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RACE: A RISKY AFFAIR

HOW DO PEOPLE ASSESS RISK WITH REGARDS TO RACE?

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY LAW CENTER

CIVIL RIGHTS POLICY SEMINAR

PROFESSOR CHARLES F. ABERNATHY

APRIL 28, 2008

WRITTEN BY:

ROBERTO A. HADDAD

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INTRODUCTION

In 1960, Professor Raymond A. Bauer of Harvard Business School revolutionized the

study of consumer behavior and marketing with his proposal that consumer behavior, i.e. the

decision making process undertaken by consumers when faced with an array of different

products and brands, be viewed as risk taking.1 Risk taking “is a characteristic of consumer

behavior as it is of all decision-making” declared Professor Bauer.2 Consumers face risk in the

sense that they must make a choice among different products, and “[a]ny choice situation always

involves two aspects of risk: [1] uncertainty about the outcome and [2] uncertainty about the

consequences.”3 Therefore, “since the outcome of a choice can only be known in the future, the

consumer is forced to deal with uncertainty, or risk.”4 Consequently, because ‘risk’ is associated

with the un-welcome results (outcome or consequences) of a decision, ‘risk assessment’ may be

defined as the calculation and weighing of the probabilities of un-welcome results occurring.

Similarly, if risk taking is a characteristic of all decision making, then it is possible to

view a person’s decision process regarding whom to interact with as function of risk analysis.5 In

a social setting, a person is presented with many choices among different types of people (e.g.

race, sex, age, social status) whom they may choose or not choose to interact with; or whom they

may be forced to interact with. Accordingly, just as a consumer assesses risk among products, a

person in a social setting should assess the uncertainty or perceived risk of interacting with one

particular stranger over another.6

The human species is an inherently social one, with a fundamental need for individuals to

interact with and belong to the larger human community around them - “[p]ositive social contact

is essential for [the] psychological and physiological health” of people.7 Yet, people are very

“selective about what groups they join and the individuals who they allow to join their groups.”8

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The selectivity shown by people in their choice of groups or individuals to interact with can be

understood as a function of risk assessment. “[B]ecause social interactions can take many forms,

the interactions one selects should depend on the exact nature of the opportunity or danger.”9

For instance, a man, when presented with choices of women with which to engage in sexual

advances towards, will calm his anxiety at the uncertainty of the outcome of his advances by

assessing the probability of rejection, and then choose the woman most likely not to reject him.A

The uncertainty or the perception of risk associated with interacting with strangersB is a

crucial factor in the decision to interact or to not interact with a particular stranger due to the fact

that “risk is often perceived to be painful in that it may produce anxiety, in which case it must be

dealt with in some manner.”10

The effects of anxiety revolving around “the anticipated loss of

love and approval, or separation, social isolation, or disruption of one’s interpersonal

relationships”11

can create feelings that are “intolerable.”12

Of course, the level of anxiety a

person will feel will range from no anxiety to high anxiety. An individual’s personal

characteristics, including risk preference and risk attitudes,13

and their self esteem will determine

the amount of perceived risk associated with a particular stranger or situation, the level of

anxiety that person will feel, and the methods pursued to alleviate any anxiety felt.14

However,

the absence of anxiety or perceived risk should not indicate that the individual does not assess

the risk associated with interacting with a stranger, but rather, that the individual does not

perceive much or any risk in doing so.15

A This example assumes ‘all things being equal’ in the sense that the man does not hold particularly strong feelings

towards one of the women over the others that could unduly influence his rationale, e.g. ‘love at first sight.’ B An assumption of primary importance laid out in this paper’s premise is the focus on interactions with “strangers”

rather than people whom the perceiver has a relationship(s) with. The focus on strangers is so that assessment of

risk relating to the characteristic of “race” may be localized and analyzed separately from other personal

characteristics of a target, such as their personality and relationship history with the perceiver, which are likely to

take a pre-eminent role over the sole characteristic of race when the perceiver knows the target.

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As suggested above, people tend to interact in groups, and an elemental factor in the

separation of people into groups tends to be homogeneity, with race being a determinative factor

in one’s perception of what they consider homogenous to themselves.16

Therefore, viewing the

division of people along racial lines from a risk analysis perspective, leads to the inference that

people consider interacting with others of a different race as a riskier alternative.17

Consequently, a relevant question, and the focus of this paper, is to ask “How do people assess

risk with regards to race?”

If race is a seemingly determinative factor in a person’s risk assessment of other people,

it follows that underlying the question of how people assess risk with regards to race is the

question of how a people perceive race. But, confronting the question of how people perceive

race requires a more fundamental exploration into how the human mind perceives and classifies

people, and consequently how the mind processes and analyzes information generally. The

discussion will begin by exploring these two areas.

DISCUSSION

A long held belief among scientists has been that the human mind is hard-wired to

automatically classify people by race, just as it has evolved special circuits to classify people by

sex and age.18

Thus, when encountering a new individual, the human mind, in an automatic and

unavoidable process, will encode three primary characteristics of the new individual – race, sex,

and age.19

However, recent research has suggested that although the human mind does indeed

have special circuits for the classification of people based on sex and age, when it comes to race,

the brain’s circuits are hard-wired to make a much more fundamental classification based on

whether the person is likely to be an ally or an enemy, rather than a purely racial classification.20

That is not to say that the human mind does not classify people by their race, because we know it

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does, but rather, that a person’s race will be classified within the dichotomy of ‘likely ally’ or

‘likely enemy.’

The reasons behind the classification of people based on whether they are likely to be a

friend or foe can be understood from an evolutionary perspective. Humans, like most living

creatures, carry within them an innate or instinctive drive for survival, and thus, the human mind

evolved to develop cognitive capacities to recognize and make distinctions as to the level of

threat posed by any one thing.21

Consequently, the mind evolved to classify people by the same

standards of whether or not they are likely to pose a threat.22

When the human brain was

evolving millions of years ago, the world in which our ancestors occupied necessitated, for the

purposes of survival, the development of cognitive processes that would enable early humans to

register the sex and age of other individuals.23

The development of the ability to register sex and

age of others enabled our ancestors (and humans to this day) to make a “large variety of useful

probabilistic inferences”24

about other people, i.e. the ability to identify potential ‘fitness’

benefits of interacting with others such as mating potential, and cooperation benefits like hunting

and gathering, defense against mutual enemies, and other mutually beneficial survival-oriented

goals.25

Conversely, because our human ancestors were hunter-gatherers who traveled by foot,

the human mind would not have developed the same cognitive mechanisms with regards race

due to the unlikelihood that our ancestors would have encountered humans of different races.26

Thus, rather than the human mind evolving cognitive features for the encoding of race,

the “encoding of race is instead a byproduct of adaptations that evolved from an alternative

function that was a regular part of the lives of our foraging ancestors: detecting coalitions and

alliances.”27

The development of cognitive features to detect coalitions and alliances was crucial

for survival, and thus, competition for “resources in the past have led to a psychology that is

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designed to form groups, exploit members of other groups, and cope with potential exploitation

at the hand of members of other groups.”28

The history of the human race serves as a pertinent

example as it is, at any moment in time, wrought with illustrations of one people’s domination,

discrimination, oppression, and subjugation of other peoples of different colors, races,

nationalities, sexual orientations, beliefs, ethnicities and religious creeds to name a few.

Consequently, race should be understood as merely an indicator – a cue, to whether a

person and/or group pose a threat or a potential alliance, and should be overridden when more

salient cues are present.29

The salience of any number of cues, (such as race, clothing, dialect

spoken, social class, religion, cultural rituals, etc) will vary with the situational context, and with

how strongly the cues indicate membership in certain groups.30

An experiment conducted by

Robert Kurzban, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, has shown that,

when classifying people into groups, the human brain can override racial categories rather

easily.31

Volunteers in the experiment were asked to view photos of men of different races in

basketball jerseys of different colors while listening to each man speak a phrase; and, a few

minutes afterwards, attempt to attribute which man said which phrase.32

Inevitably, volunteers

made mistakes, but the nature of the mistakes made by volunteers were to attribute the phrase to

a person wearing the same color jersey but of either race, thus indicating the brain is not hard-

wired to categorize by race, but rather, is able to override racial categories, even with such

arbitrary cues as shirt colors.33

The results of the basketball jersey experiment are significant because, despite a lifetime

of daily racial classifications, the participants unconsciously categorized and classified the

pictured men into groups, not by their skin color, but rather, by the color of their jerseys. These

results imply that the participants’ viewed the men’s shirt colors as a stronger indication of

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coalitional membership than the men’s skin color. By putting the pictured men in a basketball

context, the frame of reference for the participants was changed from one of a social-context, to

one based on the rules of basketball. In the basketball context, the colors of the jerseys were a

more relevant indication of coalitions and alliances among the pictured men, and thus race was

supplanted as the pre-dominant factor.34

As alluded to above, a characteristic of how people interact with each-other is that they

tend to do it by dividing into groups and preferring to interact within their own groups rather

than with other groups. The groups to which a person identifies him/herself or others with is

perhaps the most determinative factor used by a person to classify people as either allies or

enemies. In contrast to the basketball experiment where the participants were removed from the

pictured men, people will generally evaluate others’ group membership in relation to themselves

with their in-groups providing a basis for pre-judging who will be an ally and out-groups as the

basis for who will be a likely enemy.35

The separation of people into different groups is a naturally occurring phenomenon.36

