The Awl http://www.theawl.com/ Be Less Stupid Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:08:56 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.2 Science Explains Why We Are Racist Against Black http://www.theawl.com/2009/11/science-explains-why-we-are-racist-against-black http://www.theawl.com/2009/11/science-explains-why-we-are-racist-against-black#comments Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:08:56 +0000 Dave Bry http://www.theawl.com/2009/11/science-explains-why-we-are-racist-against-black
MC Serch was right. It was a white guy that started all that. And that white guy's name was... Felix Unger! Scientific American reports on a recent study asserting that the metaphorical association of white with "good" and black with "bad" has at its roots the human desire for cleanliness: "The colors white and black have carried layers of moral meaning since long before Americans' infatuation with cowboys and automobiles. Indeed, some scientists believe that our conception of blackness and sin may be entangled with a fundamental and ancient fear of dirt and contagion that remains deeply wired in our neurons today."

In the study, two University of Virginia psychologists showed volunteer subjects words with strong moral overtones such as "greed" or "honesty" on a screen, printed in either black or white. The time it took to identify the color of the words, aside from their meaning, was taken as a gauge of the level of cognitive connection between the concept and the color. (The study referenced the well-established Stroop Effect.)

And?

"When moral words were printed in white and immoral words in black, reaction time was significantly faster than when words of virtue were black and sin were white." Then they added the element of concern about purity and pollution, testing volunteers' desire for cleaning and personal hygiene products against their results on the moral connection experiment.


"The results were unambiguous. As reported in the August issue of Psychological Science, those who expressed the strongest desire for an array of cleaning products were also those most likely to link morality with white and immorality with black. But here is the really interesting part: The only products to show such an association were Dove soap and Crest toothpaste, products for personal cleanliness. Items such as Lysol and Windex did not activate the sin-blackness connection. In short, concerns about filth and personal hygiene appear central to seeing the moral universe in black and white.


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MC Serch was right. It was a white guy that started all that. And that white guy's name was... Felix Unger! Scientific American reports on a recent study asserting that the metaphorical association of white with "good" and black with "bad" has at its roots the human desire for cleanliness: "The colors white and black have carried layers of moral meaning since long before Americans' infatuation with cowboys and automobiles. Indeed, some scientists believe that our conception of blackness and sin may be entangled with a fundamental and ancient fear of dirt and contagion that remains deeply wired in our neurons today."

In the study, two University of Virginia psychologists showed volunteer subjects words with strong moral overtones such as "greed" or "honesty" on a screen, printed in either black or white. The time it took to identify the color of the words, aside from their meaning, was taken as a gauge of the level of cognitive connection between the concept and the color. (The study referenced the well-established Stroop Effect.)

And?

"When moral words were printed in white and immoral words in black, reaction time was significantly faster than when words of virtue were black and sin were white." Then they added the element of concern about purity and pollution, testing volunteers' desire for cleaning and personal hygiene products against their results on the moral connection experiment.


"The results were unambiguous. As reported in the August issue of Psychological Science, those who expressed the strongest desire for an array of cleaning products were also those most likely to link morality with white and immorality with black. But here is the really interesting part: The only products to show such an association were Dove soap and Crest toothpaste, products for personal cleanliness. Items such as Lysol and Windex did not activate the sin-blackness connection. In short, concerns about filth and personal hygiene appear central to seeing the moral universe in black and white.


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See more posts by Dave Bry

19 comments

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