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Kill Whitey

Trausti

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To what extent do our political leanings affect our perception and treatment of people of the various races? In a take on the "trolley problem," some folks at Cornell tested whether the perceived race of person influenced whether a self-described liberal or self-described conservative felt that person was worthy of sacrifice for the greater good.

Participants received one of
two scenarios involving an individual who has to decide
whether or not to throw a large man in the path of a trolley
(described as large enough that he would stop the
progress of the trolley) in order to prevent the trolley from
killing 100 innocent individuals trapped in a bus.3 Half of
the participants received a version of the scenario where
the agent could choose to sacrifice an individual named
“Tyrone Payton” to save 100 members of the New York
Philharmonic, and the other half received a version where
the agent could choose to sacrifice “Chip Ellsworth III”
to save 100 members of the Harlem Jazz Orchestra. In
both scenarios the individual decides to throw the person
onto the trolley tracks. While we did not provide specific
information about the race of the individuals in the scenario,
we reasoned that Chip and Tyrone were stereotypically
associated with White American and Black American
individuals respectively, and that the New York Philharmonic
would be assumed to be majority White, and
the Harlem Jazz Orchestra would be assumed to be majority
Black.

So what happened?

Across Studies 1a and 1b we found that self-identified
political liberals and more conservative participants differed
in their endorsement of moral principles when race
was a contextual variable. In particular, political liberals
tended to be more likely to endorse a consequentialist justification
for sacrificing an innocent White man compared
to sacrificing an innocent Black man.
There are a number
of possibilities as to why these effects were driven by the
responses of our liberal participants. For one, the race of
the victim may have simply been more salient to liberals
than more conservative participants. We conducted an
internal analysis to test this explanation. For those participants
who were given the manipulation check item,
we dummy coded their responses as 0 for “incorrect” responses
and as 1 for “correct” responses (i.e., those who
correctly or incorrectly reported Chip Ellsworth as Caucasian
or Tyrone Payton as African American, respectively).
Political orientation was not reliably associated
with correct or incorrect responses to the manipulation
check item, r = −.07, p = .50. Liberals were no more
likely than comparatively conservative participants to report
Chip Ellsworth as White or Tyrone Payton as Black,
suggesting that race of the victim was equally salient to
both conservative and liberal participants.
A more likely explanation is that antipathy toward antiBlack
prejudice played a greater role in liberals’ judgments.
A recent meta-analysis by Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski
and Sulloway (2003) indicated that one of the fundamental
differences between liberals and conservatives
lies in conservatives’ greater tolerance for social inequality.
Research on the moral foundations underlying liberal
and conservative ideologies also suggests that fairness
concerns are particularly acute for political liberals
(Haidt & Graham, 2007), and that race is likely a key
symbol evoking these concerns in contemporary America.
As such, it is possible that our scenarios describing
the sacrifice of a Black man simply held more motivational
power for liberals than for comparatively conservative
participants. Our Chip-Tyrone manipulation presented
liberals with choices likely to alert their sensitivities
to issues of racial inequality, and they responded
more negatively when asked to sacrifice a Black life
than a White life. Comparatively conservative participants,
even if not overtly prejudiced, may simply have
lacked these acute sensitivities regarding inequality, and
responded in a more evenhanded fashion as a result.
Regardless
of the source of motivation, however, these results
suggest that moral principles generally held to apply
across situations can be selectively applied in order to fit
a desired moral judgment

Are there any contemporary examples were this liberal vs. conservative difference might have played out?

http://journal.sjdm.org/9616/jdm9616.pdf
 
Just a dumb question here, but were the experimenters at least smart enough to account for the fact that America's Liberal population is generally less White than its Conservative population? Might in that case the results be describing a willingness by non-Whites to sacrifice White life then that of the Liberal population as a whole, second order correlation as it were?

