Full Citation

Title: Economic Scarity Alters the Perpection of Race

Citation Type: Journal Article

Publication Year: 2014

ISBN:

ISSN:

DOI:

NSFID:

PMCID:

PMID:

Abstract: When the economy declines, racial minorities are hit the hardest. Although existing explanations for this effect focus on institutional causes, recent psychological findings suggest that scarcity may also alter perceptions of race in ways that exacerbate discrimination. We tested the hypothesis that economic resource scarcity causes decision makers to perceive African Americans as Blacker and that this visual distortion elicits disparities in the allocation of resources. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that scarcity altered perceptions of race, lowering subjects psychophysical threshold for seeing a mixed-race face as Black as opposed to White. In studies 3 and 4, scarcity led subjects to visualize African American faces as darker and more stereotypically Black, compared with a control condition. When presented to nave subjects, face representations produced under scarcity elicited smaller allocations than control-condition representations. Together, these findings introduce a novel perceptual account for the proliferation of racial disparities under economic scarcity.

Url: http://www.pnas.org/content/111/25/9079.full

User Submitted?: No

Authors: Krosch, Amy R.; Amodio, David M.

Periodical (Full): Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

Issue: 111

Volume: 25

Pages: 9079-9084

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Poverty and Welfare, Race and Ethnicity

Countries: