Musicmystery
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quote:
ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY
News
Liberals prefer a lighter skinned Obama, study says
By Bonnie Davis
4:30 PM on 11/23/2009
When given a choice between a photo of a lighter-skinned version of Barack Obama versus a darker-skinned version, most voters who consider themselves Democrats last year selected the lighter version.
That's what research set to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences found after surveying voters before and after the 2008 presidential election.
The survey of nearly 400 voters in Chicago and at Arizona and Florida State universities sought to determine how different people "see the world" and what effect, if any, skin color plays in one's personal or group politics, says Emily Balcetis, one of the researchers. A focal point was Obama's position as "racially ambiguous" or biracial.
"We showed participants several different photos of Barack Obama, and asked them to rate how well each photo represented who he really is," Balcetis says, explaining the research methodology. "Unbeknownst to participants, we altered some of the photos to make the candidate's skin tone lighter, and some to make the candidate's skin tone darker, than it was in the original photograph."
One of the researchers, Eugene Caruso of the University of Chicago, discovered that participants whose partisanship was the same as that of the candidate "consistently rated the lightened photographs as more representative of the candidate than the darkened photographs, whereas participants whose partisanship did not match that of the candidate showed the opposite pattern."
What kind of conclusions can we draw from this?
Firm
For starters, we can conclude that the reporter is dishonest.
This story is two months old (I heard it on NPR when it was first reported). The study is entirely college students--yes, voters, but a gratuitous shift of nouns. Let's add that college students are frequently clueless about what's going on in the world and where they stand in it ideologically. The study also showed a single person--Barack Obama, while they guessed which photo was correct. Why not a range of black politicians, including conservatives--Colin Powell, Connie Rice, for example, to get a much better basis?
Then, the study noted the correlation. They did not pursue it to isolate it for study. Consequently, it could mean quite a few things--that they have different perceptions of black people generally, or of Barack Obama--i.e., is this a racial bias rather than a political one? Who knows---they didn't test for that.
So all we really have (as Caruso noted in the report I heard) is this correspondence. The interpretation added was the reporter's. What the study knows is that this happened, with a single person, and they don't know why--as they didn't study that (and easily could have).
Science reporting at its worst, perhaps political opportunism.
< Message edited by Musicmystery -- 2/26/2010 6:56:30 PM >
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RE: Liberals prefer a lighter skinned Obama - 
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