Across cultures, darker skin tone is associated with lower social status. We propose that Black politicians are subject to skin tone biases in US newspapers, with hostile biases resulting in them being portrayed as more dark-skinned. We hypothesized that such biases occur as a function of negative racial attitudes. We contrast this with an ingroup bias hypothesis, according to which partisans denigrate Black politicians of the other side, but not their own side. The present research evaluated skin tone biases toward President Barack Obama, a Democrat, and Dr. Ben Carson, a Republican, in US newspapers. We collected published photographs of President Obama during his first term in office (n = 3781 from 34 newspapers) as well as for Dr. Carson during his 2015–2016 presidential run (n = 1049 from 53 newspapers) from high-circulation newspapers, which had endorsed Democratic or Republican presidential candidates. Blind coders rated the darkness of Obama's and Carson's skin tone. Multilevel modeling revealed that Democratic-leaning newspapers portrayed both Obama and Carson as lighter than Republican-leaning newspapers. Findings did not support a partisan ingroup bias. We conclude that Black politicians of either party are subject to a skin tone bias, where Republican-leaning newspapers portray them with darker skin tones, regardless of whether they are a Democrat or a Republican.

中文翻译：

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肤色偏见和美国总统职位：报纸照片中黑人现任和黑人候选人的形象

在不同文化中，较深的肤色与较低的社会地位有关。我们建议黑人政客在美国报纸上受到肤色偏见的影响，敌对偏见导致他们被描绘成更黑的皮肤。我们假设这种偏见是消极种族态度的函数。我们将此与内群体偏见假设进行对比，根据该假设，游击队诋毁另一方的黑人政治家，而不是他们自己的一方。本研究评估了美国报纸上对民主党总统巴拉克奥巴马和共和党人本卡森博士的肤色偏见。我们收集了奥巴马总统在其第一个任期内（n = 3781 来自 34 家报纸）以及卡森博士在 2015-2016 年总统竞选期间（n= 1049 份来自 53 份报纸）来自支持民主党或共和党总统候选人的高发行量报纸。盲人编码员评价奥巴马和卡森肤色的黑暗度。多层次模型显示，民主党倾向的报纸将奥巴马和卡森描绘成比共和党倾向的报纸更轻。调查结果不支持党派内群体偏见。我们得出的结论是，任何一方的黑人政治家都受到肤色偏见的影响，无论他们是民主党人还是共和党人，偏向共和党的报纸都以较深的肤色描绘他们。