Race and Psychology

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Before the formal institutionalization of psychology in the nineteenth century, academics attributed psychological qualities to specific ethnic groups (such attributions can even be found in Aristotle’s writings). However, the systematic combination of psychological characteristics with race occurred in the eighteenth century when Carolus Linnaeus (1707–1778) linked varieties of humans (“races”) with psychological and social characteristics in his taxonomy. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840) advanced the concept of the Caucasian based on his idea that European culture originated in the Caucasus. The term Caucasian, still used in empirical psychological studies, has no scientific validity.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, some European scholars suggested that the Caucasian variety divided into two branches, identified as Semites and Aryans. Both were associated with different psychological characteristics and formed the theoretical basis for Hitler’s ideology. In the 1860s John Langdon H. Down (1829–1896) studied the structure and function of various organs in “idiots” and “imbeciles.” He observed a group of individuals that he characterized as having round faces, flattened skulls, extra folds of skin over their eyelids, protruding tongues, short limbs, and retardation of motor and mental abilities. Down classified this group on the basis of their resemblance to racial groups. He suggested that the physical features and behavioral attributes of these individuals represented typical Mongols—hence the term Mongolism for what is now called Down syndrome.

Pioneers of social psychology such as Gustave Le Bon (1841–1931) incorporated an ideology of race into their studies of intellectual ability, emotion, and volition. Le Bon understood races as physiologically and psychologically distinct entities that each possessed an immutable race soul. Paul Broca (1824–1880) was convinced that non-European races were inferior and used a variety of scientific studies to prove his preconceived conviction. Francis Galton (1822–1911) argued that Europeans were by nature more intelligent than “primitive races” and suggested the quantification of levels of racial intelligence. In the United States, pioneers of psychology such as Granville Stanley Hall (1844–1924), the first president of the American Psychological Association (APA), argued that “lower races” were in a state of adolescence, a claim that provided a justification for segregation.

Empirical race psychology was prominent and influential during the first half of the twentieth century. Race psychologists used the accepted methods of the discipline and applied them to the empirical comparison of various groups. An early example is the research emerging from the Cambridge Torres Straits Expedition, which produced psychophysiological data on racial differences. Many racepsychological studies were used to demonstrate the inferiority of certain races and thus were part of the program of scientific racism. American race psychologists performed empirical studies on immigrants and were motivated by fears that the “national stock” was declining. They participated in empirically “evidencing” the inferiority of southern and eastern Europeans and African Americans.

Based on the results of the Army Mental Tests, administered to 1.75 million American recruits during World War I, it was concluded that there were inborn racial differences between whites and blacks, and among various European “races.” Psychological studies played a role in the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924, which imposed quotas on the allegedly less intelligent European nations. Leading American psychologists participated in race psychology, including two APA presidents: Robert M. Yerkes (1876–1956), who played a decisive role in the army testing, and Lewis Terman (1877–1956), who supported segregated education. Also popular in race psychology was the study of the mulatto hypothesis, which suggested that a greater proportion of white “blood” in a black person’s ancestry would lead to higher intelligence.

Most of the empirical studies on race carried out in North America and Europe during this period were unable to overcome prejudicial ideas. Research found differences and these differences were frequently interpreted in racist terms. These studies were also unable to challenge the cultural meaning of psychological instruments, concepts, theories, and methods. After World War II and the international recognition that racism was an integral component of the atrocities committed in the name of racial superiority in Europe and Asia, empirical race psychology, which could not overcome its racist connotations, declined significantly. However, contemporary studies on differences among races on intelligence tests continue a racist legacy when these differences are interpreted as representing essential racial divisions in mental life or when ideas of inferiority or superiority are invoked.

