By: D. Gage Jordan
A review: To begin, let’s examine how babies process information:
(Wow, he's having fun, right?) | Vogel and colleagues (2012) recently sought to examine whether differences in identifying emotional expressions of in- vs. out-group members differed between 5-month-old and 9-month-old babies. The logic behind this investigation revolves around the exponential growth and experience babies have during their first year of life. For example, during the first year of life, babies tend to undergo a process of “perceptual narrowing,” wherein they become “tuned” to faces that occur more frequently in their environment (e.g., own-race faces) versus less-salient faces (e.g., other race faces). Importantly, the origin of perceptual narrowing has led some researchers to posit that this process results in the “other-race effect.” |
Their results indicated that in general, 5-month-old babies readily discriminated amongst faces within both races, whereas 9-month-old babies only did so within their own race. Interestingly as well, these two groups also differed within the congruent condition mentioned previously. That is, 9- and 5-month-olds exhibited differential neural processing of emotional congruency for both their own- and other-race faces. More specifically, 9-month-old babies’ perceptual processing of emotion-specific faces was race-specific, whereas 5-month-olds exhibited similar emotional-perceptual processing of their own- and other-race faces.
In sum, Vogel et al’s. (2012) results suggest that what contributes to the other-race effect may occur at a very early age. Thus, is this the origin of prejudice? Perhaps not the only process. For example, other research suggests that differences in identifying in-group (e.g., same race) and out-group (e.g., other race) faces may be a product of one’s environment (e.g., exposure to other faces in a more heterogeneous society; Tezler et al., 2013).
Tezler and colleagues (2013) bring up an important point – the brain regions associated with identification of faces of different races may become culturally biased toward or away from racial categories as a function of early exposure. Culture influencing neural functioning is an idea advocated by Kitayama and Park (2010), so this idea has been receiving some well-deserved exposure in recent research. However, are we bound by early cultural experiences? In other words, can we help not become prejudiced? One can’t imagine whether a baby would actually want to discriminate against other people (I’m sure they’d take all the attention they could get).
One concept we may turn to, given the sometimes implicit nature of prejudice, is a color-blind ideology. Briefly, a color-blind ideology emphasizes one “not seeing” race, which ironically fosters racism and discrimination, given that not seeing race results in blaming the victim for not taking advantage of their “freedom” to move up in the world, for example (Ferber, 2012).
Fortunately, recent research has moved forward in identifying methods to combat colorblindness (even the APA has concluded that race matters and given the preponderance of prejudice in the United States, it is impossible to ignore race). In line with this statement, findings indicate a link between a greater endorsement of color-blind ideology and a host of racial attitudes in White adults (e.g., increased fear of racial minorities; Spanierman et al., 2008). Examining the literature more specifically, evidence also suggests that men are more likely to express higher levels of intolerance (such as increased homophobia) and typically score higher on measures of color-blind ideology than do women. Results from Neville et al. (2014) suggest that college diversity experiences, such as active participation in diversity courses and activities, as well as close friendships with Black peers (this study included White participants), were associated with changes in color-blind ideologies over time (i.e., more courses and more activities were related to a steeper decline in color-blind racial ideology).
Recent research suggests that individuals may have difficulty discriminating between faces of other races compared to their own race. However, this relationship may be moderated by cultural factors, such as where one grew up. Nevertheless, prejudice and discrimination is prevalent in U.S. society, but there appears to be ways in which one can nullify prejudiced ideologies, such as engagement with the “out-groups.” Thus, education and diversity go hand-in-hand, and may be beneficial to everyone in our racially heterogeneous society.
- Ferber, A. L. (2012). The culture of privilege: Color‐blindness, postfeminism, and christonormativity. Journal of Social Issues, 68, 63-77.
- Kitayama, S., & Park, J. (2010). Cultural neuroscience of the self: understanding the social grounding of the brain. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 5, 111-129.
- Neville, H. A., Poteat, V. P., Lewis, J. A., & Spanierman, L. B. (2014). Changes in White college students’ color-blind racial ideology over 4 years: Do diversity experiences make a difference? Journal of Counseling Psychology, 61, 179-190.
- Spanierman, L. B., Poteat, V. P., Wang, Y. F., & Oh, E. (2008). Psychosocial costs of racism to white counselors: Predicting various dimensions of multicultural counseling competence. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 55, 75-88.
- Telzer, E. H., Flannery, J., Shapiro, M., Humphreys, K. L., Goff, B., Gabard-Durman, L., ... & Tottenham, N. (2013). Early experience shapes amygdala sensitivity to race: An international adoption design. Journal of Neuroscience, 33, 13484-13488.
- Vogel, M., Monesson, A., & Scott, L. S. (2012). Building biases in infancy: The influence of race on face and voice emotion matching. Developmental Science, 15, 359-372.