Comments on: The Unbearable Lightness of Agreeing.

By: Jessica

Jessica — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 03:39:40 +0000

Same comment as -k-, essentially. For example, does it make a difference that Obama’s arms are crossed over his chest in the darkened picture, or that he’s looking directly at the camera in that one? I haven’t read the study- maybe they account for that by switching which of the three photos is lightened or darkened for different study participants. If not, they should have.

By: -k-

-k- — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 01:34:09 +0000

These are weird pictures- it just looks like the difference between someone standing in the sun/with flash on the ‘lightened’ end, and someone in the shade/shadow on the ‘darkened’, and the middle one in each case looks like it’s of higher quality. I wonder what someone who knows more than I do about these things would have to say about differences in body positioning, background, close-up vs far-away, etc.- not using the same photo in each case was to avoid tipping their hand, I guess?

By: Leigh

Leigh — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:04:19 +0000

Re: my comment left over at TAPPED, you should check out this article by Cecilia Ridgeway:

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=4Nmh4oTvErQC&oi=fnd&pg=PA265&dq=gender+Ridgeway&ots=RduNGhS7e0&sig=HPLCehqi2Cw6mHOKkj3-ixO1PfY#v=onepage&q=gender%20Ridgeway&f=false

It totally lays out how inequality is reconstructed in new spheres. Very interesting.

By: Leigh

Leigh — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:54:35 +0000

“Because we base our predictions on the participants’ political group membership (and not their race), we have not excluded any participants based on race in the results we report here. None of the results meaningfully changes when Black participants are excluded from the analyses.””

This seems really flawed. I’d think if you’d want to test identification patterns in political groups, you’d want to oversample for African-Americans given their disproportionate membership in the Democratic Party, just to have your participants’ political group membership be somewhat representative of actual political group membership. Especially considering historic black turnout in the ‘08 election. I thought most *good* studies like this oversampled to get accurate proportions. With 0%, 3% and 10% participation of African-Americans (and what about Asians, Latin@s, etc.) they might as well title it about what white voters think.

By: will shetterly

will shetterly — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:24:11 +0000

I would love to know more about this, and whether’s there’s any correlation with how folks do on the race test at Project Implicit. I’m a white guy in, according to Project Implicit, the 25% of whites who have no preference or a preference for African Americans. I think the lightened picture of Obama looks ghastly. I voted for Obama, but my politics are far to the left of his, so, if the effect applies, either my preference for AA makes me like the darker pictures, or my dislike of his mainstream politics does. Hmm. Interesting study, even if it’s totally bogus.