Archive

Reconsidering Race in the Genetic Era

Race is a topic that has been explored throughout the history of social psychology research. Typically, this research has focused on how our conceptions (or preconceptions) of race affect our attitudes and behaviors. There is a long line of research examining phenomena such as prejudice, stereotypes, discrimination, in-group bias, stereotype threat, self-fulfilling prophecies, and a whole range of related issues. One could argue that an underlying assumption of this research is that all humans are fundamentally equal, regardless of race. In the academic world, there has been consistent support for this notion (Anderson & Nickerson, 2005; Sternberg, Grigorenko, & Kidd, 2005); however, folk notions of race, as a fundamental biological difference, still persist in the United States and many countries around the world (Jayarantne, Ybarra, Sheldon, Brown, Feldbaum, et al., 2006;Smedley & Smedley, 2005; Williams & Eberhardt, 2008). / more