Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T04:16:14.905Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

TAKE OFF YOUR HOODIE

Assessing How Professional Attire Influences the Perception of Black Men as Threatening

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2021

Malissa Alinor  and
Justine Tinkler
Malissa Alinor*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of Georgia
Justine Tinkler
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of Georgia
*
Corresponding author: Malissa Alinor, Department of Sociology, University of Georgia, 420 Baldwin Hall, Athens, GA30602. E-mail: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Previous research has demonstrated that Black men are perceived to be more threatening than White men. Relatedly, public discourse suggests that respectable dress may reduce this perception. In this paper, we test whether professional attire reduces associations of threat with Black men. In three separate studies, participants completed a modified version of the Weapons Implicit Association Test (IAT). In Study 1, we tested whether Black men are associated with threat more than White men dressed in similar attire. In Study 2, we sought to test whether professional dress lessens the association between race and threat through intra-race comparisons. In Study 3, we assessed the perception of threat of Black men compared to White men when dressed in differing attire. Overall, findings indicate that participants associate Black men with threat more than White men, regardless of attire. Moreover, contrary to expectations, participants more strongly associate professional than casual dress with threat. The results have implications for public and scientific discourse regarding how contextual cues affect perceptions of Black men as threatening.

Keywords

Implicit BiasIATPrototypicalityRespectability PoliticsProfessional Attire
Type
State of the Art
Information
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , Spring 2021 , pp. 97 - 117
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Hutchins Center for African and African American Research

