By: tom

tom — Sat, 25 Feb 2006 08:16:56 +0000

Hmmmm…Two things
First, i don’t know if anyone has considered it, but i think it is an unlikely explaination – look at all the other research done on the Race IAT (see the website for details). Top-of-the-head example: a ‘natural preference’ for light over dark doesn’t explain those people who *don’t* have a preference for white americans over black americans
Second, the Race IAT still shows a race preference, whatever the origin of that preference. The task measures time to classify white and black face alongside ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Even if the prejudice arises from a preference for light over dark, rather than being anything to do with race, it is still a prejudice (although, admittedly you might think rather differently about it)

By: Luke Lea

Luke Lea — Sat, 25 Feb 2006 05:37:10 +0000

Have you, or those doing this research, considered the possibility that the preference for white over black might be related to the preference for light over darkness, day over night, for completely innocuous reasons of biology and natural history. This should be an easy hypothesis to test. Use as subjects people who have never even seen or experienced other people of different pigmentation than their own: eskimos, for example, or isolated darkly-pigmented groups in remote parts of New Guinea, South America, or elsewhere. How about young children from ethnically homogeneous societies like Iceland or Japan vs. certain tribal areas in Africa. If these same preferences are found in these groups, then I think we can forget all about trying to attribute some racial significance to the phenomenon. Just a thought.

Comments on: where do implicit associations come from?

By: tom

By: Luke Lea