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September 19, 2007Racism's Cognitive Toll: Subtle Discrimination is More Taxing on the Brain |
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From Princeton University: While certain expressions of racism are absent from our world today, you do not have to look very hard to know that more subtle forms of racism persist, in schools and workplaces and elsewhere. Some psychologists reason from this that subtle racism might actually be more, not less, damaging than the plain antipathy of yesterday, sapping more mental energy. Old-fashioned racism---a "No Negroes Allowed" sign, for example---is hateful and hurtful, but it's not vague or confusing. Princeton psychologists Jessica Salvatore and J. Nicole Shelton decided to explore this idea in the laboratory. This wasn't a real company, and there were no real people involved, but the volunteers believed it was all real. Sometimes the company passed over the best candidate for blatantly racist reasons; the reviewer might comment that the candidate belonged to "too many minority organizations," for example. After witnessing these fair and unfair hiring decisions, the study volunteers took the so-called Stroop test. It did, at least for blacks, and more than the overt racism did. As reported in the September issue of Psychological Science, black volunteers who had witnessed unfair but ambiguous hiring decisions did much less well on the Stroop test, suggesting that they were using all their mental resources to make sense of the unfairness. Salvatore and Shelton figure this is because whites rarely experience any racism; they do not even notice the subtle forms of racism, and are thrown off balance when they are hit over the head by overt acts. For a copy of the article "Cognitive Costs of Exposure to Racial PRejudice" and access to other Psychological Science research findings, please contact Catherine West at (202) 783-2077 or cwest@psychologicalscience.org.
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