Author Archives: Porsche A. Hurley

Stereotypes: The beginning of an end

Stereotyping: The generalization about in a group in which certain traits are assigned to persons apart of the group, regardless of their distinctions.  In today’s society, stereotyping is more common than ever.  With an increasing number of African Americans facing ill fate because of their race, stereotypes have become narratives that we hear daily.  An article posted in the Huffington Post highlights the unjust and unfair result of stereotyping.  The article spoke about the Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin incident and how Zimmerman pursued Trayvon Martin simply because he looks suspicious, wearing a hoodie and baggy clothes.  This pursuit lead to Trayvon Martin’s death, as Zimmerman said he feared for his life. This begs the question, does stereotyping cause people to be more fearful of African Americans?

When we reason things out, we are taking the information that we have gathered and formed a conclusion based on that information.  Just as in deductive reasoning, we take a general scenario and narrow the focus to be more specific, while inductive reasoning is the opposite of that.  When we stereotype, we are basically profiling a person with the assumption that they fit the mold.  As an example, our deductive reasoning would suggests that according to the media, most African Americans are violent, therefore my neighbor Marc, must also be violent.  So, whenever I encounter Marc, my attitude towards him will reflect this reasoning.  Peter Bloom, lecturer in Organization Studies, Department of People and Organization at The Open University, confirms “In today’s America, racial fear is most obviously manifest in the widely held stereotype of African-American males as dangerous criminals. The image of the “violent thug” terrorizing the inner city and increasingly the suburbs remains a strong”. (para. 2).  As the media plays a vital role in showing stereotypes, there are also other sources that walk us down roads that lead to inaccurate perceptions.

Additionally, one of those roads is the use of heuristics are also used in the cases of stereotypes and they can lead us down the path to the wrong conclusion. Taversky and Kahneman write “people rely on a limited number of heuristic principles which reduce the complex tasks of assessing probabilities and predicting values to simpler judgmental operations.” (p. 1124). Often, it is easier to make judgments than to consider all of the variables involved, as heuristics offer a quick solution to solving problems. As an example, I saw a woman that was in her car and she saw an African American walking in her direction.  The use of heuristics caused her to lock her car door and put her purse under her chair.  Of course, there was really no need for her to do that, as it was my husband coming back from his deployment. Relying on heuristics definitely lead her to a faulty conclusion.

To conclude, I believe that stereotypes cause people to be more fearful of African Americans.  Stereotypes are first and foremost one of the most inaccurate perceptions a person can make about another.  If we continue to engage in these behaviors without at least attempting to reduce them, this unfair treatment will continue to persist much longer than it has to.

References

Bloom, Peter. (Nov. 2011). Racial Fear-mongering and Ferguson: US stereotypes of violent African American Men as old as slavery.  Retrieved from: http://juancole/2011/11freamongering-stereotypes-american-html

Tversky, A., Kahneman, D., (Sep. 1974). Judgement Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. The US National Library of Medicine National Library of Health. 158(4157): 1124-31.  Retrieved from: PubMed. PMID:17835457

Magic: A simple game of attention

Magic.  We have all been awed and inspired by magic at some point in our lives.  From childhood to adulthood, our imaginations have been fascinated and mesmerized by this entity called magic.  I can still remember watching David Copperfield on the television and thinking to myself how awesome he was to be able to perform such acts.  A single blink of the eye and intrigue becomes the question of how did he do that?  With magic, we are left wondering what happened or did we miss something?   Does magic involve special powers or is it a simple game of attention?

Attention is our ability to focus on a particular object or task.  In truth, magic tricks have everything to do with how well people pay attention.  Macknik et al. (2008) confirms “magicians have explored the techniques that most effectively divert attention or exploit the shortcomings of human vision and awareness.” (para. 1) Magicians prey on the idea that people cannot simultaneously focus their attention on multiple tasks, which is what makes magic so amazing!

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google images/ magic

When we are shown a trick, we pay we pay attention to the hands of the magician in an attempt to try and catch what he is doing.  When we do this we are utilizing our selective attention. We are not focused on what else may be happening around us, but only on what we select to focus our attention on.   This could also lead us into many other visual flaws in our attention, such as inattentional or change blindness. Let us say a magician shows us a deck of cards, all with red backs and tells us there is something different on one of the cards and we fail to find it we have experienced change blindness.  Likewise in the same case, the magician shows us a deck of cards, all with red backs, but does not tell us there is something different on one of the cards, although there is. While looking through the cards our attention is focused on everyone else looking through their cards and we miss the card that was different, we have experienced inattentional blindness.  Jensen et al. (2011) adds “Change blindness and inattentional blindness both document a surprising failure to notice something that occurred right before our eyes” (p. 13).  These and other visual attention errors provide magicians with great springboards to create magic tricks.

