Crude historical depictions of African Americans as ape-like may have disappeared from mainstream U.S. culture, but research presented in a new paper by psychologists at Stanford, Pennsylvania State University and the University of California-Berkeley reveals that many Americans subconsciously associate blacks with apes.
In addition, the findings show that society is more likely to condone violence against black criminal suspects as a result of its broader inability to accept African Americans as fully human, according to the researchers.
Co-author Jennifer Eberhardt, a Stanford associate professor of psychology who is black, said she was shocked by the results, particularly since they involved subjects born after Jim Crow and the civil rights movement. “This was actually some of the most depressing work I have done,” she said. “This shook me up. You have suspicions when you do the work—intuitions—you have a hunch. But it was hard to prepare for how strong [the black-ape association] was—how we were able to pick it up every time.”
The paper, “Not Yet Human: Implicit Knowledge, Historical Dehumanization and Contemporary Consequences,” is the result of a series of six previously unpublished studies conducted by Eberhardt, Pennsylvania State University psychologist Phillip Atiba Goff (the lead author and a former student of Eberhardt’s) and Matthew C. Jackson and Melissa J. Williams, graduate students at Penn State and Berkeley, respectively. The paper is scheduled to appear Feb. 7 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, which is published by the American Psychological Association.
The research took place over six years at Stanford and Penn State under Eberhardt’s supervision. It involved mostly white male undergraduates. In a series of studies that subliminally flashed black or white male faces on a screen for a fraction of a second to “prime” the students, researchers found subjects could identify blurry ape drawings much faster after they were primed with black faces than with white faces. The researchers consistently discovered a black-ape association even if the young adults said they knew nothing about its historical connotations. The connection was made only with African American faces; the paper’s third study failed to find an ape association with other non-white groups, such as Asians. Despite such race-specific findings, the researchers stressed that dehumanization and animal imagery have been used for centuries to justify violence against many oppressed groups.
“Despite widespread opposition to racism, bias remains with us,” Eberhardt said. “African Americans are still dehumanized; we’re still associated with apes in this country. That association can lead people to endorse the beating of black suspects by police officers, and I think it has lots of other consequences that we have yet to uncover.”
Scientific racism in the United States was graphically promoted in a mid-19th-century book by Josiah C. Nott and George Robins Gliddon titled Types of Mankind, which used misleading illustrations to suggest that “Negroes” ranked between “Greeks” and chimpanzees. “When we have a history like that in this country, I don’t know how much of that goes away completely, especially to the extent that we are still dealing with severe racial inequality, which fuels and maintains those associations in ways that people are unaware,” Eberhardt said.
Although such grotesque characterizations of African Americans have largely disappeared from mainstream U.S. society, Eberhardt noted that science education could be partly responsible for reinforcing the view that blacks are less evolved than whites. An iconic 1970 illustration, “March of Progress,” published in the Time-Life book Early Man, depicts evolution beginning with a chimpanzee and ending with a white man. “It’s a legacy of our past that the endpoint of evolution is a white man,” Eberhardt said. “I don’t think it’s intentional, but when people learn about human evolution, they walk away with a notion that people of African descent are closer to apes than people of European descent. When people think of a civilized person, a white man comes to mind.”
Consequences of socially endorsed violence
In the paper’s fifth study, the researchers subliminally primed 115 white male undergraduates with words associated with either apes (such as “monkey,” “chimp,” “gorilla”) or big cats (such as “lion,” “tiger,” “panther”). The latter was used as a control because both images are associated with violence and Africa, Eberhardt said. The subjects then watched a two-minute video clip, similar to the television program COPS, depicting several police officers violently beating a man of undetermined race. A mugshot of either a white or a black man was shown at the beginning of the clip to indicate who was being beaten, with a description conveying that, although described by his family as “a loving husband and father,” the suspect had a serious criminal record and may have been high on drugs at the time of his arrest.
The students were then asked to rate how justified the beating was. Participants who believed the suspect was white were no more likely to condone the beating when they were primed with either ape or big cat words, Eberhardt said. But those who thought the suspect was black were more likely to justify the beating if they had been primed with ape words than with big cat words. “Taken together, this suggests that implicit knowledge of a Black-ape association led to marked differences in participants’ judgments of Black criminal suspects,” the researchers write.
