Word: weisbuch
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Weisbuch, a postdoctoral student in the lab of Tufts psychology professor Nalini Ambady, researchers designed the multipart study to examine the communication of race bias on television to white college-age volunteers. Weisbuch and his team were intrigued by the fact that despite a significant reduction in overt expressions of racism in modern American society - the country has, after all, just elected its first black president - studies consistently find that many people still show biased or negative attitudes toward African-Americans, primarily through nonverbal means such as facial expressions, crossed arms and averted gazes. The psychologists wondered how such biases...
What fascinated Weisbuch was that the viewers' judgment of the characters was based purely on nonverbal cues, from facial expressions to body language. In fact, when participants were given transcripts of the verbal content of the clips, they saw no difference in the way black or white target characters were treated by speaking characters. These expressions may have been scripted into the show by writers, or by productions editors or the director, but nevertheless, researchers say they demonstrate unfavorably biased attitudes toward black characters...
...chance of responding correctly - and that's exactly how well they did, no better than chance. In other words, the patterns of bias expressed in the characters' nonverbal behavior were not obvious to the viewers. "The effect [television has] on viewers might be something less than conscious," says Weisbuch...
...findings suggest that despite the progress that has been made in addressing racism in the America, we may still be perpetuating prejudice in subtle ways - and, if Weisbuch's findings are validated, in ways that we may not even realize. "Human beings are thinking, cognizant, conscious beings who can be strategic and intentional," says John Dovidio, a professor of psychology at Yale University who wrote an editorial accompanying Weisbuch's study, published Thursday in Science. "But we are also kind of emotional and we do a lot of things without full conscious awareness. What this research suggests is that although...
...Weisbuch, who has asked his faculty to vote this spring on whether to continue filling out the survey ("If it were up to me, we'd quit"), is helping draft the letter urging his peers to take bolder steps collectively. More than one president in the liberal-arts sub-30 neighborhood - Drew this year is tied for 69th - has said higher-ups need to jump ship first. But even the ?lites are worried about taking the plunge. In recent years, a top-ranked school got a new president who wanted to skip the survey. "I was told we would drop...