The "Turban Effect"

[Florion]

I was reading The Globe and Mail's "Social Studies" miscellany assembled by Michael Kesterton, and I found this little clipping that may be of interest to you guys.

LOOK OUT, HE'S HAPPY
"When a group of Sydney researchers asked young people to play a computer game in which they shot at armed targets, they were not surprised to identify a 'turban effect,' " The Sydney Morning Herald reports. "Despite being instructed to fire only at those people holding a gun, the participants were more likely to make a mistake and shoot at innocent people holding a harmless item such as a soft drink bottle if the target was wearing a turban. ... The University of New South Wales psychologists also tested the effect of the shooters' mood on the choice of people they mowed down, and these findings were surprising - those who shot the greatest number of unarmed turban-wearers were the happy people. In our society happiness is a prized commodity. Feeling upbeat is supposed to make us more creative, co-operative and successful - a positive state we are encouraged to strive for. Yet the most deeply ingrained human emotions - fear, anger, disgust and sadness - are negative ones, points out Prof. Joseph Forgas, of the University of NSW."

What do you make of it? Would you see yourself as the happy person who kills more turban-wearing innocents? Also, on a random note, I don't know what game they were playing, but if it was one developed specifically for the study, I think it would be a really cool career, to be a video game developer for social studies. x3

EDIT: Kilo24 gives us the study - http://www.psychexperiment.net/denson/Unkelbach%20et%20al.%20(2008).pdf

 

[Kilo24]

What other defining characteristics were there for the characters? Did they have a wide variety of hats worn? Or were the turban-wearers simply the most distinctive characters onscreen?

 

[Florion]

What other defining characteristics were there for the characters? Did they have a wide variety of hats worn? Or were the turban-wearers simply the most distinctive characters onscreen?

I don't know. There aren't any screenshots or anything, it's an article about the size of a cellphone if not smaller. Depends how big your cellphone is.

 

[BonsaiK]

Someone with a turban might be easier to hit, especially if the turban was bright and highly visible. I don't think this article really proves anything other than "happy people like to shoot hats in video games". Which I could have told them without writing a special program.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

I don't know. There aren't any screenshots or anything, it's an article about the size of a cellphone if not smaller. Depends how big your cellphone is.

I suppose if everyone moved the article and their phone back and forwards from their eyes they could make them appear to be the same size.

This research seems to back up the saying "ignorance is bliss." You don't care if you shoot an innocent person if there is something about them that makes you ignorantly think they were probably guilty for some other reason anyway.

 

[Kilo24]

What other defining characteristics were there for the characters? Did they have a wide variety of hats worn? Or were the turban-wearers simply the most distinctive characters onscreen?

I don't know. There aren't any screenshots or anything, it's an article about the size of a cellphone if not smaller. Depends how big your cellphone is.

Hmm... well, this looks like the referenced article.

http://www.psychexperiment.net/denson/Unkelbach%20et%20al.%20(2008).pdf

I'll offer my analysis after poking at it for a bit.

 

[Bigeyez]

What other defining characteristics were there for the characters? Did they have a wide variety of hats worn? Or were the turban-wearers simply the most distinctive characters onscreen?

This. You can't really come to a conclusion without knowing all the variables in the testing.

 

[Florion]

What other defining characteristics were there for the characters? Did they have a wide variety of hats worn? Or were the turban-wearers simply the most distinctive characters onscreen?

This. You can't really come to a conclusion without knowing all the variables in the testing.

Hmm... well, this looks like the referenced article.

http://www.psychexperiment.net/denson/Unkelbach%20et%20al.%20(2008).pdf

I'll offer my analysis after poking at it for a bit.

That definitely looks like the article. I can't get the picture off it, but I'll describe it here: The people all look identical (photograph of a non-Caucasian man's head) except they're all holding something to the left of their heads, either one of two types of gun or one of two types of drink bottle, and 4 out of the 8 possible guys wears a turban. It's not a ridiculously stylized turban, so I don't think the "people like shooting down hats" argument stands.

 

[Kilo24]

Okay, well, it looks like adding in a turban was the only change made between pictures. Happy people shot more Muslims while angry people shot more indiscriminately. It was conducted in Australia so the attitudes would theoretically be less pronounced than in the USA. It doesn't specify that aiming was important (only that the a and l keys were randomly assigned to shoot/not shoot) so the accuracy increase of hitting the larger target is probably not applicable.

Negative stereotypes could still be at the root, but there could be a number of other factors in play. Turbans could make for larger, more attention-getting targets, so we'd need to try out the study with afros, mexican hats, chef's hats and/or non-stereotype-charged stovepipe hats to eliminate Muslim discrimination. The addition of a turban is also more information to process, so discrimination might simply be a case of shooting the more complex target.

Edit:

It's not a ridiculously stylized turban, so I don't think the "people like shooting down hats" argument stands.

It doesn't need to be overly stylized; ignoring that aspect is bad science. It's unlikely to be significant, but it could be; I'd consider the conclusions drawn by this study flawed until it controls for that variable. It proves that people are willing to shoot more at targets wearing turbans (and that their definition of happiness affects discrimination), but not that said willingness is any result of religious stereotypes. It does show that race is also influential in the decisions, as well: participants were more willing to shoot non-Caucasian males but the non-angry participants were more likely to shoot Caucasian females.

 

[Credge]

If all they showed are people with turbans and people without, that doesn't prove anything other than turbans may draw attention away from objects in the hand.

Which, ironically, is exactly what they showed.

Studies like this very obviously have an agenda they want to press.