Implicit (Unconscious) Race Bias and the 2008 Presidential Election: Does Obama Stand a Chance? -- Part I

For the past several months, Jeffrey Rachlinski (Cornell Law School professor) and I have been working on an article about unconscious race & gender bias and the presidential election. I think, maybe wrongly, that this work is pretty interesting.

One of our basic arguments is that Obama has a serious uphill battle on his hand, which I assume most people know. But I don't think people make sense of this through the lens of implicit race bias. Political scientists and political psychologists have found that whites tend not to vote for black political candidates. Thus, the success of black candidates is positively correlated with the proportion of blacks in the population. Where there are more blacks in an electoral area, black candidates are more likely to be elected to office. In areas dominated by whites, black electoral success is rare. Not all researchers have found an interactive effect of voter and candidate race. Those who have not, however, have indicated one major methodological shortcoming of their, respective, studies -- the possibility that study respondents were not honest about their opposition to black candidates. As such, a better predictor of the role that race plays in voter decision-making would be their implicit attitudes about race. With that in mind, let me make a few points:

An implicit construct is "the introspectively unidentified (or inaccurately identified) trace of past experience that mediates [the category of responses that are assumed to be influenced by that construct]." Implicit cognition reveals mental associations that people do not want to or are unable to report. This is because such cognitions might conflict with expressly-held values or beliefs, or such cognitions may be politically incorrect. Moreover, implicit cognitions reveal information that is not readily available to introspection for people with a desire to retrieve and/or express such information. Therefore, the key feature of implicit measures of attitudes is that subjects are often unaware that their attitudes are being measured and are thus unable to exert conscious control over their responses. The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is a popular measure of the relative strength of associations between pairs of concepts, including positive/negative attributes and race.

A large percentage of whites harbor anti-black/pro-white biases -- some 70-90%. That means that they demonstrate an implicit preference for white over black, manifest as faster responding for the white/pleasant combination than for the black/pleasant combination. These results are quite robust as seen in individual experiments with dozens of subjects as well as in web-based studies of hundreds of thousands of individuals.

Implicit racial bias is not a mere abstraction. It is linked to the deepest recesses of the mind -- particularly the amygdala. The amygdala is a part of the brain that is involved in emotional learning, perceiving novel or threatening stimuli, and fear conditioning. Neuroscience research indicates that whites' amygdalas are activated far more when they are subliminally shown black faces as compared to white faces. Moreover, the degree of amygdala activation is significantly correlated with participants' IAT scores. Implicit racial bias is also implicated in numerous forms of seemingly benign as well as consequential behavior.

One important study that should be mentioned demonstrated how "racialized" names trigger racial schemas. Researchers responded to more than 1300 help-wanted ads in Boston and Chicago with fictitious resumes. The resumes were crafted to be comparably qualified with the only difference being that half of the resumes were randomly assigned stereotypically black names (e.g., Lakisha Washington). The other half were assigned "white" names (e.g., Emily Walsh). The white resumes received 50% more callbacks. Jerry Kang (UCLA law professor) rearticulated these results in terms of racial schemas such that employers use the names of applicants to categorize applicants into racial categories. Once the names are racially mapped, some set of negative racial meanings are automatically activated. In turn, these stereotypes and prejudices result in fewer callbacks for blacks.

Implicit racial attitudes not only predict behavior, generally; they also predict voting behavior. I think most folks can understand that political conservativism is positively correlated with automatic associations between black/bad and white/good. However, among Democrats, those who hold the least favorable implicit attitudes towards racial minorities are nearly four times less likely to prefer a racial minority candidate over a perceived white candidate. This is compared to Democrats who hold the most positive implicit views towards a racial minority candidate.

A voter's implicit biases do not have to dictate how they will vote in the 2008 election or any other election. Individuals who harbor implicit biases, and who wish to be unfettered of those biases, may de-bias themselves and cast their vote based on where candidates stand on issues and not their race or gender. Current models of prejudice and stereotype reduction contend that the reduction of such attitudes require that individuals must: 1) be aware of their bias; 2) be motivated to change their responses because of personal values, feelings of guilt, compunction, or self-insight; and 3) possess cognitive resources needed to develop and practice correction. Of note, whites who are more internally motivated to reduce their levels of race bias show less implicit prejudice, whereas those who are more externally motivated display more implicit prejudice. Furthermore, repeated exposure to an admired black person (e.g., Denzel Washington) and a disliked white person (e.g., Jeffrey Dahmer) decreased the magnitude of automatic preference for whites over blacks. And this reduced race preference effect was not fleeting; it endured for at least 24 hours.

Read Part II here.

Comments

[BlkJDPHD]

I just noticed that at the end of my blog post is a link to part II. -Gregory

[BlkJDPHD]

I mention it in the blog entry, just take the Implicit Association Test, and see what you find. Go to www.projectimplicit.com. -Gregory

[TucsonEd]

I've been saying American's will NOT vote for a woman or a black man in large numbers.
In my work place I was repeatedly embarressed by racist remarks made by my white co-workers, yet at Diversity Training they claimed they had no bias towards blacks.
It was also interesting to note that when a black man took the position of our area manager you could no longer get promoted unless you were black. It goes both ways.

[Politiking]

I can't wait for the Part II. I believe it will come out tomorrow as soon as they realize Obama fell short on Super Tuesday.