It looks to me like they didn't and moreover the population was 88 unscreened University of California Irvine undergraduates. This isn't anything like the US population as a whole. The breakdown of the 2012 enrollees per the college's wiki page 55.7% Asian-American, 17.5% White, 16% Mexican American, 4.4% Other Hispanic and 2.9% African-American. Unless the admissions ratios have changed pretty enormously over the last 7-10 years, that'd mean that the sample is so absurdly out of whack with the population of even California, let alone the nation as a whole, that it's useless for making generalizations even if it were a big enough sample, which it isn't.

They also tacitly admit that they have fewer conservatives as opposed to liberals in their sample. Self rating on a 1-5 scale of liberal to conservative the mean score is 2.57.

So basically, we're talking about the few conservatives being overwhelmingly White respondents with a smattering of Asians, and the majority of the Liberals being Asians and Hispanics with a small number of Blacks. Even then, I'd question whether self-described "conservatives" attending a California public university might not be mere "Moderates" compared to the nation as a whole, even just the portion of the nation aged 18-22 in 2008.

So at most this proves lower income Californian Asians and Hispanics are more likely to dislike Whites than Blacks.

Garbage study made under publish or perish. NEXT!
 
Slight note:

OK, their follow-up studies had (1b) 96 participants who were UC Irvine Students plus 80 people from "a public area in Southern California"; Study 2 was 38(!) UCI students. The other studies may have been larger, but they were not the ones Trausti was talking about. Moreover, the students performed the studies in exchange for course credit, so there's also that variable in the mix. The authors clearly also didn't take statistics 101 because they are reporting correlations in study 2 that are below the margin of error for a sample size of 38.

Neither really improves the academic rigor of the study.

The fact that they not only failed to do a regression for the races of the participants but actively concealed that the sample was dramatically different racially from the general population means it has zero credibility.
 
What do all these people have against this kid
whitey.jpg


Hubert "Whitey" Whitney - friend of Beaver Cleaver

that they want him dead?
 
What do all these people have against this kid
View attachment 2188


Hubert "Whitey" Whitney - friend of Beaver Cleaver

that they want him dead?

Well, in the original timeline, he did grow up to be the next Hitler. When Space Jesus travelled back from the future to tell all the black people to kill him as a child, he was doing the world a favour.
 
To what extent do our political leanings affect our perception and treatment of people of the various races?​

Across Studies 1a and 1b we found that self-identified political liberals and more conservative participants differed in their endorsement of moral principles when race was a contextual variable. In particular, political liberals tended to be more likely to endorse a consequentialist justification for sacrificing an innocent White man compared to sacrificing an innocent Black man.

That's why Lorne Michaels was considered such a visionary.....


*
 
Comparatively conservative participants,
even if not overtly prejudiced, may simply have
lacked these acute sensitivities regarding inequality, and
responded in a more evenhanded fashion as a result.
It's amazing that evenhanded treatment of people regardless of race is considered a bad thing is some "progressive" circles.
 
Slight note:

OK, their follow-up studies had (1b) 96 participants who were UC Irvine Students plus 80 people from "a public area in Southern California"; Study 2 was 38(!) UCI students. The other studies may have been larger, but they were not the ones Trausti was talking about.

Those are plenty large enough samples to get a reliable correlation, they tested statistically for sampling error effects (that's what p < .05 means), and they replicated across 4 samples across studies 1a - 2.


Moreover, the students performed the studies in exchange for course credit, so there's also that variable in the mix.
So, what? Course credit just means that it is gen ed psych 100 course typically taken by the majority of Freshmen across many majors, and that participating in a few research studies is a course requirement. IOW, they are not students seeking extra credit, just a college students in general fulfilling the course requirement. The studies are not run by the course instructor and all responses are completely anonymous. Besides, the got the same results for the gen population sample, so nothing about it being for credit or the college students can account for the findings.


The authors clearly also didn't take statistics 101 because they are reporting correlations in study 2 that are below the margin of error for a sample size of 38.

