Solving Racism!

abstract, tells you what the variable is. What is the variable?

• concrete. how do you measure it? how do you manipulate it?

• efforts to integrate past findings, summarize, and interpret what may be happening

• psychological distance

• how we think about things differently if it’s close to us vs if it’s far away from us

• concrete, focus on detail including nonessential details

  • ex: operational definition

  • ex: Focusing on where the classroom is when registering. it doesn’t change the object for you

• low level construals become more important when things are closer

  • you don’t care where the classroom is until the night before classes

• abstract, the essence, broad

  • ex: conceptual definition

• when things are far away from you

1. temporal distance → distance across time (1 min ago vs 1 yr ago)

2. spatial distance → physical space between

3. social distance → far away in relationship to you

4. hypotheticality → object/event you are considering is actually in existence or hypothetical

   1. if something feels more hypothetical it feels more distant

high levels in any form of distance → more high level construals

less distance → more low level construals

• arguments for doing arguments are conceptually lower/subordinate than arguments for doing something

• pros take precedents

• pros are more salient at a high distance

  • when things feel far away, people focus more on pros

• cons are more salient at a low distance

  • for example: you only ask about the side effects of a medication when you want to take it

1. War on Drugs

2. Longer Sentences

3. Private sector involvement in prisons

   1. Prison industrial complex → web that works to get more people in prison for profit

Pfaff is saying these things are overemphasized when examining mass incarceration

• a rational prosecutor may focus more on drugs when crime is no longer rising

  • 80s → crime is rising

  • 90s → peaks then declines afterwards

• more logical that when crime is rising incarceration of violent crime would increase, then as violent crime decreases, police would focus more on drugs

  • we didn’t see this though

• Pretextual attacks on violence

  • Perhaps somewhat counterintuitively, what we see in Table 1.2 actually undermines the claim that drug admissions seemingly mattered as much as violent ones during the 1980s. That drug crime admissions rose more rapidly during a time of rising violence suggests that at least some of these drug admissions, maybe many, were pretextual attacks on violence.

• drug offenses are targeted as a way to punish violent crime

• violent crime is harder to prove than drug offenses

  • drug offenses have physical evidence but violent is usually eyewitness based

• drug convictions based on violent crime, prosecution didn’t feel confident they could prove violence → if they have drugs it’s easier to prosecute

• against the mythical idea that most people incarcerated for drugs are nonviolent:

  • 20% of those in prison for drugs admitted to having used a firearm in a previous crime

  • 24% had prior convictions for violent crime

• there could be a disproportionate number of admissions from drug convictions, but they might not stay long (flow)

• vast majority of prisoners do not involve drug convictions

• no evidence that the war on drugs is leading to people churning through the system more (since so little of the admissions of unique individuals have drug convictions)

• Even if we could end WoD, the resulting numbers of those incarcerated would not change that much because the majority of people in prison are not there for drug crimes.

• The prison population would still be disproportionately Black and Brown

• US would still be the leading incarcerator in the world

• WoD is only a minor contributor of mass incarceration regardless of looking at stock or flow

• audit study comparing entry level job listing

• compared Black and White testers (who actually went in to complete the application)

• criminal background was manipulated

• Black people with no criminal record had a similar % of admission to white people WITH a criminal record

• Black people are systemically excluded from the primary labor market (Pager (2003)’s audit study)

• They are pushed to the secondary labor market → more unstable part time jobs

• Also, many schools in Black neighborhoods are underfunded

• they face systematically different pressures to turn to other tactics like drugs

• So, Pfaff argues that it is weird that there is a claim of no disparities because of this difference in systemic pressures

The… claim that there are no real disparities in offending is somewhat more surprising… since the very racial discrimination that leads to biased enforcement should also lead to racial differences in drug offending”

1. biased enforcement → police targeting African Americans

2. disparities in offending → African Americans are more likely to participate in the sale of drug

• If he was attributing the FAE he would be attributing offending to Black people’s internal disposition → Black people are more criminally inclined

• Pfaff says if it’s true that Black people sell drugs more that does not inherently justify higher incarceration rates

  • rates of offending are because of environmental pressure

  • the blame of a poor Black kid in an urban neighborhood is lower than white kid in suburbs selling drugs because of situational pressures

  • the way to deter/prevent behavior should be constructive not punitive

• you can consider the differences in behavior without making the error of blaming the people who engage in the behavior because there are situational issues

• since it’s in parallel it’s consistent with sentence length not getting longer because admissions match releases

