In a series of experiments, psychologists Gary Sherman and Gerald Clore tested to see whether people associate desirable or undesirable qualities — cleanliness or dirtiness, morality or immorality — with the colors black and white.
If you’re interested in the particulars of their study, check it out in the August issue of Psychological Science (gated) or in its pre-publication, working paper version. Here’s a very brief overview:
bq. There exists a moral-purity metaphor that likens moral goodness to physical cleanliness. In three studies, we explored an unstudied, and under-appreciated, aspect of this metaphor – its grounding in the colors black and white. We documented …that people make immorality-blackness associations quickly and relatively automatically.
bq. …Sin is not just dirty, it is black. And moral virtue is not just clean, but also white.
bq. …These findings may have implications for understanding racial prejudice. …[T]he tendency to see the black-white spectrum in terms of purity and contamination extends to skin color. Given that both blackness and immorality are considered powerful contaminants to be avoided, and that the category labels “black” and “white” are often applied to race, dark skin might also be easily associated with immorality and impurity. This may explain, in part, why stereotypes of darker-skinned people often allude to immorality and poor hygiene, and why the typical criminal is seen as both dark-skinned and physically dirty.
Sherman and Clore aren’t attributing unfavorable racial stereotypes solely, or even primarily, to the tendency to associate goodness with the color white and badness with the color black. But it’s a connection worth bearing in mind as we ponder the roots of prejudice