No they are not. First, they are just reporting correlations, but beta weights from Hierarchical Regression analyses in which the key result is the interaction between subjects political ideology and the race of the person in the moral dilemma. The interaction term is significant at p = .038. The fact that the estimated beta for liberal is right at p = .05 rather than below it is explicit in the paper and not really important. It just means that the race effect just becomes significant at typical levels 1 standard deviation below the mean on the ideology scale. It is just a follow up that shows the direct of the interaction effect, not a test of whether there is a reliable interaction outside of whatever you think "margin of error" means.



The fact that they not only failed to do a regression for the races of the participants but actively concealed that the sample was dramatically different racially from the general population means it has zero credibility.

1. How do know the sample was "dramatically different racially from the general population"?
2. What is your evidence that they "actively concealed" this information?
3. They get the same results for a general community sample.
4. Your consistently invalid critiques reveal an emotional grasping at straws to find an excuse to blind yourself to the studies implications, thus its your credibility in question.

There is a valid critique of the interpretation of the statistical results, but I'll wait to see if your bias to harp on any flaw can lead you to a valid point.
 
1. How do know the sample was "dramatically different racially from the general population"?
2. What is your evidence that they "actively concealed" this information?
3. They get the same results for a general community sample.
4. Your consistently invalid critiques reveal an emotional grasping at straws to find an excuse to blind yourself to the studies implications, thus its your credibility in question.

There is a valid critique of the interpretation of the statistical results, but I'll wait to see if your bias to harp on any flaw can lead you to a valid point.

Did you not read my immediately previous post on the composition of the student body at UCI?

55.7% Asian, 20.4% Hispanic, 17.5% White is not a normal racial distribution. Unless the Freshman taking the general Psychology course are by some miracle more in line with the racial composition of the general population than the UCI student population as a whole, that's enough of a wrench in the works to keep you from extrapolating that the liberal and conservative populations of the nation as a whole exhibit the behavior of the student body for 1a.

The student body also comes mostly from Southern California with the Bay Area coming in second. We know less about the composition of the non-student sample, taken from "a public area in Southern California", but it's a fair guess that the single place was somewhere in Orange County. OC has a White population of 44%, 33.7% Hispanic, 17.9% Asian. It's my understanding that Orange County communities are somewhat self-segregated racially, so the location of that single public place makes a pretty big difference when it comes to what sort of a sample of respondents they got. 80 people who show up at a public place in Huntingdon Valley are going to be pretty different La Palma. It's a pretty big variance from the country as a whole anyway to the US as a whole even IF the sample conformed to the population of Orange County as a whole. Note also that Orange County Whites are very conservative by California standards. (This somewhat contradicts my previous point that any population of California conservatives would be different from the nation's conservatives, but not by much.)

When you are doing a study on the effects of racial prejudice on moral judgments, making no mention of the racial backgrounds of the participants strikes me as a pretty ridiculous oversight. If this data was collected and reported on in the study and I just didn't see it anywhere in the writeup, please point it out to me.

I actually have no problem with the conclusion that Liberal students at UCI and inhabitants of Orange County are more likely to see Whites as disposable than Blacks, but this would be because they are poor and Asian and Hispanic, and therefore have a constant experience of Whites dicking them over. The conclusion that Conservatives as a whole are race blind based on the comparatively affluent Whites in the Conservative sample for the UCI student body and Orange County is ridiculous.

If you were to repeat the experiment in an area with a relatively high White population that is comparatively Liberal, like Vermont, I doubt you'd see the same enthusiasm for "killing Whitey". Repeat the experiment with inner city Blacks and Hispanics and the "kill Whitey" effect would likely be stronger. If you want to find a White population with overt unconscious moral biases against Blacks, in my experience Orange County is just about the LAST place in America you'd want to look for it. Try doing the same thing in Mississippi, Alabama or Louisiana and then you'll see plenty of "kill Blackey" Conservatives.

As to the correlation in study 2, that was due to a misreading on my part, for which I apologize. I interpreted the numbers on Table 2 as Pearson correlation coefficients when they are actually average scores. It is my understanding that Pearson correlation of -0.10 or -0.18 is not sufficiently significant for a sample size of 38. Based on this table.
 