• If it were to show that sentences were getting longer releases would be lagging behind admissions because people would be getting in more than they are getting out like the graph here

• 1994 → 2008

• reported violent crime and property crime fell

• arrests for violent, property, public order, and non-marijuana drug offenses fell

• number of felonies filed in state court rose

  • p(felony charge | an arrest) rose sharply

• p(prison admission | felony case filing) was unchanged

  • prison admissions were unchanged

the only thing that rose was the rate at which prosecutors filed felony charges against arrestees

• overfocus on drug crime has led to stiffer penalties for violent convictions

• these reform efforts only focusing on nonviolent crimes are not going to lead to reductions in the prison population

• meaningful solutions are boring

• focus more on local issues → like the way we elect prosecutors

  • suburban residents feel the benefits of strict enforcement and have more sway than urban residents

• the benefit of punitive action is felt more by white suburban residents

• costs felt more by urban POC

• in the US, we tend to focus more on benefits over the cost of punishment

  • crime reduction benefits over time level out

• reducing flow instead of stock

• reduce admissions because even if the prison sentence is short, they still carry cost of felony for the rest of their lives

• Standard story is costly here because even if we were to reduce the length of sentences, if a lot of people are still going to prison they still carry the costs

• Pfaff urges to focus more on flow to address how many people receive costs

• Front end reform → focusing on admission

• Back end reform → reducing length o sentences (which doesn’t help occurring to Pfaff)

• White Ps who had seen a more Black prison population (photos) demonstrated less support for criminal justice reform → less likely to sign reform of 3 strikes condition

• Study 2

  • NY Stop & Frisk

  • no photos but gave stats to show more/less Black

  • same result → people were less inclined to sign reform in more Black condition

  • showing stats of a disproportionate Black prison population is NOT helpful

  • IV = Racial composition manipulation (condition)

  • Mediator = crime concern 

  • DV = policy acceptance 

• crime concern → mediator

• Ps report more fear of crime in more Black conditions leading to acceptance of policy (not signing reform petition)

1. false-positive problem

2. LIHS voters or “Willie Horton” effect

3. Geography

4. Census

• one of the defects

• false-negative → person incorrectly identified a not being a risk, and then breaking the law

  • wouldn’t have happened if prosecutors was harsher

• false-positive → prosecutor thinks someone is high risk but they actually aren’t

• voters are more upset about false negatives

• incentive for prosecutors to be more harsh

  • they’d rather commit the false-positive and arrest an innocent person than risk letting a guilty person free

• one of the defects

• low information, high salience voters

  • voters that don’t pay attention to day to day stuff, only vote on 1 or 2 crazy cases that are not representative

• Willie Horton

  • Mass furlough program (temp. release of inmates who were thought to be low risk)

  • Willie Horton was used as an example of the program not working.

  • In reality the success rate was over 90% → inmate left and came back with not issues

  • Willie Horton was unrepresentative BUT highly salient so it it attracted voters who don’t pay attention to the program’s day-to-day success

  • these voters prefer harsher punishments because basically in this case only focusing on negatives

    • don’t pay attention to recentivism (less likely to reoffend if connected with community)

• one of the defects

• White Americans in the 60s were policing themselves

• White Americans are still electing law enforcement → they feel benefit

• geographic segregation of costs and benefits

• for suburban residents, it’s not their family going to prison

• perceived benefits of harsh punishments is felt by suburban residents who feel safer going into the city

• the whiter and wealthier suburbs are more powerful politically

• prosecutor has political incentive to be more punitive to appeal to these white voters with more political power because prosecutors are elected by county

• where should inmates be counted?

• encouraging for counties to send more people to jail if people are counted by where in they are being held in prison instead of where they are from

• these inmates don’t get to vote

• disproportionate amounts of Black and Brown people are disenfranchised but they are boosting the political influence of rural white places where the prisons are

• freedman attempting to buy his family’s freedom

• Supreme Court was deciding if he could sue (if he had standing)

• SC ruled that he did not have standing because he was property, not a person

• Goff et al. found this to be a striking example of race based dehumanization

• Fundamental attribution error

• One can acknowledge the possibility of differences in behavior (ex. group differences in likelihood of illegal behavior) without making the error of blaming the people who engage in the illegal behavior when knowing that there are environmental explanations

• “when a white person commits a crime it is often seen as an individual failing, but when a black person commits a crime it is viewed as an indication of the broader failings of black Americans in general”

  • Implicit racial bias 

• Prosecutors may view crimes committed by black people as more serious than the same offenses committed by otherwise identical white people … they interpret them as indications of deeper community-wide social pathologies that need to be “controlled.”

