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IMPACTS OF RACIAL PREJUDICE

Impacts of Racial Prejudice on Cognitive Functions

Vanessa Ikwuazom

ID: 20894828

University of waterloo
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IMPACTS OF RACIAL PREJUDICE
Impacts of Racial Prejudice on Cognitive Functions

In this current day and age, most people are becoming more aware of the

discrimination black people face due to the colour of their skin. From the days of slavery to

the recent days of police brutality towards black people, other races in the society are

beginning to understand the trials black people face. Nowadays individuals in the majority

groups (whites ) are becoming more aware of the direct discrimination faced by black

people. However, due to the high level of known and unknown discrimination black people

have found themselves forming a kind of tolerance towards their oppressors. In this article,

an investigation is conducted to show how racial prejudice affects whites and blacks in

society as well as convey the impacts of prejudice on mental ability.

Experiment

Research question

The question involved in this article was based on if cognitive function reduced when

exposed to signals of racial prejudice ,this means that if an individual was exposed to

discrimination against their race there would a reduction in their mental ability. This

research was important because black people who faced uncertain discrimination would

find themselves developing an adjustable strategy to tolerate prejudice. The authors

attempted to answer this question by making use of an experiment, whereby they would

gather a group of individuals and asked them to evaluate the hiring recommendations of a

Human resource officer and indicate If the officer was being openly racial, in-explicitly

racial or if they were not driven by racial discrimination. They would then take part in a

Stroop task to check for their level of cognitive functions, the task consisted of labelling

the color of the text as quickly as possible.

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IMPACTS OF RACIAL PREJUDICE
Prediction and Dependent Variable

           The authors predicted that a higher level of cognitive function would reduce based

on different conditions for whites and blacks. It was predicted that the black individuals in

the experiment would convey a bad performance in an uncertain prejudiced situation, the

white individuals on the other hand would have more of a weak performance on the Stroop

task in a blatantly prejudiced situation. The dependent variable in this experiment would be

the individual's cognitive ability, because it was not manipulated during the experiment,

but changed due to what type of prejudice condition was viewed by each individual. The

independent variable of this experiment was the Stroop task because the authors were able

to manipulate the result of the task statically. The authors measured the outcomes by

removing individuals who gave incorrect responses based on their reaction time on the

Stroop task. The result of the remaining individuals was gathered and calculated with the

use of standard deviation. The authors then searched for outliers within each prejudiced

condition and removed them .The calculations led them to the Stroop interference score of

the experiment.

Independent Variable and Result       

    The experiment also consisted of two human-resources officers, a black Africa and a

Caucasian male. The races of the human-resources officers were seen as an independent

variable, because they were manipulated based on if they were biased in their hiring

pattern. This also allowed the individuals to determine what the officer was using prejudice

and which officer was not. The author explained that the result showed how the cognitive

function of the individual reduced when evaluating the content of the job application and

finding a link between their race of the individual and the human resources officer, and in
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IMPACTS OF RACIAL PREJUDICE
most cases, the job candidate belonged to a different race. To conclude, I believe the

important implication of the experiment was to show the difference in which black and

white individuals handled situations of racial prejudice, it was either ambiguous or blatant.
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IMPACTS OF RACIAL PREJUDICE
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