According to the paper’s authors, this link has devastating consequences for African Americans because it “alters visual perception and attention, and it increases endorsement of violence against black suspects.” For example, the paper’s sixth study showed that in hundreds of news stories from 1979 to 1999 in the Philadelphia Inquirer, African Americans convicted of capital crimes were about four times more likely than whites convicted of capital crimes to be described with ape-relevant language, such as “barbaric,” “beast,” “brute,” “savage” and “wild.” “Those who are implicitly portrayed as more ape-like in these articles are more likely to be executed by the state than those who are not,” the researchers write.
The way forward
Despite the paper’s findings, Eberhardt said she is optimistic about the future. “This work isn’t arguing that there hasn’t been any progress made or that we are living in the same society that existed in the 19th century,” she said. “We have made a lot of progress on race issues, but we should recognize that racial bias isn’t dead. We still need to be aware of that and aware of all the different ways [racism] can affect us, despite our intentions and motivations to be egalitarian. We still have work to do.”
For Eberhardt, two stories of race exist in America. “One is about the disappearance of bias—that it’s no longer with us,” she said. “But the other is about the transformation of bias. It’s not the egregious bias anymore, but it’s modern bias, subtle bias.” With both of these stories, she said, there is an understanding that society has moved beyond the historic battles centered around race. “We want to argue, with this work, that there is one old race battle that we’re still fighting,” she said. “That is the battle for blacks to be recognized as fully human.”
This research was supported by a Stanford University Dean’s Award to Jennifer Eberhardt.
the way they walk, the muscle build, the lack of intelligence, the elongated skulls are all resemblance to primates such as chimps and apes
you have one just east of ours go back home
How can the “black race” be 6-10 million years behind the “white race” when modern humans (and, therefore, the human ancestors of all “races” of people on earth) originated in Africa approximately 200,000 (that’s two hundred thousand) years ago?
Evolution is not progressive/teleological (it does not work toward an end point or an ultimate perfection); rather, evolution by natural selection is opportunistic and, you could say, blind. So, when you say blacks are “behind” whites and it will take tens of millions of years to “catch up”, what are you referring to? Is the standard of “whiteness” an ultimate perfection that blacks just haven’t met yet? What about black people makes them “behind” white people from an evolutionary perspective? I don’t get it! Furthermore, if these studies are suppressed, how did you get your hands on them? Why not post a reference to these studies so everyone can know the “truth” like you do?
When it comes down to it (as you say), people love “scientific” studies that justify their own racist beliefs and even scientists can find “evidence” to justify their racist beliefs. Maybe the reason why these “scientific” studies are “suppressed” is because they are bad science if science at all.
If people are evolving toward the perfection of critical thinking, I think you have some “catching up” to do.
“Psychologists at Stanford, Pennsylvania State University and the University of California-Berkeley reveals that many Americans subconsciously associate blacks with apes”
This is proof. Don’t blame the media, don’t blame history, don’t attempt to find another excuse. It’s subconscious. Why? Well I’ll leave you to answer that to yourself.
So blacks/Africans have flat noses and more “flared” nostrils, so what?
Some have said that Africans are more in touch with nature, and were wise in not developing machinery that uses fuel/electricity which contributes to global warming and pollution.
People like the Bushmen learn and develop only what they need to survive, and they are probably happier than most people.
who’s to say what looks better, and who is better at x,y, or z?
If you take into consideration the relative affluence of white vs black families then this “mixed race / white being cleverer” statement may be a result of a “better” education (at least one that teaches skills that are deemed more valuable in modern life). The fact that the fully black families in Africa do not have access to that kind of education does not necessarily mean that they are not just as intelligent but in different areas that are more suited to their life style. For example after living in West Africa for two months I know that that by the age of 17 (my age) every individual would need to know anywhere from 4-10 unrelated languages fluently – something most “successful” white people would be hard pushed to match.
This argument about racial intelligence seems to be predominantly biased in it’s definition of intelligence its self – not race. Intelligence, in this sense, should not be defined by by particular modern skills – e.g. literary skills, mathematical skills (which have to be learned by particular means) rather than creative skills or expressive skills at which African people are certainly just as capable (if not more – music, poetry, art all have incredibly important roles in African culture – as mathematics and science does in ours). And if you dispute the importance of art then you dispute a fundamental human characteristic which is to express and communicate in much more meaningful ways than that of numbers.
