In a departure from prior findings, a new study from Brazil found no evidence that economic scarcity affects racial perception. The study indicates that the relationship between economic conditions and racial perceptions are complex and influenced by societal factors. The research was published in Psychological Reports.
Classic studies in social psychology have demonstrated that competition for resources can lead to negative attitudes, distrust, and discriminatory behaviors towards out-groups. Previous research has provided evidence that conditions of scarcity can influence mental representations of Black people, suggesting that economic duress may spur racial discrimination.
However, these studies have been conducted in the United States and have used experimental methods to try to induce temporary feelings of scarcity. In the new study, the researchers attempted to replicate previous findings in a more ecologically valid way. They chose to do the study in Brazil during a time of economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, political instability, and increasing inflation.
Many people in Brazil experienced a decrease in income or lost their jobs. By conducting the study in this context, the researchers hoped to gain a better understanding of how economic scarcity affects people’s perceptions of race.
“Many factors combined for our group to investigate this topic,” explained Rui de Moraes Jr., an assistant professor at the University of Brasília and editor of the science outreach blog Eu Percebo. “First, we have been working on face recognition for a while, which is related to the face categorization task we conducted in the study. In addition, the University of Brasília has a long-standing tradition on the racial debate. Finally, we were in a social context of a rising economic and racial intolerance crisis in Brazil at the time we conceived the study.”
Between January and June 2021, the researchers conducted an online experiment using a sample of 271 participants from Brazil. About half of the participants had received emergency economic aid from the government of Brazil in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, indicating that they were in a situation of economic scarcity.
To investigate racial perception, participants were asked to categorize mixed-race faces as either white or Black in a computer task. The researchers analyzed the participants’ categorization threshold (how they defined someone as Black) and slope (how easily they categorized faces as Black) as dependent variables. In contrast to previous research, the results did not support the hypothesis that economic scarcity affects racial perception.
The researchers also explored the relationship between economic scarcity and racial perception specifically in white participants. Interestingly, the findings showed no significant difference compared to the overall analysis, indicating that economic scarcity did not affect how white participants categorized faces.
“Studies that took place in the USA showed that experimentally-induced economic scarcity influenced perception of race in a way that mixed Black-white faces were seen as ‘Blacker.’ And such output would facilitate non-consciously discriminatory behavior,” Moraes told PsyPost. “When we tested people in Brazil who were actually living under economically vulnerable conditions, the results were not replicated. Thus, our study raises the possibility that the ‘race perception x economic scarcity condition’ may be sample dependent or method dependent.”
The study considered several factors that could have influenced the results. For instance, previous studies used different stimuli, tasks, and designs, which could have contributed to the different findings.
“We designed a study in the ‘real world,” Moraes said. “As such, the study has an observational nature and causal relations cannot be drawn. In addition, previous studies conducted in the USA experimentally manipulated the economic scarcity. Thus, future experimental studies in a culturally diverse sample from the Global South would enlighten what may influence the relation between race perception and economic scarcity: the study design, the study sample, both, none.”
In Brazil, the concept of “racial democracy” has had a significant impact on racial dynamics and perceptions, which also might have impacted the results. Racial democracy refers to the belief that Brazil is a racially harmonious society, where racial inequalities and discrimination are minimal or non-existent. This concept has been historically promoted and embraced in the country.
“As a secondary goal, we investigated the relation of race perception and psychosocial variables. Interestingly, we found that people with higher scores on a prejudice scale needed more phenotypic traits of the Black race to categorize a face as Black,” Moraes told PsyPost.
In other words, those with higher levels of prejudice needed stronger visual cues of Blackness to recognize someone as belonging to the Black racial category. This finding suggests that preconceived biases can influence how people perceive and categorize race.
“It makes sense when we think how the racism was constituted in Brazil,” Moraes explained. “As a consequence of the ideal of a racial democracy socially spread there, a high categorization threshold could unconsciously facilitate discriminatory behaviors in an unconscious way, as it does not recognize the Black race and racial injustices.”
The study’s findings emphasize the importance of considering cultural variables and conducting research with samples from diverse regions, particularly outside of Europe and North America. Historically, a majority of psychological research has been conducted on populations primarily from Western countries, which may not accurately represent the experiences and perspectives of individuals from other cultural backgrounds.
“A fact that is as curious as it is symptomatic in academia is that studies are mostly carried out by white people, with white people and for white people,” Moraes told PsyPost. “More specifically, most studies are conducted with a convenience sample at leading universities in North American and Western European countries attended by the middle-class white majority who will ultimately consume these studies.”
“Science needs non-WEIRD (White, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic) societies to start to produce racial research contextualized to their realities and considering particularities on how racial inequalities were built. Our study itself is a demonstration on how race perception operates in different ways depending on how racial issues are developed within groups and societies.”
The study, “Influence of Economic Scarcity on Race Perception“, was authored by Rosana de Almeida Antunes, Edimilson dos Santos Gonçalves, Leonardo Gomes Bernardino, João Guilherme Siqueira Casalecchi, Ivan Bouchardet da Fonseca Grebot, and Rui de Moraes Jr.