Reading Response 1

I thoroughly enjoyed this reading and loved how it related to psychology. I am absolutely fascinated by human behavior and the way in which the mind works. The article discussed a lot of very interesting topics but the one that stood out to me the most was false identification, impression management, and blue lies. The reason why false identification stood out to me is because it strongly relates to another psychological principle of the same race effect. In high school, we learned about this pertaining to a rape case in which a black man raped a white female. Due to the fact that African Americans are a minority group in the US, unfortunately, play into this psychological principle in which it is hard to decipher between two similar-looking black men. In the example, I learned in high school a white woman wrongfully convicted a black man or raping her. In the example they use in the text, they discuss the words hit vs. smashed to estimate speeds at which the cars were traveling. The ones who were asked what was the approximate speed of the car when it smashed into the other said that the speed at which they hit was faster than those who were asked what was the speed at which it hit? The reason why impression management stood out to me is because the example they used in the text related to implicit biases and combating them. When a black aide was in the room people said that blacks were not dumber than whites and that inter-racial marriage was most certainly acceptable. Whereas when there was a white aide in the room more people said blacks were dumber than whites and inter-racial marriage was not ok. Showing that when the black male was in the room they were trying to combat bias. The last principle that stood out to me was blue lies. Blue lies are told by people in an attempt to help themselves or their group to be seen by others as to how they see themselves.