Comments on: Race and Perception

By: noisyeardrum

noisyeardrum — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 23:21:49 +0000

The critical question for me is “where are the error bars?”.
Are they so small that they are obscured by the data symbols themselves or are they just absent?
In my experience psychophysical and behavioural data such as these are very noisy – particularly across subjects.

I agree, Steve, that if one is unable to observe an effect ‘by eye’ one cannot help but be highly skeptical.
That said, small effects can be very real, ie. statistically robust and replicable.
I can only wonder why the experimenters didn’t just move on.

By: PharmD28

PharmD28 — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 19:49:53 +0000

@Sonic…yeah I think we agree on this largely…

By: sonic

sonic — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 17:40:18 +0000

PharmD28-
I think one thing I would look at is this– does the study sample the population one wants to make conclusions about?
If one wants to make conclusions about humans, then I’m not sure that a non-random sample of college undergrads in US universities is going to be representative. In fact, I’m sure it isn’t.
Lots of these studies are done– I understand that they sample the people available. And such a study could well be used to see if further testing is warranted– but no conclusions about populations not sampled– please.

This is why these ‘mega’ studies can be misleading too.
What good is summing a bunch of lousy studies?
GIGO.

I’m still not quantifying.

By: DLC

DLC — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 07:39:40 +0000

I have to agree with Bronze Dog. this study is almost meaningless, simply due to sample size. Then there is confirmation bias also. “The mouse pointer hovered near” is not a valid metric, but an excuse to plant “the conventional wisdom” into the results. Con Wis says people perceive non-whites to be of lower social status and therefore of lower standards of dress.
I’ve seen studies like this before, and always wondered about the effect size and various biases.

By: milotoast

milotoast — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 06:16:27 +0000

err, rather: http://tinyurl.com/69gmhhg

By: milotoast

milotoast — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 06:15:21 +0000

I’m going to agree with the above comments regarding the colour and contrast of the clothes affecting the perception of the faces’ skin colour.

This optical illusion came to mind:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/69gmhhg

By: daedalus2u

daedalus2u — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 03:09:57 +0000

In the actual tests there were finer gradations of change. In the image are shown only 5 gradations, in the tests there were 13.

But the very low number of subjects present another problem. There were only 34 subjects. The change, from 61.7% to 64.7% represents a change from 21/34 to 22/34.

The example in the BBC article, 65 to 71 is 22/34 to 24/34 or 64.7 to 70.6.

This “data” represents the observation perception of a single person or of 2 individuals. The subject group (34) was white (26), male (13), black (1), East Asian (3), South Asian (3), Biracial (1).

I would take this data as evidence of very little racial bias based on attire. If only a single person exhibited only a single gradation of bias, how is that evidence for rampant bias?

By: cjablonski

cjablonski — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 20:18:16 +0000

“I was therefore prepared to believe the results of this study.”

This, I believe, is where most people (myself included) stop whenever we read about new research. Confirmation bias? Something more complex? As someone trying to become a more critical thinker, questions such as this make me realize I have a long way to go.

By: Dan Roy

Dan Roy — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 15:15:54 +0000

And to add to Sarah’s point, the “low status attire” are place significantly higher up on the shoulders of the person – making him seem more broad shouldered and with a thicker neck.

Not sure what this means but it explains the “wider” face problem I think.

Either case, as with the contrast problem discussed above, it alters the perception of the face itself in a way probably not intended by the study constructors.

By: Crystal

Crystal — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 12:13:20 +0000

That binary choice isn’t consistent with the way people perceive race, at least not in the South where I live. A third category – light skinned or mixed race or biracial – should have been included.

It is surprising to me that they chose coveralls as the low-status (and therefore associated with black people) category. Perhaps it’s due to my own family’s “lower” status, but I think of blue-collar workers as both white and black.