Sociologists have long documented a common characteristic among the different groups people

associate and identify themselves with - the occurrence of homophily, that is, that “similarity

breeds connection.”37

In terms of people’s personal and social networks, this means that these

networks people identify themselves with will tend to be homogenous “with regard to many

socio-demographic, behavioral, and intrapersonal characteristics” such as race, age, gender,

profession, etc.38

The studies done on homophily tend to show that people choose to interact

with other people whom they consider like themselves, with race being a determinative factor in

that decision process.39

In diverse societies, like the United States, “race and race-like ethnicity

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create the most stark divides” due to the increased opportunity for each race to interact with their

own.40

The groups to which a person identifies with will tend to be homogeneous because group

membership is inevitably tied to a person’s conception of their own self, that is, people identify

themselves in terms of their group memberships, (e.g. profession, race, gender etc.) and

“[i]ndeed, the particular groups to which one belongs influence self perceptions, including self-

evaluation.”41

People will drive their self-esteem from their group memberships, and thus, there

will be a tendency or predisposition for people to think highly of the groups to which they are

affiliated.42

Because the groups to which people identify themselves are “valuable to self-

conception, people want to maintain the perception of [their groups] as being positive and clearly

distinguishable from other, relevant, reference groups.”43

The more strongly one identifies or

affiliates themselves with a particular group (i.e. high in-group identification), the more likely

they are to be protective of that group and “differentiate their in-group from similar out-groups

on relevant dimensions of comparison.”44

The predisposition to have a more favorable

evaluation towards the groups to which one belongs is called inter-group bias, which can also,

rather than mere favoritism, manifest into ‘out-group’ derogation, i.e. prejudice and

discrimination against the out-group.45

Studies have shown that inter-group bias is automatic, indicating it is hard-wired,46

and

can be triggered even when people are placed in arbitrary groups. An experiment whereby

volunteers were put into arbitrary teams of “tigers” and “leopards” illustrated that when

volunteers saw members of the opposite team, regardless of their race, the amygdala – the

portion of the brain which signals danger, reacted negatively, but not when the volunteer saw

members of his/her own team regardless of their race.47

The automatic nature of this bias and the

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seemingly quick relegation of race to an irrelevant factor when the lines of group membership

were clear, even as arbitrary as they might be, lends credence that the mind does indeed classify

people within the dichotomy of likely ally or enemy, rather than race. The human mind will re-

categorize who is an ally and who is an enemy based on which group the person is a part of, and

additionally, race can be an irrelevant factor in that analysis depending on the situational context.

Similarly, experiments have found that changing a point of reference (context), i.e. from

one of inclusion to exclusion and vice versa have a significant effect on peoples’ attitudes. In

one experiment, participants responded faster and more favorably to nonsense words (e.g. “yof”)

when those words were paired with inclusive pronouns (e.g. “we”) than with exclusive pronouns

(e.g. “they”).48

Significantly, the participants in the study were unconscious of the effect the

pronouns had on their evaluation of the words.49

Furthermore, when Hong Kong adolescents’

identity frame was switched from a regional frame of reference (Hong Kong vs. China) to a

national reference (China vs. Japan), the inter-group orientation of the participants was

effectively manipulated.50

Once the identity frame was changed from a regional to a national

one, the Hongkongers were more positive in their perceptions of Chinese Mainlanders and of

Mainland immigrants.51

The results were significant because Hong Kong’s history has created

an environment where younger generations of Hong Kong Chinese tend to conduct social

comparisons “with an exclusive regional frame of reference” and hold negative attitudes towards

Chinese Mainlanders.52

Inter-group bias, from an evolutionary perspective, can be understood as a function of

promoting survival through reciprocity, i.e. through mutual cooperation, members of a group will

be better suited to meet their own needs as well as those of the group.53

An individual’s access

to social benefits, e.g. finding mates, protection, or access to food and shelter, is dependent on

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his/her inclusion in society; i.e. social groups.54

Instinctively, people will seek to interact with,

and include in their group, those that provide the most benefits in terms of social exchange, and

exclude those that provide poor reciprocal relationships.55

Thus, it is not surprising that when

individuals perceive someone else to be a member of their own group, they tend to have a more

favorable opinion of them, whether or not they know them, they tend to be more cooperative,

and more generous when it comes to the allocation of resources (e.g. job placement).56

Hence,

people will tend to gravitate towards and value memberships in groups, particularly strong

groups, and as a corollary, people will be protective of their groups and feel motivated to exclude

individuals from inclusion in the group and thereby limit the number of individuals with whom

resources will be divided among.57

A pertinent example of group-oriented protective instincts can be seen in the history of an

increased anti-immigrant sentiment correlating with an increased influx of particular groups in

the United States (e.g. ‘no Irish need apply;’ & the current debate over illegal Hispanic

immigrants).58

A survey done on the attitudes of Anglo Americans towards Hispanics, and on

immigration found that a higher proportion of Hispanics living in an Anglo person’s county,

correlated highly with increased negative attitudes towards Hispanics by Anglo respondents.

Furthermore, stronger associations with an American Identity,C correlated strongly with negative

attitudes towards Hispanics and anti-immigration policy leanings.59

However, interestingly, the

more contact respondents stated they had with Hispanics, the more favorable feelings they had

towards Hispanics, and the more the more likely they were to favor increasing or maintaining the

number of immigrants allowed to enter the U.S.60

These findings suggest the increased number

of Hispanics (i.e. the out-group) tended to ignite protective instincts in Anglos causing them to

C Measured by questions asking about: believing in God, voting, speaking/writing English, equality, and defending

America when criticized.

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view Hispanics as a threat. On the other hand, more contact with Hispanics tended to mitigate

negative attitudes, signaling that, with more interaction, Anglos saw Hispanics more as part of

their own group, i.e. an ally, and hence, less of a threat.61

People will be evaluated by what groups they are perceived to belong to, but a key factor

in the determination is the perception of the individual making the judgment. The perceived

degree of similarity to oneself provides a compelling factor in that determination, with those

perceived more similar to oneself being evaluated more positively (i.e. ally) and those perceived

as more different evaluated more negatively (i.e. enemy).62

Furthermore, the situational context

in which information is presented will have a strong impact on the perception of what group(s)

people belong in. In the examples discussed above, simple manipulations in the context in which

the information was presented caused re-evaluations as to which groups people belonged in, and,

who posed a threat: the pictured men in a basketball context were grouped, regardless of race, by

the most relevant characteristic of different teams (i.e. coalitions) in basketball – jersey color; the

participants in the leopard-tiger study evaluated others, not by their race, but by whom they were

told were in their group (i.e. like themselves); Hong-Kong Chinese evaluated Chinese

Mainlanders more positively once they thought of themselves as Chinese (vs. Japanese) rather

than as Hongkongers vs. Chinese; and finally, more contact with Hispanics tended to mitigate

negative feelings towards Hispanics in general; as those Anglos apparently began to think of

Hispanics as more like themselves, rather than as outsiders.

Whether a person is evaluated positively (ally) or negatively (enemy) will vary with the

group they are identified with, the perception of that group, (largely measured by the degree of

similarity to oneself), and the situational context in which the information is presented. The

degree of similarity to oneself, in turn, is dependent on an evaluation of many variables such as

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race, dialect spoken, ethnicity, cultural rituals, religion etc., and the significance attributed to

those variables by cultural or historical processes.63

For instance, in the American “Jim Crow

South,” due to a history of enslavement, subrogation, and prejudice, race (i.e. skin color) was a

useful indicator of who was a friend or foe,64

but in other parts of the world, such as Iraq, skin

color is much less of a factor than is the ethnic or religious affiliations (e.g. Arab or Kurdish;

Sunni or Shi’a Muslim, Christian, or Jewish).

The significance of certain cues, such as race, in the determination of whether a person is

a friend or foe are not inherent in the human psyche, but rather, are “learned through experience

over the course of [one’s] development.”65

From an early age, children learn to which groups

they are affiliated with and can identify and distinguish those groups from others; their “parents,

neighborhood, region, nation,” “religion, race, and social traditions” are so much a part of them,

they are taken for granted.66

Furthermore, children are also “exposed to stereotypic information

that is associated with particular groups, regardless of … their personal beliefs,” and “[t]hrough

repeated exposure to this information, they learn stereotypes.”67

Thus, through socialization,

people will learn their in-groups, and the cultural relevance of other cues, such as race, indicating

to which groups other belong and whether those are perceived as positive or negative affiliations.

Although the human brain is hard-wired to classify people, the judgment of whether a

particular person will be considered as an ally or enemy is not. As stated earlier, a person’s race

is merely a piece of information - a cue, albeit a seemingly determinative one, which the brain

uses to classify people. Thus, the processes used by the mind to analyze and process

informational cues relating to other people will have a direct impact on how another person is

perceived and classified. The distinction between the hard-wired categories for the classification

of people, and the processes used by the mind to process information can be understood by an

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analogy to a filing cabinet. When it comes to the classification of people, the human mind has

essentially set up a filing cabinet with two drawers (i.e. likely ally or likely enemy), but many

factors, including the groups a person identifies with, a person’s race, situational factors, and the

personal characteristics of the perceiver will have a strong influence in what ‘drawer’ a stranger

is classified into.68

To be able to process the multitude of inherently complex information a person comes

across on a daily basis, the human mind simplifies information by sorting it into large classes and

clusters and assimilates as much information as possible into these clusters.69

As Dr. Gordon W.

Allport, a leading psychologist, once cogently stated:

“The human mind must think with the aid of categories. Once formed, categories

are the basis for normal prejudgment. We cannot possibly avoid this process.

