COP2 - Primary Research into hidden prejudice

As I'm now re-thinking my design from the feedback Simon gave me. I decided to investigate what type of person, people found most appealing and attractive on a subconscious level. A lot of people in our modern society are not racist or prejudiced but at a subconscious level there can be hidden prejudice deep routed from a young age, due to environmental and social influences. 

In the feedback that Simon gave me (as mentioned in feedback blog post) he suggested that using real life photograph was a better approach to strengthen my adverts and concept. My first idea I tested out used photographs but there was no real reason behind the particular photos, so this time around I wanted to really investigation and understand what photographs of people found more appealing and attractive.

The research

What I wanted to essentially find out was, if people preferred white women over any other ethnicity. How I setup the research was to present 6 images (below) of portraits of women from different ethnicity. The style of the photo was taken in a similar way to try and avoid bias or to influence the results in any way. I then asked 5 questions to 10 people on a 1 to 1 interview basis and recorded their results. The questions were:

1. What image do you like the most in terms of aesthetics and style?
2. What woman would you like to look like?
3. What woman do you find most attractive?
4. What woman do you find most powerful and independent?
5. What woman do you think earns the most?

Why a 1 to 1 interview setup?

I wanted honest and truthful opinions from people without the fear of being judged by other people. Other forms of research like focus groups or questionnaires wouldn't give me honest results. I also decided to keep everyone I interviewed anonymous because of the touchy topic area and some people may interpret the results the wrong way, so I didn't feel comfortable telling people what people said.

The results

The question were meant to investigate whether there was an underlining prejudice in people. I made sure to ask people from both genders and all background to get a better understand and to make the experiment fair. The results were:

Q1 - 6/10 people said #1 --- 2/10 people said #6 ---1/10 people said #2 --- 1/10 people said #4

Q2 - 7/10 people said #1 --- 3/10 people said #6

Q3 - 3/10 people said #1 --- 4/10 people said #6 --- 2/10 people said #5 --- 1/10 people said #2

Q4 - 4/10 people said #1 --- 2/10 people said #2 --- 2/10 people said #3 --- 1/10 people said #6 --- 1/10 people said #4

Q5 - 6/10 people said #1 --- 3/10 people said #6 --- 1/10 people said #3

From the results It's not completely evident that people prefer one ethnicity over another. Yes, the results clearly show a favourable amount of people choosing white women over any other woman of colour but it's also clear to see a number of people choosing the black woman time and time again, this could be a sign that people are changing and society is beginning to open their mind to diversity and say no to social oppression. In terms of what I can take from this investigation, is to directly appeal to the subconscious part of the brain, where we do not realise of our prejudice influence, therefore the consumer would be more temped to pay attention and to buy the product if using a white woman to promote the advert.

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

The next lot of primary research focuses on the same issues as the previous but instead of independent women, it was situated around groups of people. Again, I was seeing if people preferred any particular group of people over another, so I presented people with images of three groups, white, black and Asian. What I was trying to investigate was if I were to use a group of people in my adverts which group would appeal more to the consumer.

The questions I asked were:

1 - What group would you associate yourself with?

2 - What group looks most safe?

3 - What group looks most attractive?

4 - What group earns the most as a collective?

The answers were:

Q1 - 6/10 people said #1 --- 3/10 people said #3 --- 1/10 people said #2

Q2 - 7/10 people said #1 --- 1/10 people said #3 --- 1/10 people said #2

Q3 - 5/10 people said #1 --- 3/10 people said #2 --- 1/10 people said #3

Q4 - 4/10 people said #3 --- 4/10 people said #1 --- 1/10 people said #2
 

From the results its interesting to see how social stereotypes and influences from the media have shaped the way we perceive other groups of people. It's evident from the three groups that the black group received the lowest scores on most questions. With all the media interest and bad reputation around the black community it's clear to see the effect it has on people. In the media black groups are considered dangerous and not safe to be around which is sad to see but that's the interesting aspect about the research, understanding the class structure and how we subconsciously place stereotypes on people we know nothing about based on media propaganda.

#1

#2

#3

Evaluation of research

The results demonstrate a clear favoritisms for white people in general. When conducting the research It began to seem obvious what my agenda was, I felt that people change their answers once they found out what I was trying to find out from them, either because they felt embarrassed or not wanted to be judged. To get a proper understanding the research would need to be conducted at a higher scale with a lot more people but due to the time frame, this is how in-depth I was able to go. Overall, the research will allow me to pick and choose effective imagery based on these experiments to maximise desire and subconscious influences.