Research Shows Racial and Gender Bias in TV Character Perception, Study Finds

Hidden Figures: Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monae

Would you believe that in this day and age, it is still true that people still prefer white actors over minorities and even find them more believable in serious roles? Well, a recent study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign reveals that while brilliant characters are often central to movies and TV shows, those portrayed by women and people of color are frequently dismissed as unrealistic. This occurs even when these characters are based on real people and historical events.

Champaign communication professor Matea Mustafaj discovered that individuals who strongly held racial and gender stereotypes about intelligence were more likely to perceive stories featuring brilliant Black or female protagonists as unrealistic. For instance, they were more skeptical of the portrayal of the mathematicians who contributed to the U.S. space program in “Hidden Figures” compared to the depiction of Bobby Fischer in “Pawn Sacrifice.”

The participants viewed one of four video clips from American TV shows or movies that featured brilliant main characters and were asked whether they were typical of people with these abilities. None of the participants reported having seen the shows or movies used in the study.

Viewers who endorsed intelligence-related stereotypical beliefs rated white male characters as more typical of geniuses in the broader population than Black people of either sex or white women. Mustafaj and co-author University of Michigan communication and media professor Sonya Dal Cin reported the findings in a paper published in the journal Media Psychology.

“We found an association between intelligence-related stereotype endorsement and decreases in viewers’ perceived realism across three different social identities — Black women, Black men and white women — for which high-level intelligence is counter-stereotypical. In each of these cases, the relationship was mediated by viewers’ judgment that the character was atypical of geniuses in general,” Mustafaj said.

The study population included 1,000 people, 53% of whom were women. The group was more than 73% white, more than 9% Black, more than 6% Hispanic and included other races and ethnicities. All participants were from the U.S. and ranged in age from 19 to 77.

To assess viewers’ beliefs in stereotypes about intelligence, they were presented with photos of 16 different faces — four each of Black and white men and women — and were asked to indicate on surveys the extent to which each of the people could portray six different traits in a TV show. Two of the traits were related to intelligence — i.e., intelligent and logical — and the remaining four — assertive, friendly, hardworking and emotional — were not.

All the faces used in the study were in the perceived age range of 20 to 35 and slightly above average in attractiveness, the researchers wrote.

“When people view entertainment media with counter-stereotypical representations that conflict with their beliefs, they will sometimes find ways to discount that information and not incorporate it into their understanding of people in the world in the way that theory might suggest,” Mustafaj said.