To conclude, magic does not involve special powers, but is in fact is a game of attention. Audiences around the world attend the shows of David Copperfield, Penn and Teller and Chris Angel.  But are these magicians really good at what they do or are we just really bad at paying attention?  Collectively, this is the idea we know as magic.

References

Jensen, Melinda S., Yao, Richard., Street, Whitney., Simmons , Daniel J. (Mar 01 2011) Change blindness and inattentional blindness. COGNITIVE SCIENCE. 2(5). doi: 10.1002/wcs.130

Macknik, Stephen L., King, Mac., Randi, James., Robbins, Apollo., Teller, John., Martinez-Conde,  Thompson, Susana., (November 2008) Attention and awareness in stage magic: turning tricks into magic.  Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 9, 871-879. doi:10.1038/nrn2473

Do you see me, or do you see me?

http://gawker.com/unarmed-people-of-color-killed-by-police-1999-2014-1666672349

These are faces.  Faces of those that have been killed by violence at the hand of police officers.  They were unarmed and not dangerous.  Yet, they are dead.  Dead for no reason at all and their death: justified.  The killing of African Americans almost seems to be a pattern as it pertains to the reason why they were killed in the first place.  Were they perceived deemed to be a threat?  Did perception get the best the officers that killed these individuals?  Do perceptual differences exist when it comes to African Americans as opposed to other races, therefore leading to the uptick in violence toward African Americans?

The theory of unconsciousness suggests that perceptions are the result of unconscious assumptions that we make about the environment.  The media has, on every occasion, portrayed the African American community as a threat to other communities. Joshunda Sanders from the Maynard media Center on Structural Inequality (2012) writes, “Perpetuation of them as dangerous has been embedded in American society not only by words and images projected by journalists but also by a wide variety of other media and entertainment sources, including the Internet, movies and video games.” (para. 2)  These portrayals create top down processing or prior knowledge or expectations.  African Americans are often judged based on hearsay by people outside of the African American community.

Additionally, not only do media portrayals show African Americans as dangerous, but parallels are drawn to that of animals, in particular apes. Jennifer Eberhardt, professor of psychology at Stanford University (2011), points out that there are “visual and audio perception studies that reveal implicit associations between Blacks and apes. These associations can lead to justifications of violence toward Blacks and decreases in concern about racial inequalities.” (para. 2) These inequalities have derived from stereotypical judgements that are most common in the African American community.  How often so we see African Americans in the media in a positive light?

 

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/11/study-hairless-middle-aged-apes-still-middle-aged-apes

Furthermore, at what age does this perception begin? African Americans are not given the benefit of the doubt as are Caucasians, when it comes to the majority of situations, even in childhood.  In an article titled The essence of innocence: Consequences of dehumanizing black children (2014), Goff, Jackson, Culotta, Di Leone and DiTomassa hypothesize ”converging evidence that Black boys are seen as older and less innocent and that they prompt a less essential conception of childhood than do their White same-age peers” (p. 526). As a mother with two African American boys, I feel that I have to be more cautious of the way people perceive my children, even though I know that my children are no danger to anyone.  Unfortunately, the inaccurate perceptions of them being a threat could end up being the story of their lives.

Lastly, if the idea of perception is the ability to do something or act in a certain situation, then I would conclude that perceptual differences do exist when it comes to African Americans as opposed to Caucasians, therefore leading to the uptick in violence toward African Americans.  Perceptual Salience can, at most times can cause this fundamental attribution error.  That is, the focus is strictly on the individuals and not the situations that are within the communities.  It is easy to blame the individual for a circumstance rather than distribute the blame and sympathize that the surroundings could be the cause.  Other times, correspondence bias, the idea that African Americans are simply a threat, can also take hold in the minds of outside communities.

References

Goff, P., Jackson, M., Culotta, C., Di Leone, B., Di Tomasso, N. (2014). The Essence of Innocence:   Consequences of Dehumanizing Black Children. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 106(4), 526-545. doi: 10.1037/a0035663

Perlberg, A. (2011, July). The continued dehumanization of blacks. Retrieved from The Stanford University, Stanford, California, The Clayman Institute for Gender Research website: http://Stanford.edu/news/2011/continued-dehumanization-blacks

Sanders, J. (2012, May). Media portrayals of black youths contribute to racial tensions.  Retrieved from:http://www.mije.org/mmcisi/general/mediaportrayalofblackyouthcontributetoracialtensions