Social psychologists began, as early as the 1930s, to shift away from studying race differences to researching prejudice. Some racial studies took on a different perspective and were performed in the context of challenging racism, especially in the United States, where racial conflict, injustice, and discrimination were still endemic. Kenneth Clark (1914–1995) and Mamie Clark (1917–1983) performed a variety of studies in order to demonstrate the negative impact of prejudice, racism, and discrimination on African American identity. The best-known studies included a “doll test” that assessed whether African American children preferred to play with a brown or white doll and which color they considered nice. Many of the children preferred the white doll and considered it nice. The Clarks interpreted the results as showing that black children had low self-worth, an argument that played a role in court cases concerning desegregation and also in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court judged segregation to be unconstitutional.

In the wake of the civil rights movement, Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty, and early educational compensatory programs such as Head Start, a dedicated and high-profile group of researchers personally and ideologically committed to a naturalistic concept of race emerged in Great Britain and North America. In 1969 Arthur Jensen published an article in the Harvard Educational Review that challenged the idea of the value of compensatory education. He also suggested that because intelligence had a heritable component, it seemed reasonable to hypothesize that genetic factors might play a role in producing racial differences in IQ. His argument was speculative but had an enormous impact on the field of psychology and on society in general.

From a methodological point of view it is important to understand that even if intelligence has a heritable component, mostly estimated through twin studies, this does not mean that differences between groups can be explained through heredity. For example, a heritability estimate of .50 for IQ means that 50 percent of the variability of IQ that one finds within a given population can be attributed to heredity. Hypothetically assume that a researcher finds a heritability of 55 percent in a “white group,” 50 percent in a “black sample,” and 45 percent in a sample that contains various ethnicities (heritability estimates do not have a single true value and change with environment). These results mean that 55 percent of the differences that can be found within the “white group,” 50 percent of the differences within the “black group,” and 45 percent of the differences within the “mixed group” can be attributed to heredity. They say nothing about the differences between the groups.

In 1994 Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray suggested in their book The Bell Curve that genetic differences might be involved in producing racial differences in IQ. Again, they provided no evidence for this speculation. Beginning in the 1990s J. Philippe Rushton promoted his ideas of a racial hierarchy. He presupposed the existence of three major races (Orientals, whites, and blacks) and has argued that there is a three-way pattern of differences in brain size, IQ, and behavior. For Rushton, whites and Asian developed larger brains and are more intelligent than blacks because gathering food, providing shelter, making clothes, and raising children during long winters was more mentally demanding than accomplishing the same tasks in permanently warm climates. Rushton has not provided any genetic evidence for his interpretations that genes cause racial IQ differences.

The genetic speculations of contemporary race researchers in psychology take place in the context of anthropological and biological research that posits race as a sociohistorical and not a natural-biological category. Empirical differences are not interpreted as inborn and as reflecting a natural hierarchy, but as variations that must be understood as the product of cultural difference. Advancements in genetic analyses have shown that the variation within traditionally conceptualized races is much larger than between them. Instead of three or five races one should assume several thousand populations that are in the process of changing. Empirical studies that include race as a variable are now often motivated by the idea that a sociohistorical concept of “race” should be taken into account when making generalizations in psychology.

Social psychologists have provided alternative and more complex explanations for ethnic group differences than have traditional race psychologists. Experimental stereotype threat research conducted by Claude Steele (1997) is of particular significance. It is based on the empirically validated finding that the threat of being negatively stereotyped leads to underperformance in accordance with that stereotype. A negative stereotype is threatening when it provides an explanation for one’s actions or experiences, or aligns with one’s self-definition. For example, when a test is presented as assessing intellectual ability, black participants underperform in comparison to white participants. When the same test is presented as assessing problem solving unrelated to intellectual ability (and therefore unrelated to stereotypes about black intellectual ability) both groups achieve the same level of performance.