  • May see their more aggressive response as a social good, even if not consciously aware of it

• Prosecutors do not face constraints that other people in the CJS face (like sentencing guidelines for judges or consent decrees for police stops), even though they have the same biases 

5%

25%

Pfaff is talking about how the prison system is at the local level, not the federal level; 3,144 counties

• “The federal government runs the single largest prison system, but several states have systems that are fairly close to the federal one in size, and if we look at total populations under some sort of correctional observation (not just prison, but also jail, parole, and probation), the federal government quickly falls out of first place.” (Pfaff, 2017)”

22%

• Standard Story is that disproportionate numbers of Black and Brown people in prison are because of drug crimes and because disparities in enforcement than offending

  • only about 16% are in prison or drug charges

  • “If we released everyone in prison in 2013 whose top charge was a drug offense, the white percentage would rise by one point (from 35 to 36 percent), the black percentage would fall by one point (from 38 to 37 percent), and the Hispanic percentage wouldn’t change.”

  • Second is surprising if true because of exclusion from primary labor markets

    • not FAE because he is acknowledging environmental reasons

• School-zone enhancements → create a sanction for selling drugs close to a school; minorities usually live closer to schools; disparate racial impact 

• “Seventy-six percent of urban Newark, for example, falls within a school zone, compared to just 6 percent of rural Mansfield Township.66 Members of minority groups who sell drugs are thus more likely to do so within a school zone than (less urban) whites are, even if they are not trying to sell to schoolchildren.”

  • Being in a school zone makes the punishment worse and most urban places are in school zones

• When primed with Black male faces Ps were quicker (took fewer frames) to identify ape images with a degraded objects paradigm than participants primed with white faces and not primed

  • 3 race primes (B, W, None) x 2 race of P (White, Non-W) x 2 animal type (Ape, Non-Ape)

  • no effect of P race

• Black → ape

  • as if something was facilitating the response (Black faces sped up responses to ape images)

  • as if something about white-faced inhibited identification of Ape images

• white Ps given dot-probe task when primed with ape they were quicker to see Black faces

• ape → Black

• dot-probe task

• Ps quicker to see flash on Black side when primed with ape → attentional bias

• with no prime people more quickly saw the white faces → white faces holding holding attention in absence of prime

• showing it’s bidirectional

• It matters because strong mental associations tend to be bidirectional

• presented Ps with Black male faces and Asian male faces (redid study 2 but with Asian instead of W faces)

• showed it wasn't just a dehumanization of outgroup faces, but a specific attentional bias toward Black male faces 

• IAT

  • measures difference in reaction time to see implicit associations

• people were faster with Black + bad than Black + good

• then, they did the dehumanizing IAT

  • replaced “I don’t like/I like” with apes vs big cats

  • used big cats to see if:

    • Black-ape association was occurring or Black-danger

    • Black-ape association was occurring or Black-Africa

  • people were faster to categorize when Black associated with ape than other animals

• effect they see on dehumanizing IAT exists when when controlled for personalized IAT (controlling even for liking/disliking Black people)

  • ape-Black association is NOT merely due to:

    • positive/negative associations

    • not greater associations to Africa nor violence

• when people encounter situations where Black people are subjugated to force by police are their opinions shaped by dehumanization?

• Ps → white

• design 2 (animal prime type : apes, big cats) x 2 (race o target)

• they put a pic of a Black/White person and told them it was who was being beaten

  • video was v grainy which allowed them to manipulate race

• W Ps with primed with ape-words saw use of force against B target as more justified

• researcher finds something in the lab and then comes up with a theoretical explanation to explain it

• then they go back to study theories

• mutual internal validity

  • internal validity we have basis for our theory

  • however,

    • testing phenomenon and proving it in the same space

    • theory no longer describes phenomena outside the lab

• tested theory outside of lab (what Lin et al. say to do!)