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Amodio, David M. (2014). The Neuroscience of Prejudice and Stereotyping. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 15(10): 670–682.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baumeister, Roy F., Masicampo, E. J., and Vohs, Kathleen D. (2011). Do Conscious Thoughts Cause Behavior? Annual Review of Psychology, 62: 331–361.Google ScholarPubMed
Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo (2018). Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and The Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States . Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Bryson, Seymour (1998). Relationship Between Race and Attitudes Toward Black Men. Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, 26(4): 282–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Jacob (1988). Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences. Hillsdale, MI: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Correll, Joshua, Park, Bernadette, Judd, Charles M., and Wittenbrink, Bernd (2002). The Police Officer’s Dilemma: Using Ethnicity to Disambiguate Potentially Threatening Individuals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83(6): 1314–1329.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Correll, Joshua, Park, Bernadette, Judd, Charles M., and Wittenbrink, Bernd (2007). The Influence of Stereotypes on Decisions to Shoot. European Journal of Social Psychology, 37(6): 1102–1117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cottrell, Catherine A., and Neuberg, Steven L. (2005). Different Emotional Reactions to Different Groups: A Sociofunctional Threat-Based Approach to Prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88(5): 770–789.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Davies, Paul G., Hutchinson, Shirley, Osborne, Danny, and Eberhardt, Jennifer L. (2016). Victims’ Race and Sex Leads to Eyewitness Misidentification of Perpetrator’s Phenotypic Stereotypicality. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 7(6): 491–499.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Devine, Patricia G. (1989). Stereotypes and Prejudice: Their Automatic and Controlled Components. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56(1): 5–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Devine, Patricia G., and Baker, Sara M. (1991). Measurement of Racial Stereotype Subtyping. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 17(1): 44–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Devine, Patricia G., Forscher, Patrick S., Austin, Anthony J., and William, T. L. Cox (2012). Long-Term Reduction in Implicit Race Bias: A Prejudice Habit-Breaking Intervention. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(6): 1267–1278.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dixon, Travis L. (2007). Black Criminals and White Officers: The Effects of Racially Misrepresenting Law Breakers and Law Defenders On Television News. Media Psychology, 10(2): 270–291.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eberhardt, Jennifer L., Davies, Paul G., Purdie-Vaughns, Valerie J., and Johnson, Sheri Lynn (2006). Looking Deathworthy: Perceived Stereotypicality of Black Defendants Predicts Capital-Sentencing Outcomes. Psychological Science, 17(5): 383–386.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Eberhardt, Jennifer L., Goff, Phillip Atiba, Purdie, Valerie J., and Davies, Paul G. (2004). Seeing Black: Race, Crime, and Visual Processing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(6): 876–893.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Glaser, Jack, and Knowles, Eric D. (2008). Implicit Motivation to Control Prejudice. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44(1): 164–172.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, Alexander R, Carney, Dana R, Pallin, Daniel J., Ngo, Long H., Raymond, Kristal L., Iezzoni, Lisa I, and Banaji, Mahzarin R (2007). Implicit Bias among Physicians and its Prediction of Thrombolysis Decisions for Black and White Patients. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 22(9): 1231–1238.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Greenwald, Anthony G., Nosek, Brian A, and Banaji, Mahzarin R. (2003). Understanding and Using the Implicit Association Test: I. An Improved Scoring Algorithm. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(2): 197.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Greenwald, Anthony G., Poehlman, T. Andrew, Uhlmann, Eric Luis, and Banaji, Mahzarin R. (2009). Understanding and Using the Implicit Association Test: III. Meta-analysis of Predictive Validity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97(1): 17–41.Google ScholarPubMed
Harris, Fredrick C. (2014). The Rise of Respectability Politics. Dissent, 61(1): 33–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hinzman, Lindsay, and Maddox, Keith B. (2017). Conceptual and Visual Representations of Racial Categories: Distinguishing Subtypes from Subgroups. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 70: 95–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