It is no wonder that there are more well known white inventors (or otherwise successful white people) when you consider the geological placement of black vs white races and their general access to the mainstream scientific education which is necessary for an “inventor” (or successful scientist/mathematician/writer). The idea that there are more successful white people than black people is ignorant: consider the meaning of success in relation to media coverage or popularity and then consider the lack of African media coverage across the rest of the world! just because you don’t hear about someone halfway across the world doesn’t diminish their success! people in Africa haven’t heard of harry potter – does that mean that it was unsuccessful?
On the other hand I see no reason to shy away from the idea that African races have evolved in a more physical direction and white races in a more mental. The only thing that makes this controversial is this societies collective egoistic protection of the “intelligence” it holds so dear as the more important characteristic.
Also skin colour has been defined by our geological situation and climate – are we suggesting that simply living in a certain part of the world makes you innately cleverer at birth?
please try not to let your unjustified, badly thought out and, most of all, discriminatory feelings contribute to an otherwise mature conversation. Being successful does not make you clever and having a bone through your nose doesn’t make you stupid lol.
(i’m white and 17 years old)
Sure, you silly little youngster.
Why are electronics, astronomy, space travel, massive dams, bridges, tunnels and skyscrapers… high-speed trains, nuclear energy, airplanes, air conditioning, photography, deep sea exploration, robotic explorers of other planets, quantum physics… hell, classical physics, philharmonic orchestras and scanning tunneling electron microscopes considered to be “intelligent objects and pursuits”, compared to having good rhythm and living the simple life for generations without end.
Intelligence is overrated anyway. I’m sure real monkeys and apes are perfectly happy just being themselves too!
…You also speak of Black excellence in the arts – or at least, you say art figures prominently in black culture. I guess you believe European art, what with the Parthenon, Greek sculpture and stage plays, Rome, Leonardo DaVinci, Michaelangelo, Gothic cathedrals, Rembrandt, Jan Van Eyck, J. S. Bach, Vivaldi, Beethoven, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Whitman, the Eiffel Tower, Frank Lloyd Wright, the motion picture, Hemingway, Mt. Rushmore…
…all pale in comparison to African mud huts, stick figures and body paint.
You may be on to something though, as Western art over the last 100 years has devolved into something resembling, at times, African and other aboriginal art.
Well, you silly 17 year old twit – you haven’t fooled anybody in the end. Convenient disposal of “intelligence” as a valid concept will get you nowhere, sonny. Or missy, if that’s what you are. Actually, I’ll stick with Missy for you.
You are a patronizing racist when it comes to black people.
Blacks in America do have a few high achieving figures.
Blacks in Africa have none.
Mud figures, sticks and crude blocks of wood cannot be compared to contemporaneous European or Asian technology, even 3000 year old European and Asian tech, you silly nitwit.
James Watson, a Nobel Prize winner for his part in the unraveling of DNA who now runs one of America’s leading scientific
research institutions says.
The 79-year-old geneticist reopened the explosive debate about race and science in a newspaper interview in which he said Western policies towards African countries were wrongly based on an assumption that black people were as clever as their white counterparts when “testing” suggested the contrary. He claimed genes responsible for creating differences in human intelligence could be found within a decade.
“All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really”
Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.
Small amount of Black inventors, don’t be afraid we have always been around to take care of all the children that have come from us!! But with any family you have an unruly child this child turns against everything it has been taught and everyone becomes an enemy it never really learns hence never can resolve simple problems. Creates confusion and miss trust to exist is unable live harmoniously with over’s.
GEORGE ALCORN – Not many inventors have resumes as impressive as George Edward Alcorn’s. Among his credits, the African-American inventor received a B.A. in physics, a master’s degree in nuclear physics and a PhD in atomic and molecular physics. On top of that, Alcorn worked for the likes of Philco-Ford, Perkin-Elmer, IBM and NASA, created over 20 different inventions and was granted eight patents.
Garrett Morgan – is one of those rare people who are able to come up with an extraordinary invention which has a tremendous impact on society – and then follows that up with even more! Today’s modern traffic lights are based upon Morgan’s original design.
JOHN LOVE – On November 23, 1897, Love patented the pencil sharpener which called for a user to turn a crank and rotor off thin slices of wood from the pencil until a point was formedFour years earlier, Love created and patented his Plasterer’s Hawk. This device, a flat square piece of board made of wood or metal, upon which plaster or mortar was placed and then spread by plasterers or masons. This device was patented on July 9, 1895.
