The science of how we see skin color

[wmw999 2,146]

story

The upshot is that people who self-identified as liberal tended to see the lightest skin-toned Obama as the best picture, and the ones who self-identified as conservative tended to see the darkest skin-toned Obama as the best one. The pictures were the three shown, but they controlled for that by altering them differently (i.e. sometimes the indoors picture was lightened, sometimes darkened, and sometimes it stayed the same, etc).

It has nothing to do with whether individuals who participated in the study are prejudiced, but it does give some insight into why skin-based prejudice is so seemingly pervasive.

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[Andy9o8 0]

Some supporting/relevant context.
Also scroll down to see the 2 differently-toned versions of the same OJ Simpson picture.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/04/obama-skin-tone-darker-in_n_89829.html

I seem to recall the same issue arose with some of the Willie Horton pictures during the Bush-I vs. Dukakis campaign: Horton was depicted in photos as having skin tone darker than his actual tone.

[Zep 0]

I wonder what the green party see him as.

Gone fishing

[shropshire 0]

Nothing ... because they are short sighted and can't see beyond their nose

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[Andy9o8 0]

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I wonder what the green party see him as.

probably like this

[Ron 7]

Looking at the pics on the page, I would have picked the darker one as well. And that's based on him standing in front of the Capital. It looks more Presidential.

Now I know they claimed that the adjusted for this by swapping the darkness and the pose.... But the first one looked like a karaoke pose and no matter what the lightness level I would have never picked that one.

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334

[wmw999 2,146]

Remember that for some people, that was the lightest picture -- they altered each picture to each tone.

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[FallingOsh 0]

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Looking at the pics on the page, I would have picked the darker one as well. And that's based on him standing in front of the Capital. It looks more Presidential.

Now I know they claimed that the adjusted for this by swapping the darkness and the pose.... But the first one looked like a karaoke pose and no matter what the lightness level I would have never picked that one.

Completely agree.

IMO, the study would've been more valid if the same picture had been used with different tones. The only Presidential picture, again IMO, was the last one. This opens up the "study" to many different arguments; ie. Dems prefer a relaxed President while Republicans seek a suit and tie. The whole thing is heresay, once again IMO.

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Stay positive and love your life.

[GeorgiaDon 340]

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IMO, the study would've been more valid if the same picture had been used with different tones. The only Presidential picture, again IMO, was the last one. This opens up the "study" to many different arguments; ie. Dems prefer a relaxed President while Republicans seek a suit and tie. The whole thing is heresay, once again IMO.

You need to work on your reading skills.

From the article (most relevant part underlined so you won't overlook it again):
"I’m no expert here, but you’re confident that it’s the skin tone that changes “representativeness” in the eyes of the voter, as opposed to something else about the photographs—like pose, or background, or facial expression?

That’s a great question. What we did was essentially take three different photos with three different poses, and created for each photo a lightened and a darkened version. And then we randomly selected the combination of pose and skin tone that we showed each participant. "

Don

_____________________________________
Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996)
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

[kelpdiver 2]

The sampling used for the article you cite was unfortunate, as it really begs for more investigation of the 'science' in this study. What I see is lessons in basic photography.

it would be interesting to see the full suite of images, but I wonder if I'll be thinking more about underexposed/overexposed, rather than dark or light.

[timmyfitz 0]

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The sampling used for the article you cite was unfortunate, as it really begs for more investigation of the 'science' in this study. What I see is lessons in basic photography.

it would be interesting to see the full suite of images, but I wonder if I'll be thinking more about underexposed/overexposed, rather than dark or light.

I didn't see this as science as much as I saw it as someone trying to make some far fetched conclusions for the sake of their own agenda.

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The more you agree with a politician, in other words, the lighter his skin tone seems; the less you agree, the darker it becomes.

Poor conclusion.

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Which means that liberals, who are going to think that Obama is generally good and generally American, may have these subtle associations linking him to the concept of white

So liberals only associated good with white people? Wrong.

Waste of time and money on this one.

[wmw999 2,146]

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Waste of time and money on this one.

How so? I actually thought it was reasonably well-designed. It only tried to look at a single factor, and it tried to control for the two biggest variables -- picture content and population bias.

Social science studies (as opposed to polls) aren't the exact things that the harder science studies can be. And look at how much we disagree on what the results of the hard science studies mean.

What they can do is make us uncomfortable.

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[Shotgun 1]

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I actually thought it was reasonably well-designed.

I read/browsed through it quickly, so I may have missed something, but...

What bothered me about this study was that it said they asked "a group of undergraduates." I don't think that they ever mentioned how many people were in this group. And the fact that they were already starting with a select group of people (college students, who probably mostly fall into a certain age group), means that they weren't really taking a random sample of the population.

And even if they did use a large (at least 1000+) random sample of people, I would think the results would need to be repeated several times before placing much validity on the conclusions.

And even then..... Well, humans are such a difficult animal to study. I suppose I am a bit wary of most studies concerning us.