James, Lois, James, Stephen M., and Vila, Bryan J. (2016). The Reverse Racism Effect: Are Cops More Hesitant to Shoot Black Than White Suspects? Criminology & Public Policy, 15(2): 457–479.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
James, Lois, James, Stephen, and Vila, Bryan (2018). Testing the Impact of Citizen Characteristics and Demeanor on Police Officer Behavior in Potentially Violent Encounters. Policing: An International Journal, 41(1): 24–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jost, John T., Rudman, Laurie A., Blair, Irene V., Carney, Dana R., Dasgupta, Nilanjana, Glaser, Jack, and Hardin, Curtis D. (2009). The Existence of Implicit Bias Is Beyond Reasonable Doubt: A Refutation of Ideological and Methodological Objections and Executive Summary of Ten Studies That No Manager Should Ignore. Research in Organizational Behavior, 29: 39–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahn, Kimberly Barsamian, and Davies, Paul G. (2011). Differentially Dangerous?: Phenotypic Racial Stereotypicality Increases Implicit Bias Among Ingroup and Outgroup Members. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 14(4): 569–580.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahn, Kimberly Barsamian, and Davies, Paul G. (2017). What Influences Shooter Bias?: The Effects of Suspect Race, Neighborhood, and Clothing on Decisions to Shoot. Journal of Social Issues, 73(4): 723–743.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, Do-Yeong (2003). Voluntary Controllability of the Implicit Association Test (IAT). Social Psychology Quarterly, 66(1): 83–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kleider-Offutt, Heather M., Knuycky, Leslie R., Clevinger, Amanda M., and Capodanno, Megan M. (2017). Wrongful Convictions and Prototypical Black Features: Can a Face-Type Facilitate Misidentifications? Legal and Criminological Psychology, 22(2): 350–358.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knuycky, Leslie R., Kleider, Heather M., and Cavrak, Sarah E. (2014). Line-Up Misidentifications: When Being ‘Prototypically Black’ Is Perceived as Criminal. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 28(1): 39–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kurdi, Benedek, Seitchik, Allison E., Axt, Jordan R., Carroll, Timothy J., Karapetyan, Arpi, Kaushik, Neela, Tomezsko, Diana, Greenwald, Anthony G., and Banaji, Mahzarin R. (2019). Relationship Between the Implicit Association Test and Intergroup Behavior: A Meta-Analysis. American Psychologist, 74(5): 569.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kurdi, Benedek, Ratliff, Kate A., and Cunningham, William A. (2020). Can the Implicit Association Test Serve as a Valid Measure of Automatic Cognition?: A Response to Schimmack (2020). Perspectives on Psychological Science, 14: 835–840.Google Scholar
Lai, Calvin K., Marini, Maddalena, Lehr, Steven A., Cerruti, Carlo, Shin, Jiyun-Elizabeth L., Joy-Gaba, Jennifer A., Ho, Arnold K., Teachman, Bethany A., Wojcik, Sean P., Koleva, Spassena P., Frazier, Rebecca S., Heiphetz, Larisa, Chen, Eva E., Turner, Rhiannon N., Haidt, Jonathan, Kesebir, Selin, Hawkins, Carlee Beth, Schaefer, Hillary S., Rubichi, Sandro, Sartori, Giuseppe, Dial, Christopher M., Sriram, N., Banaji, Mahzarin R., and Nosek, Brian A. (2014). Reducing Implicit Racial Preferences: I. A Comparative Investigation of 17 Interventions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(4): 1765.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Livingston, Robert W., and Pearce, Nicholas A. (2009). The Teddy-Bear Effect: Does Having a Baby Face Benefit Black Chief Executive Officers? Psychological Science, 20(10): 1229–1236.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lovaglia, Michael J., Lucas, Jeffrey W., and Thye, Shane R. (1998). Status Processes and Mental Ability Test Scores. American Journal of Sociology, 104(1): 195–228.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lundberg, Gustav , J. W., Neel, Rebecca, Lassetter, Bethany, and Todd, Andrew R. (2018). Racial Bias in Implicit Danger Associations Generalizes to Older Male Targets. PLoS ONE, 13(6): e0197398.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
MacLin, M. Kimberly, and Herrera, Vivian (2006). The Criminal Stereotype. North American Journal of Psychology, 8(2): 197–208.Google Scholar
Macrae, C. Neil, and Quadflieg, Susanne (2010). Perceiving People. In Fiske, Susan T., Gilbert, Daniel, and Lindsay, Gardner (Eds.) Handbook of Social Psychology, pp. 428–463 Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.Google Scholar
May, Reuben A. Buford (2018). Velvet Rope Racism, Racial Paranoia, and Cultural Scripts: Alleged Dress Code Discrimination in Urban Nightlife, 2000–2014. City & Community, 17(1): 44–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McConnell, Allen R., and Leibold, Jill M. (2001). Relations Among the Implicit Association Test, Discriminatory Behavior, and Explicit Measures of Racial Attitudes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 37(5): 435–442.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Melamed, David, Munn, Christopher W., Barry, Leanne, Montgomery, Bradley, and Okuwobi, Oneya F.. (2019). Status Characteristics, Implicit Bias, and the Production of Racial Inequality. American Sociological Review, 84(6): 1013–1036.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Farzan, Noori, Antonia, (2018). BBQ Becky, Permit Patty, and Cornerstore Caroline: Too ‘Cutesy’ for Those White Women Calling Police on Black People? Washington Post, October 19. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/10/19/bbq-becky-permit-patty-and-cornerstore-caroline-too-cutesy-for-those-White-women-calling-cops-on-Blacks/?utm_term=.3897e450214f (accessed March 2, 2021).Google Scholar
