Right wing authoritarianism is associated with race bias in face detection

PLoS One. 2017 Jul 10;12(7):e0179894. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0179894. eCollection 2017.

Abstract

Racial discrimination can be observed in a wide range of psychological processes, including even the earliest phases of face detection. It remains unclear, however, whether racially-biased low-level face processing is influenced by ideologies, such as right wing authoritarianism or social dominance orientation. In the current study, we hypothesized that socio-political ideologies such as these can substantially predict perceptive racial bias during early perception. To test this hypothesis, 67 participants detected faces within arrays of neutral objects. The faces were either Caucasian (in-group) or North African (out-group) and either had a neutral or angry expression. Results showed that participants with higher self-reported right-wing authoritarianism were more likely to show slower response times for detecting out- vs. in-groups faces. We interpreted our results according to the Dual Process Motivational Model and suggest that socio-political ideologies may foster early racial bias via attentional disengagement.

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Authoritarianism*
  • Black or African American
  • Facial Recognition*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Racism*
  • Regression Analysis
  • Time Factors
  • White People
  • Young Adult

Grants and funding

Funding for this project was provided through Floralis—University Grenoble Alpes Filiale. This research has been done with "CNRS attentats-recherche" funding. We received this special funding in order to highlight the comprehension of discriminatory behavior in Western Societies following terrorist attacks. This funding has been attributed to do different experimental studies, and to share data with the maximum of visibility.