From: USA Today

Study: Face, race bias turns toys into weapons

USA Today:

A new study by University of Iowa researchers finds that people are more likely to misidentify a toy as a weapon after seeing a black face than a white face — even when the faces in question are those of young children.

“The surprise for us was that the magnitude of the racial bias was just as large for young boys as it was men,” said lead study author Andrew Todd, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at theUniversity of Iowa. “My intuition was that … the racial bias for boys would be smaller than that observed for men.”

The research, which was published online this week in the journal Psychological Science, has been described by black Iowans and advocates as “heartbreaking” but in keeping with previous studies and their own personal experience.

Read the whole story: USA Today


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