A series of four studies in the United States found that people believe that identical mental illnesses are less distressing to Black than to White individuals. They also believed that Black individuals would need fewer treatments to deal with psychopathology. The study was published in PLOS One.
Racism is a system of discrimination and prejudice based on an individual’s race. It involves the belief in the superiority or inferiority of certain racial groups and the use of this belief to justify unequal treatment, privilege, or discrimination. Racism can manifest in various forms. It can be institutional, when discriminatory practices are embedded in societal structures and systems. Interpersonal racism involves acts of bias, hostility, or aggression directed at individuals based on their race.
Racism has profound social, economic, and psychological consequences for marginalized racial groups, often resulting in disparities in access to opportunities, education, employment, healthcare, and housing. Studies indicate that racism even extends to the area of psychopathology. People will expect Black individuals to be less hurt by psychopathology than White. Evaluators in studies often deny Black individuals’ complex emotions such as grief, suffering or mental anguish. Black Americans, on the other hand, often report feeling that their social pains are invalidated or minimized.
Study authors Jonathan W. Kunstman and his colleagues wanted to explore whether people believe that psychopathology harms Black individuals less than it harms White individuals. They were also interested in discovering whether these biased distress judgements also produce racial biases in judgements of treatment needs.
The first study aimed to test whether people will really consider Black individuals less hurt by psychopathology. Study authors took 10 pictures of Black and 10 pictures of White male faces from the Chicago Face Database and paired them with 10 forms of psychopathology. The pictures of faces were equated on a number of characteristics in order to minimize their differences on everything except race. 204 MTurk workers viewed these images along with the psychopathology assigned to them (depression, social anxiety, arachnophobia, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), bipolar disorder, panic disorder, insomnia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, or schizophrenia) and rated how much the individual in the picture was hurt by that disorder.
Studies 2a and 2b again retested the results of the first study using the same methodology and similar samples of MTurk workers, but with one difference – study authors now also asked participants to state how many psychotherapy treatments they believe the person in the picture needed to cope with the problem (e.g., “How many sessions of therapy do you believe this person would need to effectively cope with depression?”).
Participants of study 3 were 160 mental health professionals and 258 individuals from the general population. Mental health professionals were paid $100 each for their participation. They completed the same tasks from studies 2a and 2b, assessing how much individuals in pictures were hurt and how many psychotherapy sessions they needed.
Results of the first study showed that study participants judged Black individuals to experience less distress than White ones. The difference was small to medium in size. Authors reran the analysis on participants of this study who identified themselves as mental health professionals and obtained the same result – Black individuals were perceived as hurting less from listed mental health disorders.
Results of studies 2a and 2b confirmed the finding that people perceive Black individuals as less hurt by psychopathology compared to White individuals. However, participants, on average, also reported that Black individuals needed fewer treatments. On average, in study 2a, participants reported that White individuals need 12 sessions, while Black need 11. In study 2b, the same effect was obtained, but the difference was very small – 11.18 treatments vs 10.87 treatments on average.
Results of study 3 replicated the results of the previous 3 studies – Black individuals were perceived as hurting less and needing a smaller number of treatments. Both clinicians and participants from the general public considered Black individuals hurting less than Whites from the same psychopathology. However, more detailed analysis of responses about treatment needs showed that individuals from the general public assessed treatment needs of the two races differently, but mental health professionals did not. Mental health professionals and participants from the general public did not differ in their evaluations of treatment needs of White faces, but they differed in their evaluations of treatment needs of Black faces.
“These results provide further evidence that the public believes psychopathology harms Black individuals less than White individuals and, consequently, believe Black individuals have weaker treatment needs than White individuals. Critically, the current study provides suggestive evidence that these biases extend to practicing MHPs [mental health professionals]. Like members of the lay public, MHPs judged Black targets to experience less psychopathology-related distress than White targets and—when analyzing data from all available MHPs—these biased judgments mediated target race’s effect on treatment judgments,” the study authors conclude.
The study sheds light on racial biases in the judgement of psychopathology experiences and treatment needs. However, the study was based on the evaluation of static pictures of faces and psychopathologies described through words. Results might not be the same if participants evaluated real people whose psychopathological issues they were able to observe in more detail.
The paper, “Race-based biases in psychological distress and treatment judgments”, was authored by Jonathan W. Kunstman, Tade Ogungbadero, Jason C. Deska, Michael J. Bernstein, April R. Smith, and Kurt Hugenberg.
