Black-White Differences in Nonverbal Behavior in an Interview Setting

The majority of systematic research on nonverbal behavior has used white college students as subjects. The present investigation examined both white and black subjects'nonverbal behavior and also independently varied the race of the person with whom the subject interacted. The experimental setting was an actual employment interview. Twenty black and 20 white female undergraduates were individually interviewed by either a black or white male interviewer. White subjects tended to maintain more visual interaction with interviewers of both races than did black subjects. Moreover, black interviewers were visually interacted with less, and given shorter glances. Racial, in contrast to nonracial, questions elicited longer glances; and subjects hesitated longer before answering them.     

Color makes a difference: two-dimensional object naming in literate and illiterate subjects

Previous work has shown that illiterate subjects are better at naming two-dimensional representations of real objects when presented as colored photos as compared to black and white drawings. This raises the question if color or textural details selectively improve object recognition and naming in illiterate compared to literate subjects. In this study, we investigated whether the surface texture and/or color of objects is used to access stored object knowledge in illiterate subjects. A group of illiterate subjects and a matched literate control group were compared on an immediate object naming task with four conditions: color and black and white (i.e., grey-scaled) photos, as well as color and black and white (i.e., grey-scaled) drawings of common everyday objects. The results show that illiterate subjects perform significantly better when the stimuli are colored and this effect is independent of the photographic detail. In addition, there were significant differences between the literacy groups in the black and white condition for both drawings and photos. These results suggest that color object information contributes to object recognition. This effect was particularly prominent in the illiterate group.     

Black and white adolescent males' perceptions of ideal body size

A stratified random sample of 496 white (n =337) and black (n =159) adolescent males participated in a survey of ideal body size beliefs. Responses to the questionnaire and a series of nine female and male body size drawings were analyzed using the General Linear Model Analysis of Variance and Categorical Modeling. Using SES and race as independent variables and BMI (kg/m ²)as a covariate, black males were found to prefer a significantly heavier ideal female body size than whites (p <.0001) and also perceived that their parents, female friends, and male friends would select as ideal a significantly heavier female body size than white subjects. Black subjects were 1.9 times (O.R. = 1.88, 95% C.I. = 1.44, 2.47) more likely to select a larger ideal female hip/buttocks size and 1.7 times (O.R. = 1.72, 95% C.I. = 1.25, 2.37) more likely to choose a larger ideal female thigh size than white subjects. Our findings seem to point toward a greater approval and social acceptance of a larger body size for black females by black males. This study was conducted by the University of South Carolina School of Public Health and funded in part by ASPH-CDC Cooperative Agreement, Center for Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta, Georgia.     

INTERVIEWER DECISIONS AS A FUNCTION OF APPLICANT RACE, APPLICANT QUALITY AND INTERVIEWER PREJUDICE

This study investigated the impact of the racial attitudes of interviewers, applicant race, and applicant quality on the ratings given applicants. This study used a posttest-only control group approach which was analyzed by a 2 × 2 × 2 factorial ANOVA design. Subjects were 176 white business administration students from a large urban university.
Videotapes of simulated job interviews were produced to control applicant quality and applicant race. A black male and a white male each role-played both a high and a low quality applicant. The main effect for applicant quality was significant, accounting for 50% of the variance in applicant ratings. The main effect for race was significant but not in the predicted direction. Black applicants were rated higher than white applicants. While high quality applicants were rated highly regardless of race, the low quality black applicant was rated higher than the comparably performing white applicant. The interaction of race and interviewers' level of prejudice was significant but not in the predicted direction. Highly prejudiced subjects rated black applicants higher than white applicants. The implications of these results for further research were discussed.     

General and specific self-esteem in late adolescent students: race x gender x SES effects

This study assessed the effects of gender, race, and social class on the general and area-specific self-esteem of high school students. One hundred and ninety-five high school students served as subjects in a 2 (gender: male, female) X 2 (race: black, white) X 3 (social class: low, middle and high) factorial design. The Rosenberg General Self-Esteem, the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept, and the Brookover Self-Concept of Ability and School Achievement scales were the measures of either general or specific self-esteem. Females, whites, and lower social class adolescents were consistently lower in their self-esteem scores than were males, blacks, and upper social class teenagers, respectively. White females were found to be lower in general and happiness self-esteem than all other gender by race subgroups. High SES white students were lower on the happiness and behavior self-esteem measures than black students and white middle-class students. Black males and white females were less confident in their school ability than were black females and white males.     

