A study from Pennsylvania State University has found that people exhibit racial bias when responding to emails. The researchers found that people might not respond to emails if the senders are black.
Americans are more likely to reply to emails from white people
The team stated that people consciously or unconsciously exhibited racial bias. For example, about 25 million Americans have less chance of responding to a black person’s email than a Caucasian’s.
The findings were similar for all racial groups except black people, who were more likely to answer emails from other black people compared to white.
According to a study author and Professor in Career Development, Ray Block, the researchers acknowledge that there could be apparent racism such as verbal and physical abuse. However, they wanted to examine the subtle ways racism can come out.
Professor Block adds that indignities and microaggressions tend to build up over someone’s lifetime. In addition, microaggressions should always be taken seriously as little things matter.
The team points out that there have been numerous studies on overt racism, including racial stereotypes and violence. However, fewer studies have looked into subtle forms of racism even though it is more common.
How researchers conducted the study
For their study, the researchers used 250,000 email addresses from a commercial email list and a voter registration list. The participants included people from various backgrounds, including white, black, Hispanic, Pacific Islanders, and Asian American populations.
The team sent the respondents an email asking them to answer a survey on contemporary political issues. Furthermore, they made the emails appear as if they were from a white or black person.
The researchers sent two emails two weeks apart from a sender who appeared white and another black. They then observed which emails the participants were more likely to respond to.
About 1.6% of the participants responded to white senders, while 1.4% responded to black. As a result, black senders received 3620 responses while white senders got 4007. The researchers also found that the results were still the same in each geographical area despite people believing that some places have more racism than others.
The team will use the answers they gathered from the responses to gather their opinions.
