Skin tone‐based stereotyping with Asian targets: Exploring possible mechanisms

For cultural and historical reasons, skin tone bias has been an important factor in the construction of modern society. Nonetheless, the Chinese skin tone bias, as opposed to the traditional Western perception, has different roots and expressions. The appearance also needs to be taken into account. This research conducted a series of experiments and reviewed much of the relevant literature to explore the role of appearance as a factor in skin tone bias. The results show that appearance does have some influence on skin tone bias and reveal some specific perceptions of skin tone among Chinese people. These results will be discussed using theoretical tools.

Event Abstract Back to Event Processing western high- and low-ranking buildings by east asian participants: an event-related potential study Olga Kriukova1*, Thomas Grunwald2, Heiner Mühlmann3, Xuchu Weng4 and Axel Mecklinger1 1 Saarland University, Germany 2 Swiss Epilepsy Center, Switzerland 3 Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design, Germany 4 Hangzhou Normal University, China Western architectural system traditionally distinguishes between high and low-ranking buildings. Prior research (Oppenheim et al., 2010) showed that Western participants are sensitive to the high/low ranking-building distinction even without awareness. Specifically, event related potentials (ERPs), recorded in a visual object categorization task, showed modulation of the early negative and late positive components (ENP and LPC, respectively) – components, taken to reflect early and secondary categorization processes. This tentatively suggests facilitated visual categorization of high-ranking buildings, possibly due to their cultural prominence. Here we explored whether East Asian (Chinese) participants, who have only limited exposure to Western-style architecture, would show similar sensitivity to Western high/low-ranking building distinction. ERPs were recorded in a visual object categorization task in which participants had to discriminate between objects and buildings. Building-type manipulation was not known to participants. Preliminary analysis indicates an asymmetric pattern of results in that LPC, but not ENP was modulated by the architectural rank. This suggests that Asian participants are sensitive to Western architectural ranking on the level of secondary categorization that presumably involves explicit mnemonic processes, but not on the level of early categorization processes. Taken together, the results imply that processing of architectural ranking is influenced by the (culturally-determined) amount of exposure to a particular architectural style. Funding: Supported by German Research Foundation (IRTG 1475). Keywords: EEG, Perception Conference: XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI), Palma, Mallorca, Spain, 25 Sep - 29 Sep, 2011. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Poster Sessions: Neurophysiology of Sensation and Perception Citation: Kriukova O, Grunwald T, Mühlmann H, Weng X and Mecklinger A (2011). Processing western high- and low-ranking buildings by east asian participants: an event-related potential study. Conference Abstract: XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI). doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2011.207.00363 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 23 Nov 2011; Published Online: 28 Nov 2011. * Correspondence: Dr. Olga Kriukova, Saarland University, Saarland, Germany, olga.kriukova@googlemail.com Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Olga Kriukova Thomas Grunwald Heiner Mühlmann Xuchu Weng Axel Mecklinger Google Olga Kriukova Thomas Grunwald Heiner Mühlmann Xuchu Weng Axel Mecklinger Google Scholar Olga Kriukova Thomas Grunwald Heiner Mühlmann Xuchu Weng Axel Mecklinger PubMed Olga Kriukova Thomas Grunwald Heiner Mühlmann Xuchu Weng Axel Mecklinger Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

Skin tone bias among African Americans: Antecedents and consequences across the life span

Research on skin-tone bias has focused primarily on intraracial inequality with little attention to skin-tone inequality across ethnoracial groups. We engage the debate over the color line by considering the independent, simultaneous, and interactive impacts of skin tone and self-identified race on educational performance. Analyses of National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement (AHAA) data show significant skin-tone differences in grade point average (GPA) both across and within racial groups, with darker skinned tone individuals receiving significantly lower grades than their lighter skinned tone counterparts. Net of controls, skin-tone differences in GPA are essentially flat among African Americans but are notably stronger among other race/ethnic groups. These findings highlight the interplay between racial categorization and colorism by revealing the categorical disadvantage of racial stigma versus the more fluid colorism boundaries of nonblack groups.

Pulsatile blood oxygen saturation ( ) via pulse oximetry is a valuable clinical metric for assessing oxygen delivery. Individual anatomical features, including skin tone, may affect current optical pulse oximetry methods. We developed an optical pulse oximetry method based on dual-ratio (DR) measurements to suppress individual anatomical confounds on . We designed a DR-based finger pulse oximeter, hypothesizing that DR would suppress confounds from optical coupling and superficial tissue absorption. This method is tested using Monte Carlo simulations and in vivo experiments. Different melanosome volume fractions in the epidermis, a surrogate for skin tone, cause changes in the recovered on the order of 1% in simulation and in vivo. Different heterogeneous pulsatile hemodynamics cause greater changes on the order of 10% in simulations. recovered with DR measurements showed less variability than the traditional single-distance (SD) transmission method. For the models and methods considered here, measurements are strongly impacted by heterogeneous pulsatile hemodynamics. This variability may be larger than the skin tone bias, which is a known confound in measurements. The partial suppression of variability in the recovered by DR suggests the promise of DR for pulse oximetry.

