This week’s New Scientist reports on an interesting while not surprising research result. Psychologists at Stanford University used a technique called subliminal priming, in which test participants were briefly flashed a photo of either an African-American or a European-American face, and then shown a blurry picture of an ape. Those who saw the black face were quicker to recognise the ape, the researchers found. The results were repeated when volunteers were shown line drawings of faces or names typical of black or white Americans, but the effect of associating black people with apes did not take place when participants were shown Asian faces. The group of volunteers consisted of 121 university undergraduates, including 60 whites, 39 Asians and seven blacks. The effect was found in both white and non-white students; however, there were too few black volunteers in the study to check for an effect on them specifically.
What the research suggests is a ‘de-humanising’ of black people (in this case of African origin) taking place on a very deep subconscious level of our psyche – even in people considering themselves being non-racist and/or unaware of previous historical equalisation of black people with animals (only 9 per cent of the students said they were even aware that blacks were sometimes stereotyped as apelike).
These findings are not just academic; practical manifestations can be found in everyday reality. For example, when researchers asked volunteers to watch a video of police violently subduing a suspect of indeterminate race, after first priming the students with a subliminal glimpse of a word relating either to apes or to big cats, those who were primed with ape words were more likely to say the police violence was justified – but only if they were told the suspect was black (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol 94, p 292). And when analysing more than 600 accounts of criminal cases, the team found that accounts of black defendants were more likely to include animalistic descriptors such as “barbaric” and “predator”. Another more well-known example of racial prejudice is the classic Victorian depiction of human evolution, which passes through vaguely African-looking ancestors and still ends with a white (male) Homo sapiens in current publications.
As long as we don’t actively question and replace such commonly held associations, it seems we have a long way to go to establish a civilisation in which we can talk of one humanity.