• looked at different media outlets about death-eligible cases

  • black defendants were more likely to be referred to with dehumanizing words in press

  • B defendants put to death were more likely to have been described with ape-relevant words

• not causal

• Shows why these associations matter

• mental accessibility of dehumanizing associations leads to more support of state violence against B people

• examined race and person perception

• race and gender are mutually constitutive

  • gender can affect how we categorize by race and vice versa

• for male faces race doesn’t make a difference

• for female faces, race matters for categorization

• Black female faces were more likely to be miscategorized as males

  • black females more likely to have gender miscategorized

• Movie clips

• more category errors only for Black women

  • both for racial errors and for gender categorization errors

• ratings of masculinity

  • Black women were seen as more masculine and thus less attractive

• they found a difference in performance on GRE questions only when stereotype threat existed (adjusted for SAT)

• stereotype threat was adjusted by saying the test was:

  • diagnostic → questions can assess intellectual ability

  • nondiagnostic → just a problem solving test

• a physician may feel afflicted and more responsible to patient’s well being

• duty of easy rescue

• in following instinct to do goof for a single patient, it can create inequitable distribution of goods in population as a whole

  • those who have access to better doctors could have access to better programs

• computers not constrained by conflicts and cognitive errors

• whether there is a racial bias is in calibration of a risk assessment tool

• calibration → whether realized value of some variable of interest Y matches risk score R

E[Y|R,W] → expected likelihood given a score or R for a W (white) patient

≠

E[Y|R,B] → expected likelihood for a Black person with the same risk score, what is the likelihood of diseased

expectation of health risk, given a particular score, should be identical for White and Black (they’re not the same though because people differ in treatment based on race = calibration bias)

• being at risk of confirming, as a self characterisitc, a negative stereotype about one’s group

  • worried stereotype will be applied to you

  • worry you will confirm the stereotype

• this figure shows calibration bias

• Black curve sits higher than White curve → Black individuals are sicker than W individuals with the same risk score

• B curve sits to left of W curve → B counterparts who are equally unhealthy to W are not referred to screening

• shows what algorithm score does predict in an unbiased manner (it was designed to predict health costs, and then those health costs are used to determine entry into program)

  • health costs predicted equally well

• the thought process was those who spend more money=more unhealthy

  • medical costs were used as a proxy (stand in) for health risk

• When you plot medical costs against the number of chronic illnesses you see at each level of chronic illnesses Black individuals have higher medical costs

  • could be because of barriers to access to health care

    • fewer clinics in B neighborhoods, lack of trust, diagnostic and treatment biases = lessspending on medical needs

• algorithm does what it’s supposed to do: assign risk scores to patients with similar medical costs

• BUT

  • Black patients have lower medical costs than W patients of similar health/illness

  • SO… Black patients are assigned lower risk scores than W patients of similar health/ illness

• Lower risk scores means that B patients of similar need to W patients have lower likelihood of being screened for / defaulted into programs

• Asian American/Asian Canadian female participants

• 3 conditions in all conditions → demographic questions but content differs

  1. Asian identity salient

     1. demographic questions about Asian identity

  2. Female identity salient

     1. demographic questions about female identity

  3. no identity condition

     1. control, demographic questions respond to no particular ID

• They found that Asian-American women performed better on a mathematics test when their ethnic identity was activated, but worse when their gender identity was activated, compared with a control group who had neither identity activated.

• small sample size so they needed replication → Gibson et al!

• attempted to replicate the US pattern

• effects like Shih et al US’s were replicated but only when excluding Ps who were unaware of the stereotype

  • interpretation: stereotype threat/lift depends on conscious awareness of stereotypes

• if Steele and Aronson had not adjusted, the means would be farther apart in both conditions, just less so in nondiagnostic condition

• inequalitites overlooked if one just focuses on stereotype threat

  • like unequal oppurtunities, schooling, redlining

• meta analysis → a quantitative review of studies on a given topic

• found threat effect occurs on average

  • for both race and gender-based stereotypes there were stereotype effects

• but… Zigerell (2017)

• obtained Nguyen and Ryan’s dataset to run his own analysis

• publication bias

  • when a researcher is less likely to submit nonsignificant results

  • when a publisher wants to publish just significant results

• he finds the size of effect of stereotype was bigger in less precise studies than more precise studies (that should be more trustworthy)

• also finds some publication bias

• cautious on how much stereotype threat matters

• advice

  • more preregistered studies → Researchers before starting studies commit to certain things (sample size, hypothesis, how you will analyze the data)

    • pre-committing to research plan so they can’t bias results

  • preregistered report→ agree on plan

• people encountered Black/White target and measured extent people believe certain myths about biological differences between B and W people

  • the more they endorsed it, they more they treated people differently based on race

  • rated pain less

• medical students same thing occurs

• encountered B/W people and treatment recommendations were based on the beliefs people had because of race

• beliefs in these racial medical myths occur in normal people and medical students

• these beliefs matter, increase in beliefs led to decrease in the belief of Black people’s pain

