Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do

by Jennifer L. Eberhardt

The researchers—Max Weisbuch, Kristin Pauker, and Nalini Ambady—chose eleven popular television shows that have positive representations of black characters—shows like CSI and Grey’s Anatomy, where black characters are doctors, police officers, and scientists. They showed study participants ten-second clips of a variety of white characters interacting with the same black character, but with the sound muted and the black characters edited out of the frame. Participants who were unfamiliar with the shows were asked to watch a number of these clips and to rate how much each unseen character was liked and was being treated positively by the white characters on the screen. Sometimes the unseen character was black, and sometimes the unseen character was white. A consistent pattern emerged when the researchers pooled the ratings: participants perceived the unseen black characters in these popular shows to be less liked and treated less positively than the unseen white characters.