Direct-to-Consumer Racial Admixture Tests and Beliefs About Essential Racial Differences
Abstract
Although at first relatively disinterested in race, modern genomic research has increasingly turned attention to racial variations. We examine a prominent example of this focus—direct-to-consumer racial admixture tests—and ask how information about the methods and results of these tests in news media may affect beliefs in racial differences. The reification hypothesis proposes that by emphasizing a genetic basis for race, thereby reifying race as a biological reality, the tests increase beliefs that whites and blacks are essentially different. The challenge hypothesis suggests that by describing differences between racial groups as continua rather than sharp demarcations, the results produced by admixture tests break down racial categories and reduce beliefs in racial differences. A nationally representative survey experiment (N = 526) provided clear support for the reification hypothesis. The results suggest that an unintended consequence of the genomic revolution may be to reinvigorate age-old beliefs in essential racial differences.
Get full access to this article
View all access and purchase options for this article.
References
Allport Gordon W. 1954. The Nature of Prejudice. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
Angier Natalie. 2000. “Do Races Differ? Not Really, Genes Show.” New York Times, August 22, Section F, Column 1, p. 1.
Bar-Anan Yoav, Nosek Brian A. 2012. “A Comparative Investigation of Seven Implicit Measures of Social Cognition.” Retrieved June 3, 2012 (http://ssrn.com/abstract=2074556 or https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2074556).
Bastian B., Haslam N. 2006. “Psychological Essentialism and Stereotype Endorsement.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 42:228–35.
Bolnick Deborah A., Fullwiley Duana, Duster Troy, Cooper Richard S., Fujimura Joan H., Kahn Jonathan, Kaufman Jay S., Marks Jonathan, Morning Ann, Nelson Alondra, Ossorio Pilar, Reardon Jenny, Reverby Susan M., TallBear Kimberly. 2007 “The Science and Business of Genetic Ancestry Testing.” Science 318:399–400.
Brewer Marilynn B., Brown Rupert J. 1998. “Intergroup Relations.” Pp. 554–94 in The Handbook of Social Psychology. 4th ed., Vol. 2, edited by Gilbert D. T., Fiske S. T., Lindzey G. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Cohen Jacob. 1988. Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences. 2nd ed. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Collins Francis. 2001. “Introductory Remarks.” Presented at A Decade of ELSI Research,” January 16–18, Bethesda, MD.
Condit Celeste M., Bates B. 2005. “How Lay People Respond to Messages about Genetics, Health and Race.” Clinical Genetics 68:97–105.
Condit Celeste M., Parrott R. L., Bates B. R., Beyan J., Achter P. J. 2004. “Exploration of the Impact of Messages about Genes and Race on Lay Attitudes.” Clinical Genetics 66:402–408.
Daly Emma. 2005. “DNA Tells Students They Aren’t Who They Thought.” New York Times, April 13, Section B, Column 3, p. 8.
DeBell Matthew, Krosnick Jon A., Lupia Arthur. 2010. Methodology Report and User’s Guide for the 2008–2009 ANES Panel Study. Palo Alto, CA, and Ann Arbor, MI: Stanford University and the University of Michigan.
Duster Troy. 2003. Backdoor to Eugenics. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge.
Duster Troy. 2006. “The Molecular Reinscription of Race: Unanticipated Issues in Biotechnology and Forensic Science.” Patterns of Prejudice 40:427–41.
Fanon Frantz. 1967. Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove Press.
Feagin Joe. 2001. Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, and Future Reparations. New York: Routledge.
Fiske Susan T., Taylor S. E. 2008. Social Cognition: From Brains to Culture. New York: McGraw Hill.
Fujimura Joan H., Duster Troy, Rajagopalan Ramya. 2009. “Introduction: Race, Genetics, and Disease: Questions of Evidence, Matters of Consequence,” Social Studies of Science 38:643–56.
Fullwiley Duana. 2007. “The Molecularization of Race: Institutionalizing Human Difference in Pharmacogenetics Practice.” Science as Culture 16:1–30.