• guilt → more other focused

• shame → self image

  • if we’ve done something wrong it’s about how WE look

• shame predicted support for reparations cross-sectionally

  • with effects mediated by desire to improve in group reputation

• longitudinally, guilt was a better predictor of long term support for reparations

• counterfactual argument

• inheritance argument

• alternative reality where you alter a feature

  • If Slavery never happened, African Americans would be better off than they would be if slavery occurred

• Black people owed reparations because they’re worse off than they otherwise would be because of others’ wrongdoing and the purpose of reparations is to restore them to where they would be in the absence of harm

• Version 1 → African Americans today are owed reoperations because they have been harmed by the legacy of slavery

  • no slavery no harm today

  • problem → without slavery, current day people wouldn’t exist

  • how could someone be owed reparations for something they wouldn’t exist without

  • it’s been centuries → is it plausible Af Americans today are still being harmed by something that ended 100 yrs ago

• Version 2 → The harm is from more proximate subjugation that prevents Black people from recovering from negative effects of slavery

  • subsequent generations of African Americans have been denied reparations AND have continued to be actively harmed by the government and descendants of slave owners (implicit bias). These continued injustices have prevented and continue to prevent African Americans from recovering from slavery

  • Black people are owed reparations because the government CONTINUES to engage in racist practices that limit recovery from slavery

  • economic inequality → continuing effects of racial discrimination prevent people from recovering from slavery

• Enslaved people at the time were owed reparations that they never got so now heirs are owed the reparations

• inherit the debt

• slaves owed compensation never paid to them and successive generations of Black people have inherited the claim of unpaid debt

• methodology

  • authors independently examined the same 20% of issues to identify empirical articles and then compared (for reliability)

    • then did all the other ones

  • same procedure to find the emprical publications focused on race

  • same procedure to code for racial composition of samples

  • same (except 3 authors) code for race of journal editors and lead authors

• developmental psych shows highlights race the most, then social psych, cog is basically 0

  • cognitive psychologists think their research is race-neutral

    • if this idea leads us to only sample white people, we’ll never know how race plays a role

• when there were more editors of color at a journal, there tended to be more publications about race

• authors of color had a higher proportion of non-white Ps than White authors

• most of the articles published about race are by white authors

• impact factors

  • some journals get cited more (high impact factors)

  • specialty journals have lower impact factors

  • if authors opt to submit work (either authors of color or studies about race) to specialty journals → cited less → could be hurting career

  • Figure 1 = research does not often highlight race in psych journals

    • Cognitive psychologists → understand universal processes (race-neutral)

      • Visual perception works for all people regardless of race → we don’t know if this is true if all authors are White 

  

  
  

  • Figure 2 = most editors in chief are White 

  • Publications highlighting race were more likely to appear in journals with people of color serving a editor in chief or on editorial boards 

  • Specialty journals = low impact factors 

  

  
  
  

  • Figure 3 = most articles that focus on race are published by White authors (trend change a little overtime)

  

  
  

  • Figure 4 = authors of color include a higher proportion of nonwhite participants compared to White authors 

  
  

  

  
  

• detail the racial demographics of samples

• justify the racial demographics of samples

• include constraints on generality statements (generalizability)

• include positionality statements

• when talking about historic injustices, the wrong occurred in the past. The wrongdoers and harmed people were in the past

• not clear that there are people in the present how can do much about it

  • are people owed/have to give reparations for past things

• backward-looking approach → inheritance argument

• Blacks age more slowly than whites

• Black people’s blood coagulates more quickly than whites’

• Blacks’ skin is thicker than whites

• Blacks have a stronger immune system than whites

Figure 2A: → If someone has a high endorsement of false beliefs, they are more likely to rate Black patients' pain as lower than White people’s pain. However, if someone also has low endorsement of false beliefs, they are also more likely to rate Black patients’ pain as higher than White patients’ pain.

Figure 2B → Participants responded differently in terms of accurate treatment recommendation for Black vs. White patients. When false beliefs were highly endorsed, treatment accuracy for Black patients was lower than White patients.

• Public sector unions made up of prison guards have incentive to fight for more prisoners to ensure job security 

• Legislators and citizens believe that prisons provide economic support to rural communities where they’re located – empirical studies say that the benefits are minimal to none but politicians still latch on

  • Geographical problem 

• Rural counties have incentive to fight for tougher sentencing laws b/c of US census 

  • Census problem

• Politics of punishments – powerful figures have incentive to remain tough on crime

  • False positive problem