1. How do know the sample was "dramatically different racially from the general population"?
2. What is your evidence that they "actively concealed" this information?
3. They get the same results for a general community sample.
4. Your consistently invalid critiques reveal an emotional grasping at straws to find an excuse to blind yourself to the studies implications, thus its your credibility in question.

There is a valid critique of the interpretation of the statistical results, but I'll wait to see if your bias to harp on any flaw can lead you to a valid point.

Did you not read my immediately previous post on the composition of the student body at UCI?

55.7% Asian, 20.4% Hispanic, 17.5% White is not a normal racial distribution. Unless the Freshman taking the general Psychology course are by some miracle more in line with the racial composition of the general population than the UCI student population as a whole, that's enough of a wrench in the works to keep you from extrapolating that the liberal and conservative populations of the nation as a whole exhibit the behavior of the student body for 1a.
The student body also comes mostly from Southern California with the Bay Area coming in second. We know less about the composition of the non-student sample, taken from "a public area in Southern California", but it's a fair guess that the single place was somewhere in Orange County. OC has a White population of 44%, 33.7% Hispanic, 17.9% Asian.

It's my understanding that Orange County communities are somewhat self-segregated racially, so the location of that single public place makes a pretty big difference when it comes to what sort of a sample of respondents they got. 80 people who show up at a public place in Huntingdon Valley are going to be pretty different La Palma. It's a pretty big variance from the country as a whole anyway to the US as a whole even IF the sample conformed to the population of Orange County as a whole. Note also that Orange County Whites are very conservative by California standards.

Great, but in no way did the "actively conceal" that their sample was different from the population. They merely did not report the ethnic demographics, but they also went out of their way to get a non-college sample that would be much older, less Asian.

I actually have no problem with the conclusion that Liberal students at UCI and inhabitants of Orange County are more likely to see Whites as disposable than Blacks, but this would be because they are poor and Asian and Hispanic, and therefore have a constant experience of Whites dicking them over.

First, the % Hispanics at UCI is pretty close to the their national % among those identifying as "liberal" . Its really only Asians who are over-represented and whites under-represented. IT is likely that Asians are on average stronger in anti-black racism than white "liberals". Thus, the effects in the study are more likely to be stronger among samples of mostly white liberals.
Second, Asian-Americans in general and UCI students in particular are not "poor" compared to the US population overall. Students at 4-year state Universities are generally from higher than average national income levels. And UCI is a highly competitive school that rejects 60% of applicants and most people are admitted with a high school gpa above 4.0 (they take honors courses to get it that high), 4 years of math, and SAT scores above the 75th percentile. All of these variables are positively correlated with parental education, income, and other SES factors. IOW, the "liberal" minorities in the UCI samples come from backgrounds closer to that of liberal whites more generally and their own minority group.
In addition, and once again, the ethnic make-up of the region in general is very different an much more white than that of UCI, and yet there was no difference in the results between student and non-student samples. Thus, the political ideology results are not significantly tied which race the liberals are representing. As always, more replication with more samples is important, but claiming the study has "zero credibility" is as irrational and unscientific as saying its infallible and definitive proof.


The conclusion that Conservatives as a whole are race blind based on the comparatively affluent Whites in the Conservative sample for the UCI student body and Orange County is ridiculous.

