CSUN Receives Grant To Study Perceptions About Multiracial People

NORTHRIDGE, CA -- Cal State Northridge psychology professors Debbie Ma and Justin Kantner have received a $350,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for a study that examines how Americans and others come to terms with a growing population of people who don’t have just one racial identity. Specifically, the researchers will study how an individual’s brain reacts when they are confronted with images of multiracial people.

The most recent census data shows that the number of multiracial Americans more than doubled in the past 10 years, and demographers expect that by the year 2050, one in every five Americans will identify as multiracial.

California State University, Northridge psychology professors Debbie Ma and Justin Kantner have received a $350,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for a study that examines how Americans and others come to terms with a growing population of people who don’t have just one racial identity. In particular, the pair will study how an individual’s brain reacts when they are confronted with images of multiracial people.

“We want to know how people process the faces of individuals who are multiracial,” Kantner said. “We, as humans, tend to think of so many things in terms of being either/or. Race is one of those things — you’re either Black or white, or brown or white, or Asian or white. When that sort of binary thinking is deeply embedded and you then meet a multiracial individual and they don’t mesh with your idea of either/or, there can be a sort of mental disconnect."

“What we hope to do is understand what happens to a person’s brain when that disconnect happens,” he said. “From there, we hope to explore related questions: Why are people so poor at identifying faces as multiracial? How often do people’s perceptions of you coordinate with your own racial identity, particularly if you are multiracial? Why are some people unable or unwilling to classify others as multiracial? And how do those misperceptions impact the mental and physical well-being of multiracial people?”

Those questions become increasingly important, Ma said, as the U.S. becomes increasingly more multiracial.

“We have a poor ability to differentiate among people who belong to racial categories that are not our own," Ma said. "As we become more and more multiracial, it becomes important for us to appreciate how our simple perceptions can impact how we deal with other people, and that the categories we put those people in may not apply in the way we think they do.”

Ma and Kantner will be using part of the grant to purchase an electroencephalography, or EEG, system so they can measure brain response when a subject see people of different races, including those with multiple racial identities.

“The data we collect will give us a foundation for understanding how people’s brains respond when they see multiracial people,” Ma said. “We will literally be able to see how long it takes a person’s brain to process the fact that someone is multiracial. In a sense, we can create a map of what happens in the brain when someone has to process faces that don’t fit their perception of what someone’s race should be.”