Political partisanship influences perception of biracial candidates' skin tone

Abstract

People tend to view members of their own political group more positively than members of a competing political group. In this article, we demonstrate that political partisanship influences people's visual representations of a biracial political candidate's skin tone. In three studies, participants rated the representativeness of photographs of a hypothetical (Study 1) or real (Barack Obama; Studies 2 and 3) biracial political candidate. Unbeknownst to participants, some of the photographs had been altered to make the candidate's skin tone either lighter or darker than it was in the original photograph. Participants whose partisanship matched that of the candidate they were evaluating consistently rated the lightened photographs as more representative of the candidate than the darkened photographs, whereas participants whose partisanship did not match that of the candidate showed the opposite pattern. For evaluations of Barack Obama, the extent to which people rated lightened photographs as representative of him was positively correlated with their stated voting intentions and reported voting behavior in the 2008 Presidential election. This effect persisted when controlling for political ideology and racial attitudes. These results suggest that people's visual representations of others are related to their own preexisting beliefs and to the decisions they make in a consequential context. bias ͉ psychology ͉ race ͉ voting ͉ Barack Obama

Economic scarcity alters the perception of race

“…However, mounting evidence suggests that even perceptions of race are malleable and that biases in race perception have implications for the expression of prejudice. That is, although race is often regarded as fixed and veridically perceived (14), representations of a person's race or ethnicity can shift as a function of the perceiver's social goals and motivations (15)(16)(17)(18)(19). For example, in prior work we found that greater antiegalitarian motives related to the visual perception of African American faces as "Blacker" (20).…”

The taming of desire: Unspecific postponement reduces desire for and consumption of postponed temptations.

“…Research on motivated perception and wishful thinking suggests that ambiguous information tends to be decoded in line with one's goals (e.g., Balcetis & Dunning, 2006;Caruso, Mead, & Balcetis, 2009;Sanford 1936Sanford , 1937. To the extent that people vary in their motivation to forgo a temptation, and to the extent that people's goals shape their interpretation of ambiguous stimuli, it may be that those who are highly motivated to reduce their intake of a temptation are particularly likely to interpret vague postponement as a signal of low valuation for the temptation.…”

“…As a further test of the learning account for the effects of postponement, individual differences in motivation to forgo the temptation were examined. Because ambiguous information tends to be interpreted in line with one's goals (Balcetis & Dunning, 2006;Caruso et al, 2009;Sanford 1936Sanford , 1937, we reasoned that an unspecific postponement intention should be decoded as a signal of low commitment to the temptation particularly among those strongly motivated to give up the temptation. Trait selfcontrol was also measured to show specificity for the moderating effect of motivation to forgo the temptation (i.e., high self-control could be positively or negatively associated with motivation to forgo the temptation).…”

Skin in the Game: Voter Preference on the Subject of Bi-Racial Candidate Skin-Tone

“…This approach does not explore other possible explanations, which presented an opportunity. Therefore, this study extends the research conducted in Caruso et al (2009) in an attempt to test for the presence or absence of inclusion motivation as a mediating influence between like or dislike of the candidate and preference for a lightened, darkened, or unaltered photograph of the candidate. To pursue this end, one of the three experiments conducted in Caruso et al (2009) was replicated and executed using participants from a worker pool provided through mTurk.com.…”

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AbstractIn Caruso et al (2009), the researchers determine that if a participant liked a bi-racial (one black parent and one white parent) male candidate the participant was more inclined to prefer a photograph of him in which he appears to have a lighter complexion. Caruso et al explain the results through the lens of a shade-based account of implicit association.

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