Prospective teachers are more likely to misperceive Black children as angry compared with white children, according to research in Emotion. Researchers asked 178 prospective teachers, enrolled in education programs at U.S. universities and primarily white and female, to watch videos of the faces of 72 Black and white children ages 9 to 13. Each child expressed one of six emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise or disgust. While the prospective teachers were generally accurate at detecting the children’s emotion, they incorrectly labeled both Black boys and girls. The researchers also measured the prospective teachers’ levels of explicit and implicit bias against Black people. Higher levels of explicit and implicit bias did not affect the probability of labeling Black children as angry but were associated with a lower probability of labeling white children as angry. (Monitor on Psychology)

Susie Bean Gives