STUDY: People Perceive Bi-Racial Candidates As Lighter When They Agree With Them
From Politico.com:
A provocative new study (.pdf) forthcoming in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences seems to show that people perceive a bi-racial candidate to have lighter skin color when they agree with him. That is, voters who like Obama tended to pick the photo on the left, above, as most representative of him.
The abstract:
People tend to view members of their own political group more positively than members of a competing political group. In this article, we demonstrate that political partisanship influences people’s visual representations of a biracial political candidate’s skin tone. In three studies, participants rated the representativeness of photographs of a hypothetical (Study 1) or real (Barack Obama; Studies 2 and 3) biracial political candidate. Unbeknownst to participants, some of the photographs had been altered to make the candidate’s skin tone either lighter or darker than it was in the original photograph. Participants whose partisanship matched that of the candidate they were evaluating consistently rated the lightened photographs as more representative of the candidate than the darkened photographs, whereas participants whose partisanship did not match that of the candidate showed the opposite pattern. For evaluations of Barack Obama, the extent to which people rated lightened photographs as representative of him was positively correlated with their stated voting intentions and reported voting behavior in the 2008 Presidential election. This effect persisted when controlling for political ideology and racial attitudes.
The study seems to indicate in passing that the race of the participants doesn’t effect the outcome, though it isn’t totally clear on that point. It also seems to buy into the claim that Hillary Clinton artificially darkened an image of Obama, which wasn’t terribly widely believed.
RELATED:
Being Biracial & Black In The Age Of Obama
VIDEO: “Bi-Racial Not Black, Damn It” Trailer
Dr. Conrad Murray CHARGED
Comments
16
% %
This is by far one of THE most ignorant articles I have ever run across in my entire life. And as far as Hillary being the best choice? Blame her failure on the Republicans. They openly said they would vote Obama in the primary’s, just to keep Hillary out. They thought Americans would never vote in a black man. Well, if they did what they said they would, it only BACKFIRED ON THEM. So don’t blame Obama and the American voters for that. In the words of Larry Flynt “Why anyone would want to be a Republican is beyond me” LOLOL!
I’m so sick of people always coming out of the blue with a bullshyt study. SMFH
Cory Booker, Adrian Fenty and Reggie Miller look separated at birth.
O.K. let me think here…slavemasters using skin color to create a permanent discord among blacks who are seen as field workers and house N******, Latino countries like the Dominican Republic whose past governments actually promoted hatred and racism against it’s Hatian neighbors, India and the “Untouchables” situation whereby darker skinned Indians are seen as sc**, the media intentional portrayal of black folks as robbers,thugs, lazy etc. With all this..yes..I can see the legitimacy of this story and it’s point that skin color has and alway’s will be a significant variable when it comes to racism,bigotry, and ignorance.
Dammit!! This is a LOAD OF CRAPOLEUM!!! I thought this was gonna be a post of significance!! And to think.. I actually downloaded the PDF file and was gonna read it 2nite!! Oh, well.. I guess I’ll just be a DELETING MF 2nite!!
Hillary Clinton did not artificially darken an image of Obama. Most of us, who supported Hillary Clinton, didn’t give a flying f**k about race or gender. Evidently, we made the right choice, but black people and the sexist media played into the black s**t. Stop it with the stupid lies on Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton would have made a better president than Obama, but black people are sometimes blind and are inherently sexist. Hillary Clinton is over in Afghanistan fighting for women’s rights. Obama is over here trying to get a Healthcare bill passed and helping local politicians (NJ) lose elections. If Hillary Clinton was the president the democrats would be in a much stronger position.
Stop looking for black or white. Look for a candidate that can fight. They come in all colors and in both genders. By the way, the writers of BlackPlanet.com are really beat for the bulls**t.
Can we say no s**t! Anybody’s gonna agree with a person that’s into or likes the same s**t they like.
This so obvious on so many levels, White is Right!!!!!!!!!
bj
This is ridiculous….on so many levels.
Here’s another interpretation – the lightest pic of Obama has him in more casual apparel, you might even say, something a community organizer would dress like. It’s possible that those who agree with Obama chose that picture more for the clothes that he’s wearing then for the color of his skin. Maybe BP needs to embrace the words of HIM Haile Selassie I to the UN, “Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, everywhere is war and until there are no longer first-class and second-class citizens of any nation, until the color of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes. And until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race, there is war. And until that day, the dream of lasting peace, world citizenship, rule of international morality, will remain but a fleeting illusion to be pursued, but never attained… now everywhere is war.”
Get over it people, Obama Rocks.
The more i follow the BP newsletter, the more I realize that they have nothing to say.
But after all is Obama biracial or not? He is.
Stop with this nonsense.
A website like BlackPlanet.com would be considered racist if it were dedicated to white people for example.
We have to stop to always talk about white people in everything related to us. Stop comparing and contrasting. Even our comedians have nothing more to say than make comparisons between blacks and whites.
Enough already!
OK,and whats next,who cares. We should of let a all white person win then,if colors such a issue,after they voted for him. Let them clean up,what they fncked up. Trying to pointing there dirty fingers at the superior black man.
I’ve heard numerous white people try to downplay the fact that he is black by stating that he is bi-racial (whicn in Amerikkka still means black). Perhap those people really have some screwed up superiority complex. This isn’t suprising or really profound. Is this the best of what BP can come up with without having to mention the “celebs” that are mentioned on a daily basis?
What else you got?!?
hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
This is so stupid