Effects of stereotypes can also be found in other areas. A study examining the stereotype that Asians perform well at numerical tasks has shown that Asian American women performed better than a control group on a mathematics test when ethnic identity was focused on, but worse when their gender identity was highlighted (Shih, Pittinsky, and Ambady 1999). In addition, social psychologists have studied attitudes associated with minority life that increase successful psychological functioning. Robert Sellers has investigated the meaning that African Americans attribute to race in their self-definitions (e.g., Sellers and Shelton 2003). He has developed a conceptual framework as well as instruments to provide a comprehensive assessment of African American racial identity. Instead of focusing on the negative impact of prejudice and discrimination, he has studied the protective role of identity. He has analyzed how African Americans are able to live normal lives in a context of discrimination. This has allowed him to provide a more precise picture of African American realities.

Other researchers have looked at interethnic interaction and its consequences from the standpoint of both minorities and majorities. Nicole Shelton, Jennifer Richeson, and Jessica Salvatore (2005) have demonstrated that the expectation of being the target of prejudice has complex implications for the dynamics of interethnic interaction. For example, the more ethnic minorities expected whites to be prejudiced, the more they had negative experiences during interethnic interactions. Yet, for whites, the more ethnic minorities expected them to be prejudiced, the more positive experiences they had during interethnic interactions. Richeson and Shelton (2003) have also examined the influence of interracial interaction on the cognitive functioning of members of a dominant racial group. Racial attitudes were predictive of impaired cognitive performance for individuals who participated in interracial interactions. This means that the activation of racist beliefs on the part of “whites” actually reduces their own cognitive functioning.

Despite the human genome project and advancements in human population genetics, ideological struggles over the concept of race continue. In the genome era, psychologists have been publishing increasingly on race and psychology. Although many psychologists suggest that the results from genomic research demonstrate that a biological concept of race is not tenable in psychology, others disagree. What is evident from the history of race psychology is that scientific methods are not sufficient to prevent bias, prejudice, and racism. In fact, empirical research has been used to support racism. Finally, it must be emphasized that much of race psychology has participated in epistemological violence —meaning that psychologists have produced and distributed interpretations, presented as knowledge, that have negatively shaped the life, health, and opportunities of minorities.

SEE ALSO American Psychological Association; Aryans; Bigotry; Brown v. Board of Education, 1954; Clark, Kenneth B.; Cognition; Determinism, Genetic; Discrimination; Galton, Francis; Genomics; Head Start; Heredity; Hitler, Adolf; Immigrants to North America; Immigration; Intelligence; IQ Controversy; Nature vs. Nurture; Psychology; Race; Racism; Stereotypes; Twin Studies; War on Poverty

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gould, Stephen Jay. 1996. The Mismeasure of Man. Rev. ed. New York: Norton.

Jackson, John P., Jr., and Nadine M. Weidman. 2004. Race, Racism, and Science: Social Impact and Interaction. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.

Richards, Graham. 1997. “Race,” Racism, and Psychology: Towards a Reflexive History. London: Routledge.

Richeson, Jennifer A., and J. Nicole Shelton. 2003. When Prejudice Does Not Pay: Effects of Interracial Contact on Executive Function. Psychological Science 14 (3): 287–290.

Rushton, J. Philippe. 1995. Race, Evolution, and Behavior: A Life History Perspective. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

Sellers, Robert M., and J. Nicole Shelton. 2003. The Role of Racial Identity in Perceived Racial Discrimination. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 84 (5): 1079–1092.

Shelton, J. Nicole, Jennifer A. Richeson, and Jessica Salvatore. 2005. Expecting to Be the Target of Prejudice: Implications for Interethnic Interactions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 31 (9): 1189–1202.

Shih, Margaret, Todd L. Pittinsky, and Nalini Ambady. 1999. Stereotype Susceptibility: Identity Salience and Shifts in Quantitative Performance. Psychological Science 10 (13): 80–83.

Steele, Claude M. 1997. A Threat in the Air: How Stereotypes Shape Intellectual Identity and Performance. American Psychologist 52 (6): 613–629.

Tucker, William H. 1994. The Science and Politics of Racial Research. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Winston, Andrew S., ed. 2004. Defining Difference: Race and Racism in the History of Psychology. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Thomas Teo