Mock Juror Attribution of Criminal Responsibility: Effects of Race and the Guilty But Mentally III (GBMI) Verdict Option1

The present study examined three questions relevant to the insanity defense: Does the availability of the alternative verdict “Guilty But Mentally III” affect juror assessment of criminal responsibility? Does race of defendant significantly affect juror decision-making about who should be acquitted under the insanity defense? And does race of victim significantly influence how jurors decide their final insanity defense verdicts? Race of defendant (black or white), race of victim (black or white), and verdict choice set [(Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity (NGRI), Guilty, and Not Guilty) vs. (Guilty but Mentally III (GBMI), NGRI, Guilty, and Not Guilty)] were systematically varied. The mock-trial was presented to 197 college student subjects by means of an audiotape and slide show. Following the re-enacted trial, subjects answered a series of questions regarding the case. The main dependent variable was the rendered verdict. Both χ²loglinear analyses revealed a significant relationship between race of defendant and verdict such that the defendant, when presented as black, was acquitted NGRI significantly more often than when the defendant was presented as white. No significant effects were found for race of victim. The availability of the GBMI verdict option resulted in a twofold effect: There was a two-thirds reduction in both NGRI and straight guilty verdicts when the GBMI verdict option was made available. The implications for legal policy and future research are discussed.     

Discriminating between alcoholic and nonalcoholic blacks and whites on the MMPI

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the influence of race (black, white) on the MMPI performance of alcoholic and nonalcoholic inpatients. Subjects were 73 (27 black, 46 white) male alcoholic inpatients and 73 (27 black, 46 white) male nonalcoholic psychiatric inpatients. While black and white alcoholics failed to differ on the MMPI, white alcoholics presented as less disturbed and black alcoholics as less defensive and distressed, compared to their respective nonalcoholic counterparts. Furthermore, only white alcoholics were accurately identified by the MMPI 2-4/4-2 high-point pair combination and only white alcoholics achieved more high-point pairs containing Scale 4 relative to nonalcoholic controls.     

Do “They all look alike?” The Effect of Race,Sex, Experience,and Attitudes on the Ability to Recognize Faces1

Legal scholars and social scientists have long assumed that there is a racial bias in facial recognition and eyewitness identifications, with persons being much more accurate in identifying persons of their own race, but corroborative research evidence is scanty. In the present study, black and white college students attempted to identify which of a series of facial photos they had seen earlier. As predicted, a strong race of subject by race of picture interaction was found; both black and white subjects were significantly more accurate in identifying pictures of their own race than pictures of the other race. However, contrary to assumptions made by many legal and criminal justice personnel, neither racial attitude nor reported amount of quality of interracial experience were related to ability to recognize pictures. Implications for eyewitness identifications of these and related findings are discussed.     

Reverse Discrimination and Aggressive Behavior

Aggression of each of 32 white male and female university students toward an opponent who had just defeated him in a competition was assessed in a 2 x 2 experimental design in which the winning opponent was either a black or a white and the loss was for one of two reasons: because the opponent 1) was economically deprived or 2) had superior ability. It was assumed that those S s who had lost to a black opponent because this person was economically deprived experienced reverse discrimination based on race. Results indicated that white S s were more aggressive toward a black when the loss was based on economic deprivation (reverse discrimination) than towards a white when the loss was due to economic deprivation (an arbitrary loss but not based on race), whereas white S s were less aggressive towards a black opponent than towards a white opponent when the S s lost because of the other's superior ability. The practical and theoretical implications of these results are discussed.     

Perceived Similarity in Interracial Attitudes and Behaviors: The Effects of Belief and Dialect Style1

The present study investigated the role of two types of similarity (attitude similarity and dialect style) on interpersonal attitudes and behaviors in a face-to-face interaction. Sixty subjects interacted with an experimental confederate who was either black or white, spoke either standard white English or a black dialect, and whom the subject perceived as agreeing or disagreeing on an attitude questionnaire. Subjects' nonverbal behavior during the interaction was coded using Mehrabian's scheme of immediacy cues, and attitudes toward the confederate were measured via questionnaire following the interaction. Subjects showed more favorable attitudes toward the white than black confederate and had more positive attitudes toward the black confederate when she spoke white English. Contrary to previous findings, no significant main effect was found for belief similarity. While no significant mean differences were obtained between conditions for the nonverbal measures, correlations between these measures and a measure of likinglfriendship indicated that this relationship differed depending on the race of the confederate and the dialect used. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for the role of perceived similarity in interracial interaction.     

An Investigation of the Contact Hypothesis of the Own-race Bias in Face Recognition

Although previous studies have demonstrated that faces of one's own race are recognized more accurately than are faces of other races, the theoretical basis of this effect is not clearly understood at present. The experiment reported in this paper tested the contact hypothesis of the own-race bias in face recognition using a cross-cultural design. Four groups of subjects were tested for their recognition of distinctive and typical own-race and other-race faces: (1) black Africans who had a high degree of contact with white faces, (2) black Africans who had little or no contact with white faces, (3) white Africans who had a high degree of contact with black faces, and (4) white Britons who had little contact with black faces. The results showed that although on the whole subjects recognized own-race faces more accurately and more confidently than they recognized other-race faces, the own-race bias in face recognition was significantly smaller among the high-contact subjects than it was among the low-contact subjects. Also, although high-contact black and white subjects showed significant main effects of distinctiveness in their recognition of faces of both races, low-contact black and white subjects showed significant main effects of distinctiveness only in their recognition of own-race faces. It is argued that these results support the contact hypothesis of the own-race bias in face recognition and Valentine's multidimensional space (MDS) framework of face encoding.     