Orderly living depends upon it.”70

The implications regarding how the human mind processes information and on their

effect on how people assess risk with regards to race are clear. “[C]ategories have a close and

immediate tie with what we see, how we judge, and what we do. In fact, their whole purpose

seems to be to facilitate perception and conduct – in other words, to make our adjustment to life

speedy, smooth and consistent.”71

By categorizing and assimilating information into broad

categories, the “mind tends to categorize environmental events in the ‘grossest’ manner

compatible with the need for action” and thus the mind over-generalizes.72

Once classified into a certain category, the mind will saturate the whole category “with

the same ideational and emotional flavor.”73

For instance, a racial category is a “concept” made

up of millions of different individuals, “yet it has essentially one ideational meaning;” but also a

“feeling” associated with the racial category, due to the person’s socialization within a certain

culture, that may carry a “tone of favor or disfavor.”74

E.g. “I avoid Black men, they are

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aggressive; or, I would hire an Asian, they are hard workers.” Thus, a perception of an

individual will not only be influenced by that individual’s personal characteristics, but

additionally, by their racial category and what “meanings” or “feelings” (e.g. stereotypes) the

perceiver has him/herself learned or attached to that racial category. The assimilation of

information into relevant clusters enables a person to solve problems more easily by assigning

information “rapidly into a satisfactory category” and then using that “category as a means of

prejudging the solution.”75

Thus, an individual’s experiences will tend to fit within certain

concepts or categories based on perceived probabilities and the individual’s behavior will then

correlate with their assessment of those probabilities,76

e.g. “That person is

Black/White/Asian/Hispanic, he/she will probably be dangerous/unpleasant, I will avoid

him/her.”

When presented with information, there are two possible thought processes an individual

may employ to analyze the information: (1) a “deliberate, top-down, explicit, [and] conscious”

processing of the information, that is, a Systematic process; or (2) an “automatic, bottom-up,

implicit, [and] unconscious” processing of the information, that is, a Heuristic process.77

The

distinction between the systematic and heuristic methods of processing is not in the use of

categories, but rather, in the amount of effort used by the mind/person to analyze and classify

information into different categories.78

Although the two cognitive processes are not mutually

exclusive, depending on the circumstances at the time the information is presented, one will

dominate the processing of information.79

When processing information systematically, a person will employ more discriminate

analyzing and categorizing strategies and will focus on the substance of the information

presented.80

On the contrary, when processing information heuristically, a person will base their

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perceptions/opinions on a “rather superficial assessment of extrinsic…cues.”81

Thus, if a person

is processing information systematically, a stranger’s race will likely be one of many factors in

the assessment of risk relating to interacting with the stranger.82

On the other hand, if processing

information heuristically, the person is more likely to base their perception of risk relating to the

stranger on a superficial level, basing risk on the stranger’s race and any pre-conceived notions

and feelings that person might have regarding the stranger’s race.83

The heuristic processing method of the mind may be basically understood as a short-cut

method of thinking. When processing information heuristically, a person will analyze cues

relating to other people (such as race, clothing, speech, social status, religion, etc.) by applying

“simple schemas or decision rules” (i.e. cognitive heuristics) “that people have presumably

learned on the basis of past experiences and observations.”84

For example, when evaluating the

persuasiveness of a speaker’s message, rather than listening and analyzing attentively, a person

would rely on any number of heuristic rules such as the “expert credo” – i.e. “statements by

experts can be trusted;” the “consensus heuristic” – i.e. “if other people think the message is

correct then it is probably valid;” or “length implies strength” – i.e. “more arguments are better

arguments.”85

Thus, as an alternative to focusing on the substantive content of the message, the

listener will base their judgment of the speech on simplified rules like the examples given.

In the context of race, some of the cognitive heuristics used are more commonly known

as “stereotypes.”D Applied in a social context, this means people will pre-judge a person based

on their pre-conceived notions, or stereotypes they have acquired about the target’s race as the

basis for their judgment about the target, and thus as a basis for assessing the risk associated with

the target. As stereotypes are usually negative depictions of a race,86

e.g. “Jews are stingy,” the

D Stereotype defined as “a standardized mental picture that is held in common by members of a group and that

represents an oversimplified opinion, prejudiced attitude, or uncritical judgment.” Merriam Webster Dictionary

(online edition) April 3, 2008; http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary.

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use of negative stereotypes as a basis for judging someone will increase the likelihood that, that

particular person or race will be classified as a likely enemy with an increased perceived risk of

interacting with him/her.87

Whether an individual is likely to employ a systematic or heuristic processing method to

analyze information is basically dependent on two factors: motivation and ability.88

When

engaging in cognitive processing (i.e. thinking), people seek to make accurate judgments, that is,

to gain knowledge and ascertain or confirm the validity of the information they are processing so

as to reduce the uncertainty and to provide for an “effective management of himself and his

environment.”89

In other words, people seek to reduce uncertainty and increase control in their

lives.90

Thus, due to the “need for coherence, simplicity, and predictability in the face of an

inherently complex social environment,”91

as long as people believe relying on cognitive

heuristics will provide them with fairly accurate results, they will tend to use them as a basis (i.e.

a prejudgment), and heuristically process information rather than employ more discriminate

processing and categorizing strategies (systematic).92

Motivation determines whether information will be processed systematically or

heuristically by the degree to which the judgment has personal significance or relevance to the

individual making the judgment, or by consequentiality of their decision.93

The level of personal

significance to any one individual will vary with the circumstances necessitating the judgment,

their values and beliefs, and consequently, their motivational goals in that setting.94

High

motivation should lead to more systematic processing and low motivation should lead to higher

use of cognitive heuristics. For example, a scientist may well be highly motivated to listen

attentively to a speech about quantum physics, whereas a layman will probably be less than

enthusiastic about the prospects of listening to a speech on the matter.

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To better explain, it will be helpful to frame an example where differing goals, values,

and beliefs may come into conflict. In an American criminal-case juror context, the juror will

face several, sometimes conflicting, cognitive heuristics. On the one hand, there are several

judicial heuristics, or axioms of the American criminal justice system, such as ‘the rule of law;’

‘justice is blind;” and ‘presumed innocence;’ – i.e. no one is beyond the law; equal treatment

under the law; and a defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty.95

These heuristic rules

should motivate a person to be objective and un-biased, and thus pay more attention to the

evidence presented. But, on the other hand, the juror may face any number of other heuristics

which will lead to a more biased judgment; e.g. - ‘judicial system bias,’ – i.e. belief that the

judicial system is biased against minorities; negative stereotypes associated with the defendant’s

personal characteristics such as age, sex, social status, and of course race; and the heinousness of

the crime which can lead jurors to seek revenge and punishment.96

When presented with many differing and sometimes conflicting beliefs and/or values, the

degree of identification one has with any one belief will determine how the individual processes

the information. An individual’s own race, their personal history, social status and any stigmas

or stereotypes associated with their race can influence motivation when it comes to judging other

races.97

For instance, individuals with high in-group-identification are motivated to keep others

out of their own in-group, and thus, when they perceive others who are not easily identifiable as

belonging in any one race, they take more time and systematically process the information

relating to that individual so as not to make a wrong judgment and mistakenly include that

person within their own in-group.98

This high-in-group identification may also result in

prejudice or discrimination against out-groups perceived to be a threat to the in-group, or

perceived as trying to join the in-group.99

An example of this can be seen in the survey of Anglo

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Americans discussed above – those who scored high in ‘American Identity’ also had more

negative feelings towards Hispanics, presumably, because they did not see Hispanics as being in

line with their strongly felt Americaness.

Although an individual can be motivated to systematically process information, prior

held beliefs (heuristic rules, e.g. stereotypes) may influence how the information is ultimately

perceived.100

Cognitive heuristics may produce biases by influencing and “affecting the

meaning attached to other information that is available,” or by leading the person to focus on

information that is consistent with or corroborates the prior-held expectations of the situation

and/or target-person, and disregard other relevant information.101

For instance, in the juror

context, a Caucasian American may be influenced to pay closer attention to the evidence and be

objective in an effort to “maintain an egalitarian self-image” and avoid being labeled a racist, but

at the same time be influenced by the stereotypes associated with the defendant.102

On the other

hand, a minority juror might be influenced more by feelings of the un-fairness of the criminal

justice system, and thus, will be less likely view the evidence in an purely objective fashion, but

rather, with the taint of in-justice and with a motivation to correct the perceived in-justice.103

Furthermore, once judgments and attitudes are formed by systematic processes, evidence

has shown they become deeply rooted and are much less likely to change in the future, even

when conflicting evidence proves them to be wrong.104

Consequently, the old adage “first

impressions last a lifetime” can indeed prove true, and how a person’s attitudes and beliefs are

initially formed, i.e. systematically or heuristically, will have a direct impact on the likelihood of

those attitudes or beliefs being changed in the future.

The motivation to process information heuristically or systematically will also be

affected by an individuals’ emotional state at the time the information is presented. A person’s

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mood can act as an “informational input in the judgment process,” – i.e. when making a

judgment, the current mood of the individual will bias their judgment “in the direction of the

prevailing mood state.”105

For example, when feeling bitter, a person will tend to have a

pessimistic outlook on many different issues, regardless of the connection, or lack there of, to the

source of the bitterness. From an evolutionary perspective, emotions can be considered as

triggering mechanisms activating specific cognitive processes designed to guide a person to

adapt their behavior to the environment.106

For instance, sad or mildly depressed people have a tendency to systematically process

information and be more detail-oriented.107

A possible explanation, in line with the evolutionary

perspective, is that sadness is “associated with problematic life circumstances” and thus provides

motivation to trigger “cognitive strategies that are most likely to afford effective problem

solving.”108

By thinking more systematically, the chances of finding solutions to one’s problems

are increased, and thus, the chances of survival are also increased.109

For example, when having

done poorly on an exam and feeling depressed, a law student will usually undertake a re-

evaluation of his/her studying strategies in an attempt to pinpoint problem areas and increase

performance on the next exam so as to “survive” in the competitive law school environment.

