Anthropologist: "I’ve Never Been So Disgusted with My Own Data"
10/08/2015
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From the New York Post:

Americans make racist assumptions based on names, study finds

By David K. Li October 7, 2015 | 9:42am

Americans draw racist conclusions about people they’ve never met just by learning their names, according to researchers who were “disgusted” by their own findings.

The study, published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, asked subjects to describe their feelings about imaginary characters with stereotypical white names, such as Connor and Wyatt, and stereotypical black names, such as Jamal and DeShawn.

“I’ve never been so disgusted with my own data,” said lead author Colin Holbrook, an anthropologist at UCLA.

Test subjects were read a short story about a man — with either a stereotypical white name or black name — being bumped at a bar, and then verbally berated.

Test subjects were then asked to describe what they imagined that man to look like and what he did in response to that contact and verbal assault.

“A character with a black-sounding name was assumed to be physically larger, more prone to aggression, and lower in status than a character with a white-sounding name,” said Holbrook.

I’m struck by how uncool people are these days.

Can you imagine Charlie Parker or Humphrey Bogart or James Dean or John Lennon or Steve McQueen or Lou Reed saying, “I’ve never been so disgusted with my own data”? (Granted, they are all now dead. But, still, they were cool while they lasted.)

[Comment at Unz.com]

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