Browsing by Author "Horace, Janet"

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    Her Crowning Glory: Exploring the Implicit and Explicit Cognitive Biases of African American Women's Hairstyles and Their Relations to Judgments of Attractiveness, Professionalism, and Dominance
    (University of Alabama Libraries, 2022) Horace, Janet; Roskos, Beverly; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
    For African American women, hair is often touted as one of the most important characteristics when it comes to outward beauty and attractiveness. Hair can also be thought of an aesthetic style choice, as it can affect potential job and romantic prospects. The primary objective of this study was to measure the effects of African American women's hairstyles on levels of other's perceptions of the woman's attractiveness, professionalism, and dominance. Another objective of this study was to investigate stereotypes related to African American women's hair and their effects on memory and cognitive processing, in particular, the intragroup (or within-group) stereotypes and biases associated with straight and natural hairstyles of African American women by African American men and women themselves. Through the use of both an explicit (social perception task) and implicit (lexical decision task) measure I sought to observe not only the outward ratings of these measures, but also the underlying prejudices that may be present. I hypothesized that straight hair would cause the wearer to be seen as more attractive, more professional and less dominant overall than natural hair. Straight hair was associated with greater professionalism than natural hair especially on the explicit measure when paired with congruent stereotypes as predicted. It was also found that there was a gender difference on the implicit measure where men found straight hair significantly more professional than natural hair as predicted. There were no significant correlations found between differences in responses on the explicit and implicit measures.