Interracial Relationships. The Statistical Abstract Research Paper

People besides are not always aware of their motivation aside from which it is arguable whether or not prejudicial sentiments are implicit rather than conscious. Given these conditions and more, I find the study interesting but highly limited.

There are many present theses on how we control our prejudices. The MODE model, one of the most prominent, states that prejudices are controlled via automatic and controlled processes. The researchers (Towles-Schwen & Fazio, 2006)) wanted to investigate these models in a real-life environment. Their focus, therefore, was on interracial sharing of rooms (boarding) in a university. Their first study was on roommates initial reaction to the other racially different boarder. Their second study was whether the boarding experience changed initial automatic prejudice. The racial attitudes of the 58 White freshmen were measured unobtrusively in both studies via a priming procedure at the beginning of the fall semester. Students also reported their satisfaction with their roommates on a 3-item scale adapted from Murray and Holmes's (1997)research on close relationships.

Researchers found that the automatically activated racial attitudes of White students predicted the longevity of the relationships. In other words, whether or not they were motivated to control their prejudice, it was their initial feelings to the boarder that determined the longevity of the relationship.

My main limitation that I have with this study is the reliability of the priming procedure.I have come across arguments (though unable to track them here) regarding the unreliability of many of the instruments used to track so-called unconscious feelings. The argument generally goes that if they are unconscious to start with then you cannot prove that the findings are correct. Namely, there is nothing to base them / justify them with. Aside from which I have heard there are other failures with their operation. This needs to be researched before the conclusions of this study are accepted.

Another thing that disturbed me was the fact that the study seemed skewed from the very start. It measured and expected to find prejudice among White students, but not among Blacks. Taking this into account, it started off with two assumptions, namely that prejudice existed, and secondly that it existed solely among Whites.

Finally, although not exclusively, researchers determined that it was boarder's initial prejudice, but not motivation to control it, that determined longevity to relationship. This conclusion, however, does not take into account personal characteristics of the particular boarder. I t may well be that it was personality traits or mismatch of the boarder that determined collapse of relationship and the reverse may have applied too. This was not considered nor was the appropriate MANOVA conducted.

Sources

Knox, D. et al., (2000). Interracial dating attitudes among college students. College Student Journal, Vol 34(1),.....