Minimizing Intergroup Contact: An Urban Field Study

This study examines the effects of observing the negative or neutral behavior of a black or a white couple on white subjects' subsequent social interactions with either a black or a white person. Subjects encountered either a black or a white couple having an argument or a neutral interaction. Shortly thereafter the subjects were approached by either a black or white male confederate who asked for directions. A 2 (Couple's Race) × 2 (Couple's Behavior) × 2 (Confederate's Race) analysis of variance revealed that white subjects interacted with a black confederate for a shorter period of time after having observed a black couple's argument.     

Factors related to helping behavior in preschool-age children

The present two studies were conducted to assess the prosocial behaviors (comforting and helping) of preschool children as a function of the race and gender of the subjects and peer confederates. Results indicated that black, preschool-age males demonstrated prosocial behaviors more often than did white males and females. These findings were discussed in terms of the confounding between race of child and father absence; that is, a disproportionate number of black children were living in fatherless homes. It was suggested that single parents may turn to their opposite-sex child for both emotional and physical support and thus the child learns comforting and helping behaviors early in life. Support for this suggestion was derived from the finding that the number of household chores assigned to a child was positively related to helping behavior. The present results also showed that comforting and helping behaviors were negatively related, suggesting that prosocial acts are not a function of a general personality trait but are situationally specific. Finally, it was noted that race and gender of the peer confederate were not factors in determining the prosocial responses of the subjects.     

Effects of racial prejudice and race of target on aggression

Three studies were conducted to investigate the relationship between prejudice and physical aggression using the competitive reaction time paradigm. In Study 1, high and low prejudiced subjects competed against either a black or white opponent. The race of the opponent did not differentially affect the aggressive behavior of either high or low prejudiced subjects. In Study 2, high prejudiced subjects were confronted with a competitor who behaved in a nonaggressive fashion. Under these conditions, the high prejudiced subjects attacked the black target more than the white target. In Study 3, high prejudiced subjects competed against an opponent who communicated nonaggressive intentions. The subjects behaved in a nonaggressive manner toward both the black and the white target. It was proposed that prejudice facilitates indiscriminate aggression in the presence of a clear threat and selective aggression in the presence of ambiguous threat.     

Race × class stereotypes of women

Forty-four undergraduates assigned traditional stereotyping adjectives to middle-class black, middle-class white, lower-class black, and lower-class white female stimulus persons. A multivariate analysis of variance revealed that these Race × Class stereotypes of women differed significantly by race and by social class, but there was no Race × Class interaction. The stereotype of white women was rated significantly higher than that of black women on dependent, passive, and emotional. The stereotype of lower-class women was rated significantly higher than that of middle-class women on confused, dirty, hostile, inconsiderate, and irresponsible. Although the stereotypes of women differed significantly by race and social class, all were stereotypically feminine. In addition, the stereotypes of white women, and of middle-class women were most similar to traditional stereotypes of women. Thus, it was concluded that both race and social class are implicit variables in sex-role stereotypes.     

Differential effects of ethnic membership, sex, and occupation on the California Psychological Inventory

This study investigated the effects of race, sex, and occupation on college students' responses to the California Psychological Inventory. Analyses of variance of the standard CPI scales indicated numerous race, sex, and race X sex effects. A comparison of the results of factor analyses of the responses of black and white subjects (within each sex) indicated a similarity in factor structure between the two female groups, but not for the two male groups. These findings suggested that, due to these major differences in scale means and factor structure, care be taken in interpreting scores from the CPI when they are obtained from nonwhite populations.     

Recognizing faces across continents: The effect of within-race variations on the own-race bias in face recognition

People are better at recognizing faces of their own race than faces of other racial groups. This own-race bias (ORB) in face recognition manifests in some studies as a full crossover interaction between race of observer and race of face, but in others the interaction is accompanied by main effects or other complexities. We hypothesized that this may be due in part to unacknowledged within-race variation and the implicit assumption that the terms white and black describe perceptually homogeneous race categories. We therefore tested white and black South Africans on their recognition of black and white American faces and black and white South African faces. Our results showed the expected interaction, but only for South African faces. This finding supports explanations of the ORB that are premised on intergroup contact and perceptual experience and highlights the danger of assuming homogeneity of appearance within groups. Author Note     

Teacher race,student race,and the behavior problem checklist

The ratings of 458 fourth- and fifth-grade boys were investigated to determine whether or not scores on the Behavior Problem Checklist vary systematically with teacher or student race. Analyses of the data for conduct problems, inadequacyimmaturity, and socialized delinquency indicated that white teachers demonstrate a strong tendency to rate black children as more deviant and white children as less deviant when contrasted with the ratings of black teachers. The ratings of black teachers were found not to vary with student race. No differences among any of the variables were found with regard to personality problems. Possible explanations for the results are discussed, along with implications for the use of the Behavior Problem Checklist in the field.