Another possible explanation could be that the increased attention spent on processing and

thinking about certain things/events serves as a distraction to the source of the un-happiness.110

Fear and anger are two emotions worth mentioning because of their tendency to cause

people to process information heuristically,111

and due to how they are likely to be induced and

the correlation to group membership, i.e. in-groups, out-groups, and hence race. Anger or fear

may be triggered by an insult or a perceived threat, and thus, people will tend to act impulsively,

quickly, and heuristically as an adaptive feature for promoting survivability.112

When there is

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danger, it usually behooves people to act quickly to avoid the danger; e.g. running to avoid being

hit by a bus.

Furthermore, people of different races may evoke feelings of fear or anger more readily

than one’s own race. To briefly summarize what has already been stated, from an evolutionary

perspective, people form groups to reap the benefits of mutual cooperation and to enhance

survival prospects, and thus, people will be protective of their in-groups, and seek to punish

those that do not cooperate or violate the cooperative tenets of group membership.113

From

one’s own coalitional membership perspective, others of a different race (or nationality etc.) will

tend to evoke fear and anger (and their relation – hate) because different groups promote inter-

group competition, and thus an individual from a different coalition, e.g. race, is more likely to

be perceived as a threat and inspire fear or anger.114

Positive mood, on the other hand, has been shown to cause individual’s to categorize

information in broader and more inclusive categories, but, at the same time, allowing for more

flexibility in the categorization of information.115

More flexibility allows individuals, not only to

be able to see more similarities between diverse items, but also, the ability to observe more

distinct differences between items, i.e. the ability to compare and contrast more effectively.116

For example, when observing two individuals of race X, one might observe the similarity in their

skin color, but also note the differences in their mannerisms, and how they carry themselves,

rather than categorizing on a purely racial basis. Thus, positive mood should allow for the more

broad and inclusive categorization of information, but also allow for more narrow and exclusive

categorization of information, e.g. “both race X, but A is differentiated by B by his/her

confidence.” But, the tendency for people in a happy mood to categorize more broadly, i.e.

heuristically, indicates that a person’s motivation to play closer attention to the subject of the

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judgment is tied to their “intrinsic interest” in the subject, and that happy people are generally

less motivated to employ systematic processing.117

Along with fear, anger, and at times happiness, other emotional states, such as stress and

anxiety, have been shown to cause people to process information heuristically rather than

systematically.118

Although motivation plays a factor, another possibility could be that certain

emotional states overwhelm the cognitive processes and limit the ability, i.e. the capacity, of the

mind to process information systematically and thus, the mind resorts to heuristic methods of

processing information.119

When the ability to process information is low, cues such as an

individual’s race, will have a larger impact on how an individual is judged, because information

will be processed heuristically.

The ability to process information systematically, i.e. thoroughly, is dependent on several

factors such as emotional state, the availability and amount of information, time, and task

complexity.120

Due to the lack of information or to the ambiguity of information available, an

individual may choose, or be forced to, rely on cognitive heuristics in order to come to a decision

or form an opinion/judgment.121

But, because cognitive heuristics, such as stereotypes, must be

learned (See discussion on page 12), the lack of information might also force a person to engage,

at least in part, in systematic processing of the information.122

For example, when encountering

an individual speaking an un-intelligible foreign language, the observer will have to engage in

some deductive reasoning, i.e. systematic processing, to discern or at least form an opinion of

where the foreigner is from. Although the speech might be foreign to the observer, other cues

such as accent and skin color, will assist in the determination of where the foreigner is from, and

thus the deductive reasoning combined with prior learned cognitive heuristics will influence the

observer’s opinion.

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When faced with time constraints, too much information, or complex information to

process, an individual will tend to process information heuristically, even if motivation to

process systematically is high - due to capacity constraints on the minds ability to handle the

information.123

For example, in the Hong-Kong example discussed earlier (pg. 9), as part of the

experiment, Hongkonger participants were given mitigating background information on

Mainland Chinese Immigrant defendants and asked to provide recommendations as to the

defendants’ length of incarceration.124

Some of the participants were put under time pressure,

while others were not. The results showed that those participants under no time pressure

considered the mitigating background information and were more lenient in their

recommendations, while those under time pressure relied more on stereotypes in their judgments

of the Mainland Chinese and were harsher in their sentencing recommendations.125

Comparably,

several studies in the American criminal juror context had similar results where participants were

given a mass amount of evidence to discern, or complex evidence to process.126

These studies

showed that when given either too much evidence, or complex evidence to process, jurors were

more likely to use the defendants’ race as an indicator of the likelihood of guilt and recidivism

rather than solely relying objectively on the evidence.127

So far this paper has discussed several cues (such as race, appearance, speech etc) that

are associated with specific cognitive heuristics depending on a person’s own beliefs, culture,

values and situational context, which must be learned (e.g. “He is a young black man in South

Central L.A., he must be a thug” or “She speaks with a twang, she must be from the South). But,

unlike these heuristics, due to how the human mind processes and retrieves information

generally, (i.e. through categorization - See pg. 11-12), there are several judgmental heuristics

which are not learned, but rather, are inherent in the framework the mind uses to process

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information.128

Contrary to the cognitive heuristics discussed above, which may vary in use with

motivation and/or ability, these judgmental heuristics will influence judgment regardless.129

The

distinction between the judgmental heuristics and the cognitive heuristics is not in the use of

cues, but rather, in the process by which the information is analyzed, stored, and categorized.

For example, as in the filing cabinet example used above, although the subject matter of different

files (i.e. cues) might influence what drawer information is stored into, the files themselves

cannot change the filing cabinet, or how the files fit within it.

The first of these judgmental heuristics is the representative heuristic, in which the mind

categorizes information by the degree of similarity, or in other words, by the degree one item is

representative of another.130

For example, by observing that one dog barks, pees by lifting its

hind leg, and has long fur, one might infer that all dogs bark, pee by lifting their legs and have

long fur, and moreover, will then categorize all other dogs by the degree of similarity to that one

observed ‘reference’ dog.131

Applied in a racial context, consider the following facts: a white

person W is walking down the street and sees a young black male BM walking towards W.

Young males have a reputation for being aggressive, especially black males. Unconsciously,

applying the representative heuristic, W will assess the probability that BM is aggressive by the

degree to which BM is representative of, or similar to, the stereotype of young black males.132

BM, at least visually, is highly representative of young black males, and thus W will judge that

there is a high probability that BM fits the aggressive stereotype.

The mind will attribute characteristics of one person/thing to another depending how

representative it is of the other reference point (i.e. previously categorized information).133

Furthermore, when it comes to attributing characteristics to people, a documented bias has

shown that people have a tendency to more willingly attribute dispositional causes of behavior to

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others rather than themselves and moreover, to other groups rather than their own in-groups.134

That is, people will tend to believe others’ behaviors are “governed by stable internal

characteristics” and thus are more willing to attribute others’ behavior as in line with stereotypes

and consider stereotypic-consistent behavior as both more stable and more likely.135

A possible

explanation for this bias is the need to make the future predictable, (e.g. when making a hiring

decision, it is easier to think of all Mexicans as lazy).136

But, “the lack of such determinants for

one’s own behavior allows for flexibility required to meet the demands of a changing

environment.”137

The use of the representative heuristic may lead to errors in judgment concerning a

persons race “because similarity, or representativeness, is not influenced by several factors that

should affect judgment of probability.”138

Several errors commonly employed when basing

opinions on the representative heuristic are insensitivity to prior probability of outcomes,

insensitivity to sample size, misconceptions of chance, and insensitivity to predictability.139

For

example, when called upon to assess the risk of interacting with a particular individual, the

individual’s representativeness to their race will tell the perceiver nothing about the probability

of this one individual will pose a threat, yet, the perceiver will, irregardless of the sample size

(i.e. one person and thus less representative of that race as a whole), attribute any negative

stereotypes they might know of the target’s race to that one person.

The second judgmental heuristic is the availability heuristic, in which people will asses

the frequency of an event, (e.g. likelihood of getting cheated by a Jew), by the ease of which

examples or instances can be brought to mind.140

Thus, a person will judge another individual’s

race by the availability of information regarding that race, and without first-hand knowledge by

which to judge, the information used to judge will likely be second-hand accounts, such as the

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media, or stereotypes held of that particular race.141

Due to the separation of people into

homogenous groups, the most available information regarding peoples of other races will likely

be second-hand information or stereotypes.142

Furthermore, the salience and perceived accuracy

of instances will increase the likelihood that they will be recalled.143

For instance, a survey done

in Los Angeles County, CA of local news exposure showed that over-representation of Blacks as

criminals was positively related to a perception of Blacks, among respondents, as violent.144

The third judgmental heuristic is the anchoring heuristic, in which people will make

judgments from a starting, or reference point, and then adjust it to yield to new information.145

The discussion above (pg. 13, endnotes 73 & 74 and pg. 18 endnote 101) has described the

anchoring effect on the processing of information, but it will be briefly described again here. In

short, people will attempt to make their judgments “compatible with their knowledge about the

subject matter, the laws of probability, and [their] own judgmental heuristics and biases.”146

That is, people will rationalize the meaning of new information based on their expectations

which are in turn, based on what they already know or believe.