This is a critique I agree with. The "Kill whitey" results are likely to hold for white liberals in general, but the "even handed" judgment of the conservatives is not likely to hold among conservatives more generally. But this is not because of race of the sample, but rather because the sample does not include many actual conservatives even by it own method of measuring. In all samples, the mean political ideology score was to the "liberal" side of the true midpoint of the scale. Only people significantly to the right of the midpoint of the scale are actual ideological conservatives. In study 1b, the mean on a 7 point scale where 4 was the midpoint was 3.5. Their analyses of "conservatives was for people only 1 standard deviation above that mean, which is probably about a score of 4.5, which is as barely conservative as one could be without being liberal. In contrast, the "liberals" were at 1 deviation below that mean, which is about 2.5, which is pretty liberal. Note in their Figure 1 (right hand side), their are only 20 people out of 176 (11%) with an ideology of above a 5 out of 7. Thus very few actual conservatives. Also, look at the results for people with an ideology score of 5, which is at least moderately conservative. The regression line shows the statistically estimated avg scores for those people. The "Tyrone" line is way above the "Chip" line at that point and the difference is larger then the reverse difference for even the most extreme liberals. That difference means that those actual conservatives are more likely to throw Tyrone under the trolley than chip. They are showing anti-black bias. Most researchers of this topic are out to show how racist white people are and this is actually better than 90% of studies posted here claiming to show racism. Their stat methods are not wrong, but their interpretation is. They didn't take into account the actual meaning of their own measurement scale and that "above the sample mean" can still be slightly liberal or just independent and not actually conservative.
The only people being "even handed in their samples were those near the midpoint of the scale. Strong libs and conservs were biased in opposite directions.


If you were to repeat the experiment in an area with a relatively high White population that is comparatively Liberal, like Vermont, I doubt you'd see the same enthusiasm for "killing Whitey".

You'd likely see as or more enthusiasm for killing whitey among white liberals than among Orange County Asian liberals.
What their methods miss is what is true among most white conservatives, which their own data graphs suggests is anti-black bias in killing Tyrone.
Sure you could enhance or reduce the effect with select samples, but it isn't at all surprising that many liberals, including whites, would go out of their way not to sacrifice Tyrone. This is just one of many studies (other specifically on white participants) showing "liberal guilt" and willingness to be biased in favor of a minority over a white hypothetical person. I
 
Great, but in no way did the "actively conceal" that their sample was different from the population. They merely did not report the ethnic demographics, but they also went out of their way to get a non-college sample that would be much older, less Asian.

How do you know that they went out of their way to get a sample that would be "much older, less Asian". Do they report the ethnic demographics of the non-student sample for study 1b? Does the study say that this was one of their goals in collecting the sample? Because I sure as hell didn't see these things anywhere. I assume if they were there you'd have cited them, because I explicitly asked for them.

It MIGHT be that the sample is, as you say, "much older, less Asian", but it is more likely to have looked like whatever neighborhood it was gathered from, and since Orange County communities vary pretty wildly in their ethnic compositions, see the table in the wiki link above, it's more along the lines of a crap shoot. Maybe it looks like a normal Nationwide ethnic distribution, maybe it doesn't. You don't actually have any evidence backing up your assertions on this. (Look also at the voting history compared to the ethnic breakdown of Orange County. If you have a population that is 44% White that votes 52% Republican then even if a large portion of the minority population is non-citizen or non-voter, the percentage of Whites who are "Liberals" is going to be in the 10% range, 20% at most. This means that the "Liberals" found in a Public Place in Orange County are going to be overwhelmingly non-White.)

It frankly astounds me that you don't see not gathering or reporting the ethnic makeup of the sample as a critical methodological flaw. They're doing a study on racial prejudice, how can they assume that the race of the participants won't make a difference? As I see it, the only possibilities are gross negligence or deliberate omission of a fact that would complicate the story they wanted to tell, hence my contempt.

As to the other studies you assure me exist where the same experiment is replicated, link them if you can. My suspicion is that you are making an Apples to Oranges comparison to studies where the willingness to "kill Whitey" is actually a willingness to "inconvenience Whitey". It makes a huge difference what the scale of inconvenience the victim will suffer will be compared, and most of the existing studies probably don't go as far as inflicting death.

I'm sorry if you are offended by my unwillingness to implicitly assume that the peer review process of the Journal of the "Society for Judgement and Decision Making" renders its publications beyond the reproach of mere mortals, but it is my understanding that we deal with evidence in this forum, not appeals to authority.
 
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