Gates Henry Louis. 2010. “Faces of America.” Public Broadcasting System.
Greenwald A. G., McGhee D. E., Schwartz J. L. K. 1998. “Measuring Individual Differences in Implicit Cognition: The Implicit Association Test.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74:1464–80.
Henig Robin M. 2004. “The Genome in Black and White (and Gray).” New York Times, October 10, Section 6, Column 1, p. 47.
Hoffman Curt, Hurst Nancy. 1990. “Gender Stereotypes: Perception or Rationalization?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 58:197–208.
The International HapMap Consortium. 2003. “The International HapMap Project.” Nature 426:789–96.
Keller J. 2005. “In Genes We Trust: The Biological Component of Psychological Essentialism and Its Relationship to Mechanisms of Motivated Social Cognition.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88:686–702.
Kluegel James R. 1990. “Trends in Whites’ Explanations of the Black-White Gap in Socioeconomic Status, 1977–1989.” American Sociological Review 55:512–25.
Leroi Armand M. 2005. “A Family Tree in Every Gene.” New York Times, March 14, Section A, Column 1, p. 21.
Lindee M. Susan. 2003. Review of DNA: The Secret of Life by James D. Watson, with Andrew Berry. New York: Knopf. Grain. Retrieved March 17, 2014 (http://www.grain.org/article/entries/426-dna-the-secret-of-life-by-james-d-watson-with-andrew-berry-new-york-knopf-2003).
Link Bruce G., Phelan Jo C. 2001. “Conceptualizing Stigma.” Annual Review of Sociology 27:363–85.
Lippman A. 1992. “Led (Astray) by Genetic Maps: The Cartography of the Human Genome and Health Care.” Social Science and Medicine 35:1469–76.
Martin Carol Lynn, Parker Sandra. 1995. “Folk Theories about Sex and Race Differences.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 21:45–57.
Massey Douglas, Denton Nancy. 1998. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Nelkin D., Lindee M. S. 1995. The DNA Mystique: The Gene as a Cultural Icon. New York: W.H. Freeman & Company.
Nelson Alondra. 2008. “Bio Science: Genetic Genealogy Testing and the Pursuit of African Ancestry.” Social Studies of Science 38:759–83.
Nelson Alondra. 2010. “Henry Louis Gates’s Extended Family.” Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved March 17, 2014 (http://chronicle.com/article/Henry-Louis-Gatess-Extended/64192/).
Office of International information Programs, U.S. Department of State. 2000. Transcript: White House Briefing on Genome Map. Retrieved June 26, 2014 (http://usinfo.state.gov).
Oliver Melvin L., Shapiro Thomas M. 2006. Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality, Tenth Anniversary Edition. New York: Routledge.
Omi Michael, Winant Howard. 1994. Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge.
Payne B. Keith, Cheng Clara Michelle, Govorun Alice, Stewart Brandon D. 2005. “An Inkblot for Attitudes: Affect Misattribution as Implicit Measurement.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 89:277–93.
Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. 2013. (www.people-press-org/2012/27/in-changing-news-landscape-even-television-is-vulnerable/) accessed January 6, 2013.
Phelan Jo C., Link Bruce G., Feldman Naumi M. 2013. “The Genomic Revolution and Beliefs about Essential Racial Differences: A Backdoor to Eugenics?” American Sociological Review 78:167–91.
Rothbart M., Taylor M. 1992. “Category Labels and Social Reality: Do We View Social Categories as Natural Kinds?” Pp. 13–36 in Language, Interaction and Social Cognition, edited by Semin G. R., Fiedler K. London: Sage.
Royal Charmaine D., Novembre John, Fullerton Stephanie M., Goldstein David B., Long Jeffrey C., Barnshad Michael J., Clark Andrew G. 2010. “Inferring Genetic Ancestry: Opportunities, Challenges, and Implications.” American Journal of Human Genetics 86:661–73.
Tajfel H., Turner J. C. 1986. “The Social Identity Theory of Intergroup Behavior.” Pp. 7–24 in Psychology of Intergroup Relations, edited by Worchel S., Austin W. G. Chicago: Nelson-Hall.