Assessing whether a person is likely an ally or enemy, i.e. assessing their risk, is

basically a probabilistic determination decision “based on beliefs concerning the likelihood of

uncertain events.”147

When assessing probabilities under uncertainty, “people rely on a limited

number of heuristic principles which reduce the complex tasks of assessing probabilities … to

simpler judgmental operations.”148

Although useful in enabling people to process mass amounts

of information quickly, the basic framework used by the mind to process information,E may lead

to erroneous decisions and beliefs.149

For instance, when encountering a snake, most people will

interpret the snake as a sign of danger based on their expectations that snakes are poisonous

(anchoring), on the availability of information (without knowledge to distinguish one snake from

E i.e. Judgmental Heuristics, by similarity, availability, and anchoring.

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another – this snake is dangerous), and on how representative this snake is of dangerous snakes

(with limited knowledge – all snakes are dangerous). As shown, these heuristics can be very

helpful in avoiding danger, but, the snake could have well been of a harmless variety, and thus

the individual’s perception of it as dangerous erroneous. Applied in a social context, without

knowledge of most of the people that one encounters, these heuristics can lead to a variety of

wrong assumptions about other people based on the perceiver’s beliefs concerning the stranger’s

appearance, race, location of encounter, etc.

CONCLUSION

A natural and seemingly unavoidable occurrence in the human world is for people to

splinter off into different groups, and to prefer their own groups to other outside groups. To

promote survival, the human psyche has evolved cognitive mechanisms designed to recognize

these in-groups and out-groups and to distinguish between them on an elemental basis by the

likelihood that these different coalitions of people may pose a threat. Thus, the fundamental

classification of people within the human mind is by whether they may be considered a likely

ally or a likely enemy. Thus, when choosing whom to interact with or to group with, people will

assess the risk of associating with another person in terms of whether that person is likely an ally

or a likely enemy.

An essential component of the human mind’s recognition process is how it perceives,

stores, and retrieves information. The mind stores information generally by categorizing it into

large and inclusive categories by the degree of perceived similarity to other information already

stored or currently being processed. That is, the mind will group similar things together, e.g.

dogs are dogs, and cats are cats. The perception of new information is directly affected by how

the mind stores information because information already stored will be retrieved and provide a

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basis for understanding the new information, and thus, how old information has been perceived

and stored, will affect the perception and storage of the new information; a mind catch-22 if you

will. Thus, when perceiving new information, the mind will compare and contrast the new

information to old information already stored, and analyze and classify the new information on

the basis of comparison, i.e. by the degree of similarity or differentiation to old information; e.g.

“this shirt is a Polo shirt, my other Polo shirt is good quality, so this Polo shirt must be good

quality;” or “this car does not drive like my old car, my old car was a good car, thus, this car is

not a good car.”

The extent and quality of the comparison, however, will depend on whether the

individual is motivated to or has the ability to: (1) thoroughly process the information, that is to

process the information systematically; or (2) whether the individual will employ a superficial

comparison and rely on simple extrinsic cues, such as appearance, color, etc., to make the

comparison, that is process the information heuristically. When processing information

heuristically, an individual will rely on simple heuristic rules, such as “red means hot thus avoid

touching” rather than interpreting the new information fully. Thus, these simple heuristic rules

must be learned and are not instinctual. Furthermore, even when processing information

systematically, prior learned heuristic rules may effect the interpretation of the new information.

When it comes to heuristic rules about race, they may be understood as stereotypes

which take on different meanings depending on how a person learns those stereotypes and what

values society puts on them. A person’s race is merely a physical attribute that carries with it

social significance depending on the situational context, and the cultural or historical processes

of the society in which a person resides. In the United States, due to a history, until fairly

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recently, of mainly white protestant settlement, slavery, and racial segregation, race proves to be

a dividing line among people, with the white-black dichotomy providing the most stark divide.

Thus, race plays a factor in the U.S. due to its significance in providing information

about coalitional membership. But, even among Americans with lifetimes of racial

classifications, race may be overridden quite easily depending on whether more viable cues

indicating coalitional membership are present. For instance, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks,

Americans of all races, ages, and creeds banded together because of a threat emanating from the

outside, and thus all Americans were, for a while at least, an in-group. On the contrary, in a

normal social setting, race and class will play a pivotal role in drawing the lines of group

membership. Furthermore, due to how the mind processes information, stereotypes are likely to

be a strong influencing factor in one’s perception of an individual, that is, one’s stereotypes of a

certain race will form the basis of the perception of that individual and will taint that information

from then on.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

The findings that race is not an inherent classification of the human psyche, but rather,

only a factor in the determination of who is likely to be an ally or a likely enemy, and

furthermore, that race should only be a significant factor depending on the social significant a

society attaches to that race compels for a re-evaluation of the current conception of Civil Rights

laws in the United States. The current system of civil rights laws which outline “protected

classes” might serve to enhance the differentiation of these groups, and thus, an increased

perception of them as a threat among other groups. For instance, there is a lot of backlash

against Affirmative Action simply because it seems to take away opportunities from one group

and give them to another group. As Justice Thomas said in Grutter v. Bollinger, “the question

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itself is the stigma.” Thus, although providing for more opportunities for some, such programs

may serve to also create more resentment and more differentiation among the different classes in

the United States and therefore, perpetuate stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination.

But, such a statement cannot be said without the caveat that the United States, likely due

to many of these civil rights laws, has made tremendous strides in race relations in the past fifty

years. Thus, these laws have not had the overall effect these findings might suggest. America

has long been known as a “melting pot” which tends to integrate rather than isolate immigrants

into the American culture (at least generation-ally if not immediately). This melting pot society

can explain why, with each passing generation, American society tends to get more tolerant and

more inclusive of its definition of who is an American. As children grow up in a more diverse

society, their definition of “American” is inherently different from that of their parents, and thus,

each generation’s “stereotypes” are different, and therefore, their basis for evaluating coalitions

and alliances and hence risk with regards to race, will be different.

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*** This paper is not intended to be, nor is it comprehensive. Many of the topics discussed within each have

volumes and volumes of research and theories behind them (e.g. cognitive heuristics, inter-group bias, stereotypes,

consumer behavior and economics, risk analysis, human evolution, self esteem, group dynamics, etc). This paper

merely attempted to bring together some of these areas to discuss how people assess risk with regards to race.

1 Raymond A. Bauer, Consumer Behavior as Risk Taking, in Dynamic Marketing for a Changing World;

Proceedings of the 43rd National Conference of the American Marketing Association June 15, 16,17, 1960, 389-98

(Robert S. Hancock, ed., 1960); James W. Taylor, The Role of Risk in Consumer Behavior, 38 Journal of Marketing

54, 54 (1974) (discussing the impact of Mr. Bauer’s proposal to view risk taking as an element of consumer

behavior).

2 Raymond A. Bauer, Consumer Behavior as Risk Taking, in Dynamic Marketing for a Changing World;

Proceedings of the 43rd National Conference of the American Marketing Association June 15, 16,17, 1960, 389-98

(Robert S. Hancock, ed., 1960).

3 James W. Taylor, The Role of Risk in Consumer Behavior, 38 Journal of Marketing 54, 54 (1974).

4 Id. at 54.

5 Raymond A. Bauer, supra note 2 at 390.

6 Robert Kurzban & Mark Leary, Evolutionary Origins of Stigmatization: The Functions of Social Exclusion, 127(2)

Psychological Bulletin 187, 194 (2001) (“the quality of a particular individual as a candidate for trading or

friendship relationships depends on the perceived likelihood that he person is willing tand able to engage in a

reciprocal cooperative relationship”); See Kerry Yarkin-Levin, Anticipated Interaction, Attribution and Social

Interaction, 46(4) Social Psychology Quarterly 302, 302 and 309 (1983) (discussing that people will make

attribution of those they expect to interact with in order to reduce uncertainty); Amos Tversky & Craig Fox,

Weighing Risk and Uncertainty,102 Psychological Review, 269, 269 (1995) ( Applying the principles of decision

theory to decisions made under uncertainty - “Decision under uncertainty, therefore, calls for an evaluation of two

attributes: the desirability of possible outcomes and their likelihood of occurrence”).

7 Robert Kurzban & Mark Leary, supra note 6 at 187.

8 Id. at 196.

9 Robert Kurzban & Mark Leary, supra note 6 at 192; See James W. Taylor, supra note 3 at 56 quoting Rom J.

Markin, The Psychology of Consumer Behavior, 60 (Prentice Hall, 1969) (discussing that when consumers are

presented with uncertainty and the anxiety the uncertainty produces, consumers will resort to ‘habitual modes of

reducing tension’ in order to deal with and reduce the anxiety so that they may continue with the goal they are

presently trying to attain).

10

James W. Taylor, supra note 3 (discussing consumers’ perceived risk creating anxiety); See James R. Averill,

Personal Control Over Aversive Stimuli and its Relationship to Stress, 80(4) Psychological Bulletin 286 (1973)

(discussing throughout, the reduction of stress correlated with a reduction of uncertainty and people’s different

responses - behavioral, cognitive or decisional, as coping methods to deal with uncertainty and the stress it causes).

11

James W. Taylor, supra note 3 at 56 quoting Frieda Fromm-Reichman, An Outline of Psycho-analysis, 114 (New

York: Random House, 1955).

12

James W. Taylor, supra note 3 at 56 quoting William F. Fisher, Theories of Anxiety, 48 (New York: Harper &

Row Publishers, 1970); See James R. Averill, supra note 10 (discussing throughout the correlation between stress

and uncertainty).