Nosek, Brian A. (2005). Moderators of the Relationship between Implicit and Explicit Evaluation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 134: 565–584.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nosek, Brian A., Smyth, Frederick L., Hansen, Jeffrey J., Devos, Thierry, Lindner, Nicole M., Ranganath, Kate A., Smith, Colin Tucker, Olson, Kristina R., Chugh, Dolly, Greenwald, Anthony G., and Banaji, Mahzarin R. (2007). Pervasiveness and Correlates of Implicit Attitudes and Stereotypes. European Review of Social Psychology, 18(1): 36–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Obasogie, Osagie K., and Newman, Zachary (2016). Black Lives Matter and Respectability Politics in Local News Accounts of Officer-Involved Civilian Deaths: An Early Empirical Assessment. Wisconsin Law Review, 541.Google Scholar
Oswald, Frederick L., Mitchell, Gregory, Blanton, Hart, Jaccard, James, and Tetlock, Philip E. (2013). Predicting Ethnic and Racial Discrimination: A Meta-Analysis of IAT Criterion Studies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 105(2): 171.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pager, Devah (2003). The Mark of a Criminal Record. American Journal of Sociology, 108(5): 937–975.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pedulla, David (2014). The Positive Consequences of Negative Stereotypes: Race, Sexual Orientation, and the Job Application Process. Social Psychology Quarterly, 77(1): 75–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ridgeway, Cecilia L., and Kricheli-Katz, Tamar (2013). Intersecting Cultural Beliefs in Social Relations: Gender, Race, and Class Binds and Freedoms. Gender & Society, 27(3): 294–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rivera, Geraldo (2012). Geraldo Rivera: Trayvon Martin’s Hoodie Is as Much Responsible for His Death as George Zimmerman. Fox News, March 23. Video, 3:57. http://video.foxnews.com/v/1525652570001/?#sp=show-clips (accessed March 2, 2021).Google Scholar
Romney, A. Kimball, Weller, Susan C., and Batchelder, William H. (1986). Culture as Consensus: A Theory of Culture and Informant Accuracy. American Anthropologist, 88(2): 313–338.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rudman, Laurie A., and Ashmore, Richard D. (2007). Discrimination and the Implicit Association Test. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 10(3): 359–372.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schuman, Howard, Steeh, Charlotte, Bobo, Lawrence, and Krysan, Maria (1998). Racial Attitudes in America: Trends and Interpretations, Revised Edition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Sekaquaptewa, Denise, Espinoza, Penelope, Thompson, Mischa, Vargas, Patrick, and Hippel, William von (2003). Stereotypic Explanatory Bias: Implicit Stereotyping as a Predictor of Discrimination. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 39(1): 75–82.Google Scholar
Stanley, Damian A., Sokol-Hessner, Peter, Banaji, Mahzarin R., and Phelps, Elizabeth A. (2011). Implicit Race Attitudes Predict Trustworthiness Judgments and Economic Trust Decisions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(19): 7710–7715.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stepanikova, Irena, Triplett, Jennifer, and Simpson, Brent (2011). Implicit Racial Bias and Prosocial Behavior. Social Science Research, 40(4): 1186–1195.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tinkler, Justine E. (2012). Controversies in Implicit Race Bias Research. Sociology Compass, 6(12): 987–997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Todd, Andrew R., Thiem, Kelsey C., and Neel, Rebecca (2016). Does Seeing Faces of Young Black Boys Facilitate the Identification of Threatening Stimuli?. Psychological Science, 27(3): 384–393.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Uzogara, Ekeoma E., Lee, Hedwig, Abdou, Cleopatra M., and Jackson, James S. (2014). A Comparison of Skin Tone Discrimination Among African American Men: 1995 and 2003. Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 15(2): 201.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wisecup, Allison K. (2011). Do We Have Consensus?: Examining The Sources of Systematic Variation in Cultural Identity Meanings. PhD dissertation, Department of Sociology, Duke University.Google Scholar
Zelditch, Morris, Jr. (1969). Can You Really Study an Army in the Laboratory? In Etzioni, A. (Ed.) Complex Organizations, pp. 528–539. NewYork: Holt, Rinehart, Winston.Google Scholar
Ziegert, Jonathan C., and Hanges, Paul J. (2005). Employment Discrimination: The Role of Implicit Attitudes, Motivation, and a Climate for Racial Bias. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(3): 553.CrossRefGoogle Scholar