|
This story is from the category Augmenting Organics
Date posted: 26/09/2011 Researchers at Tufts University, Stanford and University of California, Irvine found that computerized faces accompanied by business attire were more likely to be seen as white, whereas faces with blue-collar attire were more likely to be seen as black. More subtle evidence of bias was revealed by a novel-mouse tracking technique that recorded participants' hand movements while using a computer mouse to choose a racial category. Even when participants ultimately decided that a face with low-status attire was white or a face with high-status attire was black, they were still drawn to the other race that was stereotypically tied to the status cue and moved the mouse slightly closer to that response before making their final decision. The researchers also ran a series of computer simulations to show how the shifting of race perception by status cues might naturally emerge in a system that is mathematically similar to a human brain -- so long as that system already associates Whites with high status and Blacks with low status. Even when participants ultimately decided that a face with low-status attire was White or a face with high-status attire was Black, they showed that they were still drawn to the other race that was stereotypically tied to the status cue by moving the mouse slightly closer to that response before making their final decision. The researchers then ran a series of computer simulations to show how the shifting of race perception by status cues naturally emerges in a system that is mathematically similar to a human brain -- so long as that system already associates Whites with high status and Blacks with low status. "The study shows how the perception of a face is always a compromise between the visual cues before our eyes and the baggage we bring to the table, like the stereotypes we hold," says the study's lead author, Jonathan B. Freeman, a doctoral candidate in psychology at the Tufts Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. See the full Story via external site: medicalxpress.com Most recent stories in this category (Augmenting Organics): 04/05/2013: Printable 'bionic' ear melds electronics and biology |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