13

Elke U. Weber & Richard A. Millman, Perceived Risk Attitudes: Relating Risk Perception to Risky Choice, 43

No. 2 Management Science, 123, 125 (1997) (discussing the difference in risk perception and risk attitude).

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14

James W. Taylor, supra n. 12, at 54 (“Both the amount of risk perceived in a particular choice situation and the

selection of methods for dealing with the risk will be affected by the individual consumer’s level of self esteem”);

See Cardell K. Jacobson, Separatism, Integrationsim, and Avoidance among Black, White, and Latin Adolescents,

55(4) Social Forces 1011, 1017 & 1022 (1977) (discussing results of surveys done on Black, White and Hispanic

adolescents that showed teens with low self-concept and a low sense of personal control and high anxiety tended to

cope by avoidance of other teens of different races).

15

See Elke U. Weber, et. al., supra n. 13 at 125 (discussing the difference in risk perception and risk attitude and

distinguishing entrepreneurs from other managers not because of a greater risk preference among entrepreneurs but

rather on entrepreneurs’ “overly optimistic perception of the risks involved”); Ying He & Rui-Hua Huang, Risk

Attributes Theory: Decision Making Under Risk, 186 European Journal of Operational Research, 243, 257 (2008)

(risk attributes determined by cognitive level of the risk); James R. Averill, supra note 10 at 297 (discussing study

results indicating that different defensive styles of participants represented different cognitive sets concerning the

likelihood of danger).

16

Miller Mcpherson et. al., infra note 36.

17

See Robert Kurzban & Mark Leary, supra note 6., at 192 (stating that the interactions people choose to engage in

should depend on the exact nature of the opportunity or danger of that particular social interaction).

18

Robert Kurzban, John Tooby & Leda Cosmides, Can race be erased? Coalitional computation and social

categorization (October 12, 2001), Center for Evolutionary Psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara,

15387, 15387, available at www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.251541498; Sharon Begley, How Your Brain Looks

at Race, Newsweek, March 3, 2008, at 26.

19

Id.

20

Robert Kurzban, John Tooby & Leda Cosmides, supra note 18, at 15387; See Lawrence A. Hirschfield, Do

children have a theory of race?, 54 Cognition 209, 243-47 (concluding that children rely less on perceptual cues and

more on conceptual cues in their cognitions of race as one of many indications that children learn race through

specialized faculties of understanding).

21

Jeff Greenburg, Tom Pyszezynski, Sheldon Solomon, Linda Simon, & Michael Breus, Role of consciousness and

accessibility of death-related thoughts in mortality salience effects, 67(4) Journal of Personality and Social

Psychology, 627, 627 (1994); Robert Kurzban & Mark Leary, supra note 6 at 191-92;

22

Robert Kurzban, John Tooby & Leda Cosmides, supra note 18 at 15387; Sharon Begley, supra note 17 at 26.

23

Robert Kurzban, John Tooby & Leda Cosmides, supra note 18 at 15387.

24

Id.

25

Robert Kurzban & Marky Leary, supra note 6 at 191; Robert Kurzban, John Tooby & Leda Cosmides., supra note

18 at 15387; Sharon Begley, supra note 18 at 26; See Leslie Ashburn-Nardo, Corrine I. Voils, & Margo J.

Monteith, Implicit Associations as the Seeds of Inter-group Bias: How Easily Do they Take Root?, 81(5) Journal of

Personality and Social Psychology 789, 790 (2001) (discussing evolutionary perspective theories as the basis for

inter-group bias).

26

Robert Kurzban & Mark Leary., supra note 6 at 191; Robert Kurzban, John Tooby & Leda Cosmides, supra note

18 at 15387; Sharon Begley, supra note 18 at 26.

27

Robert Kurzban, John Tooby & Leda Cosmides, supra note 18 at 15387; C. David Navarrete, Robert Kurzban,

Daniel T. Fessler, & Lee A. Kirkpatrick, Anxiety and Inter-group Bias: Terror Management or Coalitional

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Psychology, 7(4) Group Processes & Inter-Group Relations 370, 374-75 (2004) (discussing the inclusion into in-

groups as a necessity for survival).

28

Robert Kurzban & Mark Leary, supra note 6 at 196; C. David Navarette et. al., supra note 27 at 374-75.

29

Robert Kurzban & Mark Leary, supra note 6 at 197; Robert Kurzban, John Tooby & Leda Cosmides, supra note

18 at 15388; See Leda Cosmides, John Tooby & Roberto Kurzban, Perceptions of Race, 7(4) Trends in Cognitive

Sciences 173 (2003).

30

Robert Kurzban & Mark Leary, supra note 6 at 196.

31

Robert Kurzban, John Tooby & Leda Cosmides, supra note 18 at 15388-15390; See Lawrence A. Hirschfeld

supra note 20 (discussing results of children’s experiments showing that children do not automatically categorize

people by race).

32

Robert Kurzban, John Tooby & Leda Cosmides, supra note 18 at 15388-15390

33

Robert Kurzban, John Tooby & Leda Cosmides, supra note 18 at 15388-15390

34

Robert Kurzban, John Tooby & Leda Cosmides, supra note 18 at 15388-15390.

35

Gordon W. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice, 33-47 (Perseus Books 1979) (1954) (discussing in-groups, out-

groups, and reference groups); See Miller McPherson et. al., infra note 36 (discussing the homogeneity of social

groups);

36

Miller McPherson, Lynn Smith-Lovin, & James M. Cook, Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks, 27

Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2001. 415-44 at 415; Gordon W. Allport, supra note 35 at 17-20 (discussing the natural

separation of human groups).

37

Miller et. al., supra note 36.

38

Id.

39

See Bruce H. Mayhew, J. Miller McPherson, Thomas Rotolo, & Lynn Smith-Lovin, Sex and Race Homogeneity in

Naturally Occurring Groups, Social Forces, Vol. 74(1) (Sep., 1995), 15-52; Miller McPherson, et. al., Birds of a

Feather: Homophily in Social Networks, 27 Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2001. 415-44; Wesley Shrum; Neil H. Cheek, Jr., &

Suandra MacD. Hunter, Friendship in School: Gender & Racial Homophily, 61(4) Sociol. Of Education, 227

(1998).

40

Miller et. al., supra note 36 at 429.

41

Jim Blascovich, Natalie A. Wyer, Laura A. Swart, & Jeffrey L. Kibler, Racism and Racial Categorization, 72 No.

6 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1364, 1364 (1997).

42

Ali M. Ahmed, Group identity, social distance and inter-group bias, 28 Journal of Economic Psychology 324,

335 (2007); See Richard J. Crisp et. al. infra note 43 at 175 (discussing the importance of in-group to the concept of

self).

43

Richard J. Crisp & Sarah R. Beck, Reducing Intergroup Bias: The Moderating Role of In-group Identification,

8(2) Group Processes & Intergroup Relations 173, 175-76 (2005).

44

Richard J. Crisp et. al, supra note 43 at 175; Jim Blascovich et. al., supra note 41 at 1364; See Gordon W. Allport

supra note 35 at 37-43 (discussing reference groups, social distance and whether there can be an in-group with an

out-group); But See

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45

Jim Blascovich et. al., supra note 41 at 1364-65; Ali M. Ahmed, supra note 42 at 324-27; Charles W. Perdue,

John F. Dovidio, Michael B. Gurtman, & Richard B. Tyler, Us and Them: Social Categorization and the Process of

Inter-Group Bias, 59(3) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 475-77 (1990).

46

Leslie Ashburn-Nardo supra note 25 at 797.

47

Sharon Begley, supra note 18 at 27.

48

Charles W. Perdue, supra note 45 at 476-81.

49

Id.

50

Shui-fong Lam, Chi-yue Chiu, Ivy Yee-man Lau, Wan-man Chan, & Pui-shan Yim, Managing inter-group

attitudes among Hong Kong adolescents: Effects of social category inclusiveness and time pressure, 9 Asian Journal

of Social Psychology 1, 3 (2006).

51

Shui-fong Lam et. al., supra note 50 at 9.

52

Shui-fong Lam et. al, supra note 50 at 9.

53

Leslie Ashburn-Naredo et. al, supra note 25 at 790.

54

C. David Navarrete, supra note 27 at 374; Robert Kurzban & Mark Leary, supra note 6 at 193.

55

Robert Kurzban & Mark Leary, supra note 6 at 193.

56

Ali M. Ahmed, supra note 42 at 335; See Leslie Ashburn-Naredo et. al, supra note 48 at 790; Henri Tajfel, M.G.

Billig, & R.P. Bundy, Social categorization and inter-group behavior, 1 European Journal of Social Psychology 149

(1971); Shui-fong Lam et al., supra note 44 at 9 (once a national frame of reference was adopted, Hong Kong

participants expected people from both regions, China and Hong Kong, to be more cooperative).

57

Robert Kurzban & Mark Leary, supra note 6 at 195.

58

See Robert M. Stein, Stephanie Shirley Post, & Allison L. Rinden, Reconciling Context and Contacts Effects on

Racial Attitudes, 53(2) Political Research Quarterly 285, 294 ((stating that Anglo residents of California and Florida

(more populous in Hispanics) are more inclined to have negative attitudes of Hispanics and favor of decreasing

levels of immigration)).

59

Id. at 294-95; See Richard J. Crisp et. al., supra note 43 at 181 (discussing high group identification vs. low group

identification).

60

Robert M. Stein et. al., supra note 57 at 294.

