Racial biases shape the way people interpret body poses

By Emma Young People reliably interpret expansive poses — with the arms and legs spread and the head held high — as a signal of dominance, or power. But work to date on perceptions of body poses has focused on White targets, note the authors of a new paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Attitudes and Social Cognition. As research shows that Black people are often stereotyped as aggressive, hostile and threatening, might an expansive pose lead others to perceive them as being more aggressive than a White person holding their body in exactly the same way? Francine Karmali at the University of Toronto and Kerry Kawakami at York University found this is indeed the case — at least for Black men. They also report evidence that this could have all kinds of impacts on a Black man’s professional and personal life. In an initial study, 111 White undergraduate students were shown photos of White and Black men in a range of settings (behind or in front of a table, for example), adopting either an expansive pose or a constrictive pose (with the limbs held close to the body). Based on their impressions from the photos alone, they rated each target for dominance, aggression, competence and warmth. The team found that, compared with constrictive poses, expansive poses got higher dominance ratings for both racial groups. However, while this higher dominance was linked to greater competence in White men, for Black men it was linked to greater compete...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Social Source Type: blogs