Background: Artificial intelligence (AI)-based dermatology mobile applications are increasingly used for preliminary diagnosis of skin conditions. However, their diagnostic accuracy in populations with darker skin tones, such as those in India, remains poorly studied. This research aimed to assess and compare the accuracy of three AI-based dermatology apps against dermatologist consensus diagnoses in Indian patients presenting with common dermatoses. Methods: A prospective, cross-sectional study was conducted on 32 patients attending a dermatology outpatient clinic in Hyderabad, India. Each patient was clinically diagnosed by board-certified dermatologists and subsequently evaluated using three AI apps: Aysa, Skinner by Arboreal, and AI Dermatologist Skin Scanner. The diagnostic output from each app was compared to the dermatologist consensus. Accuracy was calculated for top diagnosis and top three diagnoses. Cohen’s kappa was used to assess agreement. Results: Aysa showed the highest top diagnosis accuracy (59.4%), followed by Skinner (53.1%) and AI Dermatologist (46.9%). Diagnostic agreement varied by condition, with higher accuracy observed for acne vulgaris and tinea corporis. Performance was poorest for pigmentary and inflammatory disorders such as vitiligo and psoriasis. Diagnostic accuracy declined with increasing Fitzpatrick skin type, indicating skin tone bias in the AI models. Cohen’s kappa indicated moderate agreement for Aysa (κ=0.43) and fair agreement for the other two apps. Conclusions: While AI dermatology apps show moderate accuracy for certain conditions, they remain inconsistent and biased toward lighter skin tones. These tools may serve as preliminary screening aids but cannot substitute clinical judgment. Enhanced training on diverse skin tones is necessary for equitable AI deployment.

The Influence of Colorism and Hair Texture Bias on the Professional and Social Lives of Black Women Student Affairs Professionals “If it was so honorable and glorious to be black, why was it the yellow-skinned people among us had so much prestige?” Zora Neal Hurston (1942) understood the privilege and oppression associated with colorism. “Colorism is the allocation of privilege and disadvantage according to the lightness or darkness of one’s skin” (Burke, 2008, p. 17). Colorism is the systematic preference for lighter skin tones over darker tones and stems from larger racial systems impacting education, income, marriageability, job placement, housing and social status for Black Americans (Hunter, 2005). The systematic privileging of light skin over dark skin advocates a hierarchy of skin tones, whereas lighter tones are positioned at the top, which impacts the roles Black Americans play within their own social group and in the larger US consciousness. Other physical characteristics, including facial features, weight, and hair texture also serve as gatekeepers; granting or denying access based on these features. In recent years, Black women have been encouraged to big chop and go natural, as to wear their natural hair curl pattern without chemicals and extensions. This is evidenced in the countless videos, memes, blogs, and vlogs via social media outlets, which may present challenges for Black women who wish to rid themselves of the mental enslavement Eurocentric beauty ideals have placed on their former crowns of glory, their hair, when entering professional arenas as well as social encounters. Incorporating Black hair politics allows for further exploration of the role aesthetics plays in the experiences of Black women socially and professionally. Skin tone bias has historical underpinnings but is still relevant in today’s society and is pervasive in the modern workplace, affecting Black Americans’ job mobility and professional experiences (Harrison, 2010), while simultaneously influencing the social lives of Black women. The purpose of the proposed study is to understand how colorism and hair texture bias influence the professional and social lives of Black women Student Affairs professionals

Studies have shown that individuals are better able to recognise the faces of people from their own race than the faces of people from other races. Although the so-called own-race effect has been generally regarded as an advantage in recognition memory, differences in the processing of the own-race versus other-race faces might also be found at the earlier stages of perceptual encoding. In this study, the perceptual basis of the own-race effect was investigated by generating a continuum of images by morphing an East Asian parent face with a Caucasian parent face. In a same/different discrimination task, East Asian and Caucasian participants judged whether the morph faces were physically identical to, or different from, their parent faces. The results revealed a significant race-of-participant by race-of-face interaction such that East Asian participants were better able to discriminate East Asian faces, whereas Caucasian participants were better able to discriminate Caucasian faces. These results indicate that an own-race advantage occurs at the encoding stage of face processing.

