Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
Cogn Res Princ Implic. 2021 Sep 6;6(1):61. doi: 10.1186/s41235-021-00324-y.
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.
四项研究共涉及 2552 名美国白人参与者，旨在调查基于头发纹理的种族表型的偏见。具体来说，我们探究了偏向欧美人种（直发）而非非裔美国人种（卷发）的偏见的存在和程度，以及其在预测涉及表型的法律决策反应中的特异性。研究 1 通过内隐联想测验（IAT）揭示了一种隐含偏好，即白人美国人倾向于欧美人种的头发纹理，而不是非裔美国人种的头发纹理。这种效应不能简化为黑人/白人的隐性种族态度，也不能简化为仅仅是偏好直发而不是卷发的感知偏好。在研究 2 中，表型（头发）IAT 显著且独特地预测了对实际法律案件的支持表达，该案件涉及基于非裔美国人种头发纹理的歧视。除了复制这一结果外，研究 3 和 4（后者预先注册）提供了进一步、甚至更严格的增量预测有效性证据：在这两项研究中，表型 IAT 与对黑人原告的支持相关，超越了两个平行的显式量表和种族态度 IAT 的影响。总的来说，这些研究支持了这样一种观点，即通过检查基于群体表型的隐含态度，可以独特地检测出种族偏见。此外，目前的结果为隐性社会认知背景下的对应原则的理论研究提供了信息：它们表明，通过分解表型等方式，使 IAT 适应于指数态度对象的特定方面，可以提高对群体间行为的预测。
