{"id":44908,"date":"2015-12-30T23:44:01","date_gmt":"2015-12-30T23:44:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=44908"},"modified":"2015-12-31T02:10:24","modified_gmt":"2015-12-31T02:10:24","slug":"bias-in-the-flesh-skin-complex%ef%bb%bfion-and-stereotype-consistency-in-political-campaigns%ef%bb%bf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=44908","title":{"rendered":"Bias in the Flesh: Skin Complex\ufeffion and Stereotype Consistency in Political Campaigns\ufeff"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bias in the Flesh: Skin Complexion and Stereotype Consistency in Political Campaigns<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Public Opinion Quarterly<\/a>
\nFirst published online: 2015-12-17
\nDOI: 10.1093\/poq\/nfv046<\/a><\/p>\n

Solomon Messing<\/strong><\/a>, Director of Data Labs
\nPew Research Center, Washington, D.C.<\/em><\/p>\n

Maria Jabon<\/strong><\/a>, Senior Software Engineer
\nLinkedIn, Mountain View, California<\/em><\/p>\n

Ethan Plaut<\/a><\/strong>, Postdoctoral Fellow
\nStanford University, Stanford, California<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
\nResearchers manipulated the tone of President Obama’s<\/a> skin to measure viewers’ stereotypes. (Courtesy of Solomon Messing<\/a> \/ Political Communication Lab, Stanford University<\/a>)<\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

There is strong evidence linking skin complexion to negative stereotypes and adverse real-world outcomes. We extend these findings to political ad campaigns, in which skin complexion can be easily manipulated in ways that are difficult to detect. Devising a method to measure how dark a candidate appears in an image, this paper examines how complexion varied with ad content during the 2008 presidential election campaign (study 1). Findings show that darker images were more frequent in negative ads<\/a>\u2014especially those linking Obama<\/a> to crime\u2014which aired more frequently as Election Day approached. We then conduct an experiment to document how these darker images can activate stereotypes, and show that a subtle darkness manipulation is sufficient to activate the most negative stereotypes about Blacks\u2014even when the candidate is a famous counter-stereotypical exemplar\u2014Barack Obama<\/a> (study 2). Further evidence of an evaluative penalty for darker skin comes from an observational study measuring affective responses to depictions of Obama with varying skin complexion, presented via the Affect Misattribution Procedure<\/a> in the 2008 American National Election Study<\/a> (study 3). This study demonstrates that darker images are used in a way that complements ad content, and shows that doing so can negatively affect how individuals evaluate candidates and think about politics.<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bias in the Flesh: Skin Complexion and Stereotype Consistency in Political Campaigns Public Opinion Quarterly First published online: 2015-12-17 DOI: 10.1093\/poq\/nfv046 Solomon Messing, Director of Data Labs Pew Research Center, Washington, D.C. Maria Jabon, Senior Software Engineer LinkedIn, Mountain View, California Ethan Plaut, Postdoctoral Fellow Stanford University, Stanford, California Researchers manipulated the tone of President […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,63,8413,125,8,26,20],"tags":[22503,22502,240,22507,22506,22504,22505],"class_list":["post-44908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-communications","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-usa","tag-affect-misattribution-procedure","tag-american-national-election-study","tag-colorism","tag-ethan-plaut","tag-maria-jabon","tag-public-opinion-quarterly","tag-solomon-messing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44908"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44909,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44908\/revisions\/44909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}