Telles E. E. 2004. Race in Another America: The Significance of Skin Color in Brazil. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Wade Nicholas. 2002. “For Sale: A DNA Test to Measure Racial Mix.” New York Times, October 1, 2002, Section F, Column 5, p. 4.
Wade Nicholas. 2004. “Articles Highlight Different Views on Genetic Basis of Race.” New York Times, October 27, Section A, Column 1, p. 13.
Williams Melissa J., Eberhardt Jennifer L. 2008. “Biological Conceptions of Race and the Motivation to Cross Racial Boundaries.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 94:1033–47.
Biographies
Jo C. Phelan is a professor of sociomedical sciences in the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Her research focuses on social conditions as fundamental causes of inequalities in health and mortality; stigma, prejudice, and discrimination, especially with respect to mental illness; and the impact of the genomic revolution on stigma and racial attitudes. She is particularly interested in the interplay between structural conditions and social psychological processes in the creation and reproduction of inequalities.
Bruce G. Link is a professor of epidemiology and sociomedical sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia University and a research scientist at New York State Psychiatric Institute. His interests include the nature and consequences of stigma for people with mental illnesses, the connection between mental illnesses and violent behaviors, and explanations for associations between social conditions and morbidity and mortality.
Sarah Zelner is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. She has an MPH from Columbia University and a BA from Bryn Mawr College. Her research interests are in urban sociology and sociology of culture. Her dissertation is an ethnographic study of processes of integration in a diverse urban neighborhood.
Lawrence H. Yang is an associate professor of epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. His research focuses on several areas of psychiatric epidemiology. This includes theoretical and empirical work on how culture (via the “what matters most approach”) is conceputalized in relation to stigma and mental illness, in particular within Chinese groups. He currently has an NIMH R01 grant to examine the neurocognitive and social cognitive underpinnings of the new designation of a “high risk for psychosis.”
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
Cite article
Cite article
Cite article
OR
Download to reference manager
If you have citation software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice
Information, rights and permissions
Information
Published In
Article first published online: August 1, 2014
Issue published: September 2014
Keywords
PubMed: 25870464
Authors
Metrics and citations
Metrics
Journals metrics
This article was published in Social Psychology Quarterly.
View All Journal MetricsArticle usage*
Total views and downloads: 3797
*Article usage tracking started in December 2016
Altmetric
See the impact this article is making through the number of times it’s been read, and the Altmetric Score.
Learn more about the Altmetric Scores
Articles citing this one
Receive email alerts when this article is cited
Web of Science: 31 view articles Opens in new tab
Crossref: 33
- Motivations for Direct-to-Consumer Genetic Testing: Understanding Interpretations of Ancestry Results
- DNA Identities: Narrative and Authority in Genetic Ancestry Performance on YouTube
- Genetic Options and Constraints: A Randomized Controlled Trial on How Genetic Ancestry Tests Affect Ethnic and Racial Identities
- Scientific supremacy: How do genetic narratives relate to racism?
- Exposing the hazards of teaching 19th century genetic science
- Conceptualizations of Race: Essentialism and Constructivism
- Linking race and genes: racial conceptualization among genetic ancestry test-takers
- DNA Ancestry Testing and Racial Discourse in Higher Education: How the (Re)Biologization of Race (Un)Settles Monoracialism for Graduate Students
- Genetic technologies and the interplay between public desire, commercial interests, and regulatory powers
- Navigating narratives of genetic categorization at the frayed edges of identity
- View More
Figures and tables
Figures & Media
Tables
View Options
Access options
If you have access to journal content via a personal subscription, university, library, employer or society, select from the options below:
I am signed in as:
View my profileSign out
I can access personal subscriptions, purchases, paired institutional access and free tools such as favourite journals, email alerts and saved searches.
loading institutional access options
ASA members can access this journal content using society membership credentials.
ASA members can access this journal content using society membership credentials.
Alternatively, view purchase options below:
Purchase 24 hour online access to view and download content.
Access journal content via a DeepDyve subscription or find out more about this option.
