- Psychologists showed white students pictures of black and white boys
- They then flashed up images of toys or weapons after the pictures
- A face of a black five-year-old led to guns being categorised more quickly
- Participants also misidentified toys as weapons after seeing a black child
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...-violent-racial-stereotypes-claims-study.html
Few people see children as a threat but it seems racial stereotypes can change that.
A new study has found stereotypes linking black men with violence and criminality can result in black children as young as five being identified as dangerous.
White people taking part in the research were more likely to misidentify a toy as a weapon after seeing the face of a black five-year-old boy, compared to a white youngster.
'One of the most pernicious stereotypes of Black Americans, particularly black men, is that they are hostile and violent.
'So pervasive are these threat-related associations that they can shape even low-level aspects of social cognition.'
In the study, published in the journa Psychological Science, Dr Todd and his colleagues showed 64 white college students images of children's faces before pictures of toys or weapons.
They were told the first image was merely a signal that the second image was about to appear and they were to concentrate as identifying the second image as a toy, such as a rattle, or a gun as quickly as possible.
The children's faces included six images of black five-year-old boys and six images of white five-year-old boys.
The researchers found the students tended to be quicker at recognising guns after seeing a black child's face than the face of a white child.
They also more often mistakenly categorised toys as weapons after seeing pictures of the black boys.
But they also mistook weapons for toys after seeing a white child's face