrimination reminds me once again the Kelvin water generator (described in this post ). In this device, there are not two people but two initially equivalent containers. Soon, one of them positively charged and one negatively without being able to predict in advance the sign of each container: another story of symmetry which breaks spontaneously, surprisingly. After the stunts, and scalable power, are the social stunts!
Sources:
The site Harvard on implicit associations
CNN's "Black or White" kids on race " available on YouTube (in English)
Steele and Aronson: Stereotype Threat & the intellectual test performance of African American (1995)
Fryer et al: Experience-Based Discrimination : Classroom Games (2005) Steele and Aronson: Stereotype Threat & the intellectual test performance of African American (1995)
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