Study: Obama's Political Rise Lessened Prejudice Toward Blacks

Racial prejudice among whites decreased following Barack Obama's groundbreaking presidential candidacy, according to a new study by University of Wisconsin-Madison and Florida State psychology professors.

Patricia Devine, a UW-Madison psychology professor, and E. Ashby Plant, a Florida State psychology professor, conducted the study that examined President Obama's influence in the way whites perceive blacks.

According to a university release, the professors found a decrease in racial prejudice among participants following Obama's nomination.

The research showed that following Obama's nomination as the first black presidential candidate of a major political party, 51 percent of the participants showed knee-jerk preferences for whites, a decrease in bias from previous years.

In an interview, Plant said the topic interested her and Devine because previous research suggested exposing people to positive role models of different groups could have a positive impact.

"Barack Obama was a very positive, very counter-stereotypic African-American man, constantly in the news, very salient," Plant said, adding that she and Devine thought "this may truly have an impact on people's attitudes to African-Americans in general."

According to the release, UW-Madison and Florida State non-black students participated in a variety of experiments to"measure stereotyping and implicit prejudice."

Plant said the study focused on questioning students about the positive ideas that came to their mind when thinking about blacks.

"We saw if they listed Barack Obama, if they listed [him as] the first thing that came to their mind. ...We found that if they did they also had far less prejudice," Plant said.

Alimatu Sirleaf, a member of the Multicultural Student Coalition, said she was not surprised research participants associated positive black figures with Obama during the study.

"There were a lot of students that were in support of President Obama, and I did see that very much on the night he was elected. Everybody was out and in support of him," Sirleaf said.

However, Sirleaf said she did not think interactions between blacks and whites changed since last fall.

The research findings are currently under review, and researchers expect to publish the results within the next nine months.

This story was filed by UWIRE, which offers reporting from more than 800 colleges and universities worldwide. Read more at www.uwire.com