Does+Perceived+Harm+Depend+on+the+Race+of+the+Agent%3F
Jude Dylan Edelman · 2024
White Americans hold associations linking Black Americans with concepts like negativity, hostility, and physical threat (Wilson et al., 2017; March et al., 2021). Perhaps consequently, classic research has shown that when a Black versus White person is the agent of an ambiguously harmful behavior (i.e., a shove that could be playful or hostile) that action is perceived as more aggressive. Because White people perceive Black individuals' ambiguously aggressive behavior as more aggressive, people may anticipate higher levels of harm to result from Black people's behavior, leading to serious implications. Consider that police officers are about 3.5 times more likely to shoot an unarmed Black male versus an unarmed White male (Ross, 2015), perhaps due to heightened expectations of possible harm. This is just one of the likely many consequences that may result from people expecting to be harmed more by the same action from a Black versus White individual. The following study tests this idea by exploring whether the perception of harm via an electric shock is greater when the perceived agent of that shock is a Black versus White person and the implications of that for decisions to punish the agent. It was found that shock intensity did not vary significantly by race and that harm perception was slightly higher when the agent was white. Despite this, results showed the participants were more willing to retaliate against Black confederates versus White. This calls for further exploration regarding how the agent of harm's race impacts the perception of pain.