Study finds racism affects national policy

People’s bias against black people, even unconsciously, is influencing their view of President Obama and his health-care policies, a new study by UC Irvine researchers suggests.

In a four-part study that began before the presidential election last November, researchers found that people’s attitudes toward blacks played a role in how they viewed the president and the day’s most divisive social issue: health care.

“We were pretty focused on the health-care debate. For people with high prejudice, the messenger kind of stains the message for them,” said Eric Knowles, assistant professor of psychology and social behavior at UCI.

University researchers measured 285 people’s implicit prejudice, or their emotional associations with a particular group or members of a group. The study involved 236 European Americans, 43 Asian Americans and six Latinos. Females were the majority of participants, with 194 participating. Researchers targeted non-blacks for the study, Knowles said.

The study found that 65% of people with implicit prejudices toward blacks supported a health-care platform when they were told it was proposed by President Clinton. When the same group was told the plan was presented by Obama, only 41% of people with prejudices supported it, the study found.

“This is one study that shows racial attitudes continue to shape perceptions of political and social policies,” Knowles said. “My interests were psychological, not political. I really wanted to know whether race was a factor in shaping people’s attitudes on Obama.”

When people showed an explicit prejudice against blacks, that is, a clear, understandable and acknowledged bias against them, researchers considered that in their findings, Knowles said.

Researchers conducted speed tests that measure knee-jerk attitudes toward blacks to determine implicit prejudice.

Participants were assigned with judging two ideas at once in a split second. First, participants were given names that are commonly associated with blacks and whites, or European Americans. For instance, scientists considered the name Tyrone to be related to blacks and the name Chip associated with whites. The second component was good versus bad. So a word such as peace or pleasure meant a good association, while a word such as war or death had a bad association.

The study subjects sat in front of a computer, and a name flashed on the screen such as Chip. On the left side of the screen was the word “black” or “white,” and on the right was another word such as “pleasure” or “peace.” If the name Chip was related to either black or the word on the right — which had a good or bad association — the subject hit the space bar. If the name was unrelated to either black, white, or the good or bad association on the right, the subject was instructed to do nothing. The choices were presented so fast that people did not have time to fully think about their choices before reflexively answering. Thus, implicit prejudices revealed themselves, Knowles said.

When a name like Tyrone was on the screen and subjects were faced with choosing “white” or something bad such as death or war, people often hit the space bar. If it was Tyrone and the words were “white” and something positive such as pleasure or peace, people with prejudices hesitated or didn’t hit the space bar, the study found.

The group’s finding rebuts a study by a Democracy Corps organization that claimed opposition to Obama or his policies was not related to race, Knowles said.

He said claims that people should “just get over” the idea that race is a part of criticisms is debunked by the data.

“If you thought that electing a black president was going to clean the slate, it’s not,” he said.

The UCI study is in the current issue of Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.