Training away face-type bias: perception and decisions about emotional expression in stereotypically Black faces
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Training away face‑type bias: perception and decisions about emotional expression in stereotypically Black faces Corey J. Bohil1 · Heather M. Kleider‑Offutt2 · Clay Killingsworth1 · Ashley M. Meacham2 Received: 7 December 2018 / Accepted: 14 September 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Prior research indicates that stereotypical Black faces (e.g., wide nose, full lips) are perceived negatively relative to nonstereotypical faces (face-type bias). The current study investigated whether stereotypical faces may bias the interpretation of a neutral facial expression to seem threatening. Moreover, could biased responses be trained away with feedback? In two experiments, stimuli (face images) were presented in a speeded identification task that included corrective feedback, and participants indicated whether the face stimuli were stereotypical or not and threatening or not. Stimuli were pre-rated by face-type (stereotypical, non-stereotypical) and expression (neutral, threatening). Computational modeling based on General Recognition Theory indicated that training increased perceptual discriminability between all the faces. By the end of training (in both experiments), discriminability for emotional expression was slightly higher for stereotypical faces. Model parameters (for both experiments) also showed that, early in training, decision boundaries were more biased toward the threatening response for stereotypical faces relative to non-stereotypical faces. The results suggest that decision bias may be malleable with training.
Introduction Black men have received biased treatment in the legal system from law enforcement to juror decisions. Such treatment is attributed, in part, to cultural/social stereotypes associating Black men with crime (e.g., Cooper, 2015; Fiske, 1998). A sub-group of Black individuals with Afrocentric features, also called stereotypical Black face-type (e.g. some combination of darker skin, wide nose and full lips; Eberhardt, Davies, Purdie-Vaughns, & Johnson, 2006) are especially vulnerable to biased treatment and association with negative stereotypes. These individuals are considered characteristic of the category “Black male” and most closely tied perceptually to the criminal Black male stereotype (Knuycky, Kleider & Cavrak; 2014; Kleider, Cavrak & Knuycky, 2012). Recent research using General Recognition Theory (Kleider-Offutt, Bond, Williams, & Bohil, 2018) to model decision and perceptual tendencies corroborates the idea that * Corey J. Bohil [email protected] 1
Department of Psychology, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL 32816, USA
Department of Psychology, Georgia State University, Atlanta, USA
2
people may have difficulty perceiving stereotypical faces as non-threatening. That is, even when presented with a neutral facial expression people categorize/interpret the stereotypical face-type as threatening. This suggests that for this group of individuals, their demeanor and thus intent may be misinterpreted by oth
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