Generally speaking, if you have to verbally proclaim that you’re not a racist, you’ve perhaps done something that may justifiably give people cause to doubt your innocence.  That was also the conclusion of a recent study from Berkeley Haas, which found that when we insist we’re not racist, we may be sending the opposite impression.

The findings emerged from a study with white participants who all claimed to have egalitarian views.  Each was asked to write various statements explaining why they weren’t prejudiced.  Despite the statements prophesying otherwise, other white people were nonetheless able to detect any underlying prejudices.

“Americans almost universally espouse egalitarianism and wish to see themselves as non-biased, yet racial prejudice persists,” the researchers say. “Our results suggest that the explicit goal of appearing egalitarian might blind people to the possibility that they could be communicating, and perpetuating, prejudicial attitudes.”

Leaking out

The research builds on previous work that suggests that racial prejudice can often “leak out”, whether through our nonverbal behavior or physical distance.  The researchers wanted to test whether it also applies to written content.

They selected a group of white volunteers, all of whom had passed a test to screen out those with overt prejudice.  The volunteers were then tested for their racial attitude by being asked: “Do you believe that all people are equal and should have equality of opportunity? Why or why not?,” and “Are you prejudiced toward Black people? Why or why not?”

A second group of white volunteers was then asked to read the responses of the first group and to estimate how each person had scored on the prejudice scale.

Intentional signals

The researchers then strived to understand whether people were sending out signals as to their racial attitudes intentionally or inadvertently.  They did this by asking one of the groups to answer honestly while the other group to answer in “the least prejudiced way possible”.  This experiment revealed no discernible difference in terms of the rating given to them by readers.

“That gave us some confidence that people are naturally trying to come across as egalitarian, but something about the language they choose is betraying them,” the researchers say.

A number of linguistic cues are given off, however, with the biggest found to be when language was used to dehumanize or objectify African Americans.  For instance, someone might write that they “have a great relationship with the Blacks”.

Other common giveaways are excessive defensiveness or references to our personal responsibility.  This suggests that equal opportunities do exist but there is something in minorities that prevents them from capitalizing.

“This demonstrates that peoples’ use of the cues are meaningful not only for how prejudice is expressed, but also how egalitarianism is perceived,” the researchers continue.

Contagious

A third experiment then set out to understand whether people’s views towards Black people might change if they read statements from other self-avowed non-racists when those people had also scored highly on the underlying prejudice scale.

Sadly, it seemed that being exposed to those views prompted readers to begin mirroring them and adopting similar attitudes to the writers themselves.  What’s more, this even occurred if they identified as ideologically dissimilar, such as a conservative reading the views of a liberal.

“We don’t know reading other people’s views gave them permission to express more prejudice, or whether they thought that this is the norm and their actual prejudice level changed, but there seemed to be a contagion effect,” the researchers conclude. “One of the lessons here is that words carry weight. It does seem that this is one way that prejudice is unwittingly spread.”