If Hillary wins, tomorrow's Part II will be claimed as a vindication of this hogwash article/study.

[Politiking]

This article practically calls every non-black person who does not vote for Obama a Racist; a Psychological Racist for that matter because you may have thought or considered Obama but voted Hillary.

It would have been credible if they studied both Sexism and Racism and its influence on Election.

Talking about laying on the White-Guilt. This is hogwash. And they study this crap at Cornell: Supposition and Preposition to marginalize any win for Hillary Clinton.

[uheardme]

Blacks should really re-assess their loyalty to the Democratic party. Perhaps it is a "plantation."

[uheardme]

Based on some of the vile posts about the Obamas on this so-called progressive website, I think your numbers make sense.

[Lemeritus]

"I think, maybe wrongly, that this work is pretty interesting."

I'm still trying to make sense of what the parenthetical "maybe wrongly" connotes.

Well, rightly or "wrongly", we're doing something which will never be done quite this way again. When we're done, the issues of sexism and racism might never have quite the power to sway that they've had before. We're crossing a street for the first time -- we may cross it again and again, but without the same trepidation.

At least, that's what I hope.

[arvada]

i guess i better change my white vote for obama so my inner racist can come out

hogwash

[Lon]

This post raises some interesting questions. There seems little doubt, as the application survey shows, that there continues to be a lot of judgement based on race. It is quite plausible that this is mostly subconscious rather than overt.

HowardRoarke is right though that it is not clear to what degree this will carry over to cases in which the actual people are known, and so there are other things for our impressions to be grounded in.

I have no idea how big a factor this will be. My hope is that it will be negligiable because it will be strongest among the people that would never vote for a democrat anyway.

Romney's mormonism cost him more in the republican primaries than it would have in the democrat primaries if he had views as liberal as the views he pretended to have are conservative.

[hrayovac]

Mr Parks,
Clearly a good deal of thought went into your column.
Do you think it matters that so many years ago Colin Powell might have won the presidency had he run, according to polls? This is no way a rhetorical question for which I have formulated an opinion. I say might..I would have opposed him for his constant lying on behalf or corporate/war profiteers.

There certainly are ingrained attitudes. Mine is that black folks are more honest when they are being honest than white folks are honest when they are being honest..sound silly?
Obama '08

[RichardS]

I am a Black Obama supporter, soon to go out and vote in the California Primary, and what amazes me is how broadsweeping generalizations are presented as facts by all of you.

Yes, race is a factor with some folks, but just as important is the "Will he understand me question?"

Many younger, well-educated whites--even in South Carolina--voted for Obama because his life story and perspective more closely resembles their own persona--despite his race.
Just as Michael Steele got many of the votes of Republican White guys in Maryland because his life, history and perspectives resembled their own.

By contrast, many old-school black politicians
come from the Civil Rights establishment in cities and typically are not familiar with the standard White Middle Class suburban experience.

Is it mostly about race, or class, or Urban vs. Suburban/Rural, liberal vs. moderate/conservative (and almost all black canddates run as staunch liberals).

By focusing only on those whites who absolutely refuse to support black candidates under any circumstances we present a distorted picture of all of the nuances on a matter like this.

While this is only part one of your article Gregory, I hope the other parts refer to some of these other variables.

Also, to the folks saying blacks are only supporting Obama because we are reverse racists, me and many other blacks did not support the candidacies of Shirley Chisolm, Jesse Jackson, Carol M. Braun or Al Sharpton.
when they ran for President in the past.
Yet when we finally support Barack this is forgotten so some of you can convienently hurl the "reverse racism" charge.

Identity politics has run amuck, and that is why I, a moderate independent will vote for McCain if he faces Clinton in the fall.

And no whining and crying from you Clinton supporters when McCain wins 40-plus states against her. You had it coming.

I heard a poll says in a general election match up here in California, McCain and Clinton are dead even, whereas Barack beats him by seven points.



.

[lincat]

I'm white and I voted for Obama and some white people that I know are voting for Obama also. I use to think I would vote for Hillary but I think Bill has gotton mean and I don't want him in the white house. Also Hillary has been saying in all of her speeches that the Republicans have been bashing her for 16 years. How is she going to have a good working relationship with Republicans. I think that Obama is honest and intelligent and I hope he can get things done in a bipartisan way and restore our image in the world. So my voting for Obama has nothing to do with voting for a black person or voting against a woman. I think that a lot of people are feeling the same way and are excited and hopeful after 8 years of sheer hell that still aren't over.

[AnninCA]

This is one of the slimiest blogs ever.

He loses, and it's due to racism?

Oh go grow up.

The good news is that this blogger is just that......

Because this argument was dispelled firmly in the initial primaries. That is the point of those primaries.

Iowa was close. Obama 14, Hillary 13.

She won NH.

Nevada..she won the state. Delegates have yet to be assigned.

Florida, which is more age-oriented, she won hands down.

The point I'm making is that this election is not entirely upon race lines.

Obama has the "AA" vote, but she's not without her percentage, if you haven't noticed.

And Latinos aren't going for his bait.

So, get past the race issues.

It's honestly......a wash.

[tbone99]

Many white people veiw affirmative action as
unfair competition ,- I suppose these types would veiw Obama's position as president the same as giving an A.A. leader the power to continue the same economic partisianship based on race that whites have done for hundreds of years.And that scares them shitless!