61

See Richard J. Crisp et. al., supra note 43 at 181 (“For lower identifiers, group membership contributes little to

self-identity and so any weakening of categorical boundaries will likely lead ot the formation of an inclusive

representation that includes former out-groupers”); Lee Sigelman & Susan Welch, The Contact Hypothesis

Revisited: Black-White Interaction and Positive Racial Attitudes, 71(3) Social Forces 781, 793 (discussing results of

a racial attitude survey that showed interracial friendships decrease blacks’ perceptions of racial hostility and that

interracial neighborhood contacts decrease whites’ perceptions of hostility).

62

See Gordon W. Allport, supra note 35 at 29 (discussing the formation of in-groups and stating “[p]sychologically,

the crux of the matter is that the familiar provides the indispensable basis of our existence”).

63

Robert Kurzban & Mark Leary, supra note 6 at 197; Charles S. Johnson, The Present Status of Race Relations,

with Particular Reference to the Negro, 8(3) The Journal of Negro Education 323, 323 (1939) (discussing the factors

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that determine race relations which include the social values and meanings which are given to the observable

physical differences).

64

Sharon Begley, supra note 18 at 26-27;

65

Id.; See Leslie Ashburn-Nardo et. al., supra note 25 at 789 (arguing that from an early age, children learn

stereotypes); Gordon W. Allport supra note 35 at 29 (discussing that children are, from an early age, able to discern

ethnic categories); Lawrence A. Hirschfeld supra note 20 at 214 (stating that ‘racial categories becomes

essentialized when general categorization biases combine with the transfer of specialized reasoning strategies from

better grounded domains’).

66

Gordon W. Allport, supra note 35 at 29.

67

Leslie Ashburn-Nardo et. al., supra note 25 at 789; See Gordon W. Allport supra note 35 at 29 (discussing that

children are, from an early age, able to discern ethnic categories); Shelley Chaiken, infra note 78 at 31 (stating that

to employ simple heuristic rules, ‘people must have learned and stored in memory knowledge structures tah are

relevant to available extrinsic persuasion cues” e.g. race).

68

See Robert Kurzban & Mark Leary, supra note 6 at 197 (concluding that ‘[t]he cues that differentiate the relevant

categoies in one’s social world must be learned through experience over the course of development, and there is

evidence of domain-specific cognitive mechanisms designed for exactly this purpose’); Richard J. Crisp et. al.,

supra note 43 at 174, 175 (discussing the psychological dichotomization of in-groups and out groups and that

categorization affords a psychological basis for in-groups and out-groups); Lawrence A. Hirschfeld supra note 20 at

214 (stating that ‘racial categories becomes essentialized when general categorization biases combine with the

transfer of specialized reasoning strategies from better grounded domains’).

69

Gordon W. Allport, supra note 35 at 21.

70

Id. at 20.

71

Allport, supra note 35 at 21.

72

Allport, supra note 35 at 21.

73

Id.

74

Allport, supra note 35 at 21.

75

Allport, supra note 35 at 20.

76

Id.

77

Torsten Reimer, Rui Mata, Konstantinos Katsikopoulos, & Klaus Opwis, On the Interplay between Heuristic and

Systematic Processes in Persuasion, 6 European Review of Social Psychology, 1833, 1833 (1995).

78

Shelly Chaiken, The Heuristic Model of Persuasion, in 5 Social Influence: The Ontario Symposium 3-39, 3 (Mark

P. Zanna, James M. Olson, & C. Peter Herman eds., 1987); Duane T. Wegener, Jason K. Clark, & Richard E. Petty,

Not All Stereotyping is Created Equal: Differential Consequences of Thoughtful Versus Non-Thoughtful

Stereotyping, 90(1) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 42, 43-44 (2006) (discussing evidence showing

both thoughtful and non-thoughtful thought processes may lead to stereotypical judgments).

79

Torsten Reimer et. al., supra note 76 at 1833; See Galen V. Bodenhausen & Robert S. Wyer, Jr., Effects of

Stereotypes on Decision Making and Information-Processing Strategies, 48(2) Journal of Personality and Social

Psychology 267, 279 (1985) (discussing the interplay between the heuristic and systematic processing methods and

the factors that lead one method to dominate).

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35

80

Shelley Chaiken, supra note 77 at 3.

81

Id.

82

C. Neil Macrae, Miles Hewstone, & Riana J. Griffiths, Processing load and memory for stereotype-based

information, 23 European Journal of Social Psychology 77, 84-86 (1993) (discussing results of experiment that

showed participants were able to recall more stereotype-inconsistent information under low processing demands, but

when processing demands were high, participants showed a preference for recalling stereotypical information, thus

indicating when processing information systematically, participants analyzed the information more thoroughly);

Galen V. Bodenhausen & Robert S. Wyer., supra note 78 at 280 (discussing the effects of stereotypes on

information recall).

83

Shelley Chaiken, supra note 77 at 3.

84

Shelley Chaiken, supra note 77 at 4; See Amos Tversky & Daniel Kahneman, Judgment Under Uncertainty:

Heursitics and Biases, 185(4157) Science 1124, 1124 (1974) (discussing the application of heuristic rules in the

making of probabilistic judgments); Galen V. Bodenhausen & Robert S. Wyer, supra note 78 at 267.

85

Shelley Chaiken, supra note 77 at 4-5; Shelley Chaiken & Durairaj Maheswaran, Heuristic Processing Can Bias

Systematic Processing: Effects of Source Credibility, Argument Ambiguity, and Task Importance on Attitude

Judgment, 66(3) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 460, 460 (1994).

86

Leslie Ashburn-Nardo, supra note 25 at 789.

87

See Galen V. Bodenhausen & Robert S. Wyer, supra note 78 at 271 (discussing the results of a study showing that

an infraction was more likely to occur when it was stereotypic of the target’s nationality and that respondents

recommended more severe discipline for stereotypic offenses; indicating respondent’s attributed more risk to those

they had stereotypic views of); Ron Tamborini, Ren-He Huang, Dana Mastro & Reiko Nabashi-Nahahara, The

Influence of Race, Heuristics and Information Load on Judgments of Guilt and Innocence, 58(4) Communication

Studies 341, 354-56 (2007) (discussing results of study showing that stereotypes plays a role in judgments of guilt or

innocence).

88

Shelly Chaiken, supra note 77 at 11-15; Ron Tamborini et. al., supra note 86 at 344-48 (discussing the role of

information load on judgments of innocence or guilt and the increased of stereotypes); Galen V. Bodenhausen &

Meryl Lichtenstein, Social Stereotypes and Information-Processing Strategies: The Impact of Task Complexity,

52(5) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 871, 878 (concluding task complexity increases the use of

heuristics); C. Neil Macrae et. al., supra note 81 at 84-86 (discussing the effects of higher processing loads and the

use of heuristics).

89

Thane S. Pittman & Nancy L. Pittman, Deprivation of Control and the Attribution Process, 39(3) Journal of

Personality and Social Psychology, 377, 377 (1980) quoting H.H. Kelley, Attribution Theory in Social Interaction,

221 (Eds. E. E. Jones et. al.)(General Learning Press 1971); Ron Tamborini et. al., supra note 86 at 342; James R.

Averill, supra note 10 at 286-87; Kerry Yarkin-Levin, supra note 6 at 302.

90

Thane S. Pittman, et. al, supra note 92 at 377; James R. Averill, supra note 10 at 286-87; Kerry Yarkin-Levin,

supra note 6 at 302.

91

Id.

92

Allport, supra note 35 at 21; Amos Tverksy & Daniel Khaneman, supra note 84 at 1126 (discussing how people

will assume the validity of their judgments based on their representativeness).

93

Shelley Chaiken, supra note 77 at 8; Duane T. Wegener et. al., supra note 77 at 44 (discussing motivation and

ability as determinants of cognitive processes).

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36

94

Shelley Chaiken, supra note 77 at 32 (discussing the effects of context, setting, and goals on motivation).

95

See Ron Tamborini et. al, supra note 86 at 354-355 (discussing judicial heuristics; aversive racism and the

tendency to alternate between positive and negative behaviors towards members of racial groups dependent upon the

situation and context).

96

Ron Tamborini et. al, supra note 86 at 354-355 (discussing judicial heuristics; aversive racism and the tendency to

alternate between positive and negative behaviors towards members of racial groups dependent upon the situation

and context); Galen V. Bodenhausen, Stereotypic Biasis in Social Decision Making and Memory: Testing Process

Models of Stereotype Use, 55(5) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 726, 727 (1988) (discussing effects of

racial stereotypes in juror context); Galen V. Bodenhausen & Meryl Lichtenstein., supra note 87 at 878 (discussing

the effect of racial stereotypes on judgments of innocence and guilty in jury context); See Robert Kurzban & Mark

Leary, supra note 6 at 200 (stating that ‘defectors in the context of dyadic or group-level cooperation should elicit

anger or motivate punishment’); Galen V. Bodnehausen, Lori A. Sheppard, & Geoffrey P. Kramer, Negative Affect

and Social Judgment: The Differential Impact of Anger and Sadness, 24 European Journal of Social Psychology 45,

55 (1994) (discussing the results of experiments showing anger affected participants by making them more likely to

apply heuristic processing).

97

See Ron Tamborini et. al, supra note 86 at 355 (comparing motivations of Caucasians in a jury context to

maintain an egalitarian self-image and avoid being censured a racist with those of African Americans’ in-group

favoritism); Kessley Hong & Irish Bohnet, Status and Distrust: The Relevance of Inequality and Betrayal Aversion,

28 Journal of Economic Psychology 197, 208-09 (2007) (concluding that groups typically considered as having

lower status in the U.S. as being averse to disadvantageous in-equality while higher status groups dislike being

betrayed).