Madam C. J. Walker – In 1908, Sarah started Lelia College in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which trained women to sell her products door-to-door and by 1910 had more than 1,000 sales agents. In that year, she moved the company’s headquarters to Indianapolis, Indiana and soon the company grew beyond anyone’s expectations. By 1914, the woman who only nine years earlier had only $2.00 to her name was now worth more than one million dollars. Her products ranged from hair conditioners and facial creams to hot combs specially made for the hair of Black consumers.
George Washington Carver – was born in 1860 in Diamond Grove, Missouri and despite early difficulties would rise to become one of the most celebrated and respected scientists in United States history. His important discoveries and methods enabled farmers through the south and midwest to become profitable and prosperous.
Frederick McKinley Jones
FREDERICK McKINLEY JONES – Anytime you see a truck on the highway transporting refrigerated or frozen food, you’re seeing the work of Frederick McKinley Jones.
One of the most prolific Black inventors ever, Jones patented more than 60 inventions in his lifetime. While more than 40 of those patents were in the field of refrigeration, Jones is most famous for inventing an automatic refrigeration system for long haul trucks and railroad cars.
Before Jones’ invention, the only way to keep food cool in trucks was to load them with ice. Jones was inspired to invent the system after talking with a truck driver who lost his whole cargo of chicken because he couldn’t reach his destination before the ice melted. As a solution, the African-American inventor developed a roof-mounted cooling system to make sure food stayed fresh.
For the record Many of those inventions were not by black people. And many of the remaining were of “mixed Ancestory” –
Interesting links -
You can google yourselves, to reconfirm the facts!
http://www33.brinkster.com/iiiii/inventions/
Small amount of Black inventors, don’t be afraid we have always been around to take care of all the children that have come from us!! But with any family you have an unruly child this child turns against everything it has been taught and everyone becomes an enemy it never really learns hence never can resolve simple problems. Creates confusion and miss trust to exist is unable live harmoniously with over’s.
GEORGE ALCORN – Not many inventors have resumes as impressive as George Edward Alcorn’s. Among his credits, the African-American inventor received a B.A. in physics, a master’s degree in nuclear physics and a PhD in atomic and molecular physics. On top of that, Alcorn worked for the likes of Philco-Ford, Perkin-Elmer, IBM and NASA, created over 20 different inventions and was granted eight patents.
Garrett Morgan – is one of those rare people who are able to come up with an extraordinary invention which has a tremendous impact on society – and then follows that up with even more! Today’s modern traffic lights are based upon Morgan’s original design.
JOHN LOVE – On November 23, 1897, Love patented the pencil sharpener which called for a user to turn a crank and rotor off thin slices of wood from the pencil until a point was formedFour years earlier, Love created and patented his Plasterer’s Hawk. This device, a flat square piece of board made of wood or metal, upon which plaster or mortar was placed and then spread by plasterers or masons. This device was patented on July 9, 1895.
Madam C. J. Walker – In 1908, Sarah started Lelia College in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which trained women to sell her products door-to-door and by 1910 had more than 1,000 sales agents. In that year, she moved the company’s headquarters to Indianapolis, Indiana and soon the company grew beyond anyone’s expectations. By 1914, the woman who only nine years earlier had only $2.00 to her name was now worth more than one million dollars. Her products ranged from hair conditioners and facial creams to hot combs specially made for the hair of Black consumers.
George Washington Carver – was born in 1860 in Diamond Grove, Missouri and despite early difficulties would rise to become one of the most celebrated and respected scientists in United States history. His important discoveries and methods enabled farmers through the south and midwest to become profitable and prosperous.
Frederick McKinley Jones
FREDERICK McKINLEY JONES – Anytime you see a truck on the highway transporting refrigerated or frozen food, you’re seeing the work of Frederick McKinley Jones.
One of the most prolific Black inventors ever, Jones patented more than 60 inventions in his lifetime. While more than 40 of those patents were in the field of refrigeration, Jones is most famous for inventing an automatic refrigeration system for long haul trucks and railroad cars.
Before Jones’ invention, the only way to keep food cool in trucks was to load them with ice. Jones was inspired to invent the system after talking with a truck driver who lost his whole cargo of chicken because he couldn’t reach his destination before the ice melted. As a solution, the African-American inventor developed a roof-mounted cooling system to make sure food stayed fresh.
We need our own nation. . . that is the true solution to our problems. Please continue speaking the truth!