98

Jim Blascovich et. al., supra note 41at 1370.

99

Ali M. Ahmed, supra note 42 at 326-27 (discussing the three causes of out-group derogation, or discrimination –

[1] positive consequences of in-group formation; [2] negative consequences of out-group differentiation; and [3]

inter-group social competition).

100

Shelley Chaiken et. al, supra note 84 at 461 (discussing how the heuristic rules and prior held beliefs may work

in tandem with systematic processing of information).

101

Galen V. Bodenhausen, supra note 94 at 727; See Galen V. Bodenhausen & Robert S. Wyer., supra note 78, 279-

80 (discussing the effects of stereotypes on judgments and on recall data); Amos Tversky et al., supra note 84 at

1124-29 (discussing the representative, availability, and anchoring biases).

102

Ron Tamborini et. al, supra note 86 at 355; See Kessely Hong & Iris Bohnet, Status and Distrust: The Relevance

of Inequality and Betrayal Aversion, 28 Journal of Economic Psychology 197, 209 (2006) (discussing findings that

show that lower status groups in the U.S. are averse to disadvantageous inequality while higher status groups dislike

being betrayed).

103

Ron Tamborini et. al, supra note 86 at 355; See Kessely Hong & Iris Bohnet, Status and Distrust: The Relevance

of Inequality and Betrayal Aversion, 28 Journal of Economic Psychology 197, 209 (2006) (discussing findings that

show that lower status groups in the U.S. are averse to disadvantageous inequality while higher status groups dislike

being betrayed).

104

Duane T. Wegener et. al., supra note 77 at 55; Ziva Kunda & Kathryn C. Oleson, Maintaining Stereotypes in the

Face of Disconfirmation: Constructing Grounds for Subtyping Deviants, 68(4) Journal of Personality and Social

Psychology 565, 565 (1995) (stereotypes are notoriously difficult to change even when presented with conflicting

evidence); Ziva Kunda & Kathryn C. Oleson, When Exceptions Prove the Rule: How Extremity of Deviance

Determines the Impact of Deviant Examples on Stereotypes, 72(5) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

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37

965, 965-67 (1997) (discussing how people subtype exceptions that prove the rule when it comes to stereotypes);

Tortsten Reimer et. al., supra note 77 at 1837 (stating that only systematic processing will change a attitudes).

105

Galen V. Bodnehausen, Lori A. Sheppard, & Geoffrey P. Kramer, supra note 95 at 46-47 (discussing the mood

congruency effect and possible explanations for it).

106

Robert Kurzban & Mark R. Leary, supra note 6 at 200.

107

Galen V. Bodnehausen, Lori A. Sheppard, & Geoffrey P. Kramer, supra note 95 at 48.

108

Id.

109

Id.

110

Galen V. Bodnehausen, Lori A. Sheppard, & Geoffrey P. Kramer, supra note 95 at 48.

111

Galen V. Bodnehausen, Lori A. Sheppard, & Geoffrey P. Kramer, supra note 95 at 48; Robert S. Baron, Mary L.

Innam, Chuan Feng Kao, & Henrietta Logan, Negative Emotion and Superficial Social Processing, 16(4) Motivation

and Emotion 323, 341-44 (1992) (concluding that negative emotional states, i.e. fear and anger, correlate with

superficial information processing, i.e. heuristically).

112

Galen V. Bodnehausen, Lori A. Sheppard, & Geoffrey P. Kramer, supra note 95 at 48.

113

Robert Kurzban & Mark Leary, supra note 6 at 200. See supra notes 27, 28, 53 & 54.

114

Robert Kurzban and Mark Leary, supra note 6 at 200.

115

Noel Murray, Harish Sujan, Edward R. Hirt, & Mita Sujan, The Influence of Mood on Categorization: A

Cognitive Flexibility Interpretation, 59(3) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 411, 412-13 (1990); See

Galen V. Bodnehausen, Lori A. Sheppard, & Geoffrey P. Kramer, supra note 95 at 47-48 (stating that happiness is

associated with more heuristic styles of thinking).

116

Noel Murray et. al., supra note 110 at 412.

117

Noel Murray et. al., supra note 110 at 418; Galen V. Bodnehausen, Lori A. Sheppard, & Geoffrey P. Kramer,

supra note 95 at 48; Compare Robert S. Baron, supra note 111 at 341-44 (discussing the availability of certain cues

affecting motivation to systematically process information).

118

Shelley Chaiken, supra note 78 at ; Robert S. Baron et. al., supra note 111 at 341-44.

119

Galen V. Bodnehausen, Lori A. Sheppard, & Geoffrey P. Kramer, supra note 95 at 59; Robert S. Baron, et. al.,

supra note 111 at 342; Noel Murray et. al., supra note 110 at 422-23.

120

Shelley Chaiken, supra note 78 at 11-15; Marisa J. Mazzotta & James Opaluch, Decision Making When Choices

are Complex: A Test of Heiner’s Hypothesis, 71(4) Land Economics, 500, 500 (1995); C. Neil Macrae et. al., supra

note 82 at 79 (“In other words, when the information-processing going gets tough, stereotypes (as heuristic

structures) get going”); Galen V. Bodenhausen & Meryl Lichtenstein, supra note 88 at 878 (discussing the effects of

task complexity on the use of stereotypes); Ron Tamborini et. al., supra note 87 at 356 (discussing information load

effects on use of heuristics).

121

Shelly Chaiken, supra note 78 at 31.

122

Shelly Chaiken, supra note 78 at 31; See Supra notes 65 & 67.

123

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38

124

Shui-fong Lam et. al., supra note 50 at 9.

125

Id.

126

Ron Tamborini et. al., supra note 87; Galen V. Bodenhausen & Meryl Lichtenstein, supra note 88; Galen V.

Bodenhausen & Robert S. Wyer, supra note 78; See C. Neil Macrae et. al., supra note 82 at 79 (discussing

information load and effects on use of heuristics); Marissa J. Mazzotta et. al., supra note 120 at 511 (discussing that

as complexity increases, the use of heuristics increases as well).

127

See supra note 126.

128

Amos Tversky & Daniel Kahneman, supra note 84 at 1124; Shelley Chaiken, supra note 78 at 33.

129

Shelley Chaiken, supra note 78 at 33.

130

Amos Tversky et. al., supra note 84 at 1124; Leda Cosmides et. al., supra note 29 at 176.

131

Modifying zebra example, provided in Leda Cosmides et. al., supra note 29 at 176.

132

Modifying the librarian example, but using similar language, provided in: Amos Tversky et. al, supra note 84 at

1124.

133

Thane S. Pittman et. al., supra note 89 at 378; Amos Tversky & Daniel Khaneman, supra note 84 at 1124-26.

134

Thane S. Pittman et. al., supra note 89 at 378; See Birt L. Duncan, Differntial Social Perception and Attribution

of Intergroup Violence: Testing the Lower Limits of Stereotyping of Blacks, 34(4) Journal of Personality and Social

Psychology 590, 596-97 (1976) (discussing the findings of an experiment which showed whites were more willing

to attribute dispositionally to blacks and situationally to whites).

135

Thane S. Pittman et. al., supra note 89 at 378; Galen V. Bodenhausen & Robert S. Wyer, supra note 6 at 268; See

Generally Kerry Yarking-Levin, supra note 6 at 309-10; See Duane T. Wegener et. al., supra note 77 at 55; Ziva

Kunda et. al., supra note 104 at 565 (stereotypes are notoriously difficult to change even when presented with

conflicting evidence); Ziva Kunda et.al., supra note 104 at 965-67 (1997) (discussing how people subtype

exceptions that prove the rule when it comes to stereotypes).

136

Thane S. Pittman et. al., supra note 89 at 378; See James R. Averill, supra note 10 at 298 (discussing obtaining

control in one’s life as a primary motivating factor).

137

Thane S. Pittman et. al., supra note 89 at 378; See James R. Averill, supra note 10 at 298 (discussing obtaining

control in one’s life as a primary motivating factor).

138

Amos Tversky & Daniel Khaneman, supra note 84 at 1124.

139

Id. at 1124-27.

140

Amos Tversky & Daniel Khaneman, supra note 84 at 1127; Amos Tversky & Daniel Khaneman, Availability: A

Heuristic for Judging Frequency and Probability, 5 Cognitive Psychology 207, 207-08 (1973).

141

See Lee Sigelman, supra note 61 at 783 (“Given the tendency of media coverage to focus on case of intense,

dramatic conflict, the secondhand information whites have about blacks is apt to accentuate the negative”); See

Generally Roger E. Kasperson & Jeanne X. Kasperson, The Social Amplification and Attenuation of Risk, 545

Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 95, 95-105 (discussing the social amplifications of

risk).

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39

142

See supra note 36 & 143.

143

Amos Tversky & Daniel Khaneman, supra note 84 at 1127.

144

Travis L. Dixon, Crime News and Racialized Beliefs: Understanding the Relationship Between Local News

Viewing and Perceptions of African Americans and Crime, 58 Journal of Communication 106, 119 (2008).

145

Amos Tversky & Daniel Khaneman, supra note 84 at 1128; See supra notes 73, 74 & 101.

146

Amos Tversky & Daniel Khaneman, supra note 84 at 1130.

147

Amos Tversky & Daniel Kahneman, supra note 84 at 1124

148

Id.

149

Amos Tversky & Daniel Kahneman, supra note 84 at 1124.