PurposeThe present study explored the young women's lived experiences of discrimination and othering based on skin tone in two rural localities of Uttarakhand , State of India. The authors used intersectionality as the theoretical lens for this study.Design/methodology/approachThe authors have adopted an interpretive phenomenological study in the conduct of this research. The authors interviewed twelve female participants in person using a semi-structured interview schedule. The data were analysed using the six-stage data analysis process of interpretive phenomenological analysis.FindingsThe study's findings underline the experiences of stigma, negative self-concept, marriage is a complex reality, media's influence and skin whitening is the first and last resort. Dark-skinned women experience stressful life events due to their skin tone and society's prejudice favouring white and fair skin tones. The experiences of bullying, social shame, guilt and low esteem were also vivid.Originality/valueThis study reveals women's exposure to negative experiences of skin-tone-based discrimination prevalent in Indian society. This is one of the first kinds of such study in India that captures the dark-hued women's recurrent phenomenon of discrimination in their daily lives. It further shows that skin-tone bias and discrimination are widely prevalent and practised despite the claims that Indian society is free from skin-tone biasedness and subsequent discrimination.

Honoring Asian diversity by collecting Asian subpopulation data in health research.

As a racial group, Asians are incredibly diverse; however, psychology research may not capture heterogeneity within this social category. Recent findings suggest that U.S. perceivers consider East Asian (e.g., Chinese, Japanese) Americans as more prototypically Asian American than South (e.g., Indian, Pakistani) or Southeast Asian Americans (e.g., Filipino, Vietnamese; Goh & McCue, 2021). We investigated whether artifacts of this cultural default are present in research conducted by U.S.-based psychologists. We also examined non-U.S.-based research to understand the potential limits of this prototype and its influence on research, globally. We expected to observe that most participants in psychology research are of East Asian descent and that most stimuli used to represent Asian identity actually depict East Asian (versus South and Southeast Asian) identity. To test our hypotheses, we conducted a literature search of psychology publications that mentioned “Asian” in the abstract. In line with our hypothesis, researchers were more likely to include East Asian participants and to present East Asian stimuli than to include or present South or Southeast Asian participants and stimuli in their research – results we observed in research conducted both within and outside of the U.S. We draw on intersectionality theory to inform recommendations for how researchers may work toward greater diversity and inclusion in their research.

Candida auris is an emerging multiresistant yeast against which amphotericin B (AMB) is still the first therapeutic choice in certain clinical situations (i.e., meningitis, endophthalmitis, and urinary tract infections). As data about the in vitro killing activity of AMB against C. auris clades are lacking, we determined MICs, minimum fungicidal concentrations (MFCs), and killing activity of AMB against 22 isolates representing the 4 major C. auris clades (South Asian n = 6; East Asian n = 4; South African n = 6, and South American n = 6). MIC values were ≤1 mg/L regardless of clades; MFC ranges were, 1–4 mg/L, 2–4 mg/L, 2 mg/L, and 2–8 mg/L for South Asian, East Asian, South African, and South American clades, respectively. AMB showed concentration-, clade-, and isolate-dependent killing activity. AMB was fungicidal at 1 mg/L against two of six, two of four, three of six, and one of six isolates from the South Asian, East Asian, South African, and South American clades, respectively. Widefield fluorescence microscopy showed cell number decreases at 1 mg/L AMB in cases of the South Asian, East Asian, and South African clades. These data draw attention to the weak killing activity of AMB against C. auris regardless of clades, even when MICs are low (≤1 mg/L). Thus, AMB efficacy is unpredictable in treatment of invasive C. auris infections.

Although hypothesized to be the root cause of the pulse oximetry disparities, skin tone and its use for improving medical therapies have yet to be extensively studied. Studies previously used self-reported race as a proxy variable for skin tone. However, this approach cannot account for skin tone variability within race groups and also risks the potential to be confounded by other non-biological factors when modeling data. Therefore, to better evaluate health disparities associated with pulse oximetry, this study aimed to create a unique baseline dataset that included skin tone and electronic health record (EHR) data. Patients admitted to Duke University Hospital were eligible if they had at least one pulse oximetry value recorded within 5 minutes before an arterial blood gas (ABG) value. We collected skin tone data at 16 different body locations using multiple devices, including administered visual scales, colorimetric, spectrophotometric, and photography via mobile phone cameras. All patients' data were linked in Duke's Protected Analytics Computational Environment (PACE), converted into a common data model, and then de-identified before publication in PhysioNet. Skin tone data were collected from 128 patients. We assessed 167 features per skin location on each patient. We also collected over 2000 images from mobile phones measured in the same controlled environment. Skin tone data are linked with patients' EHR data, such as laboratory data, vital sign recordings, and demographic information. Measuring different aspects of skin tone for each of the sixteen body locations and linking them with patients' EHR data could assist in the development of a more equitable AI model to combat disparities in healthcare associated with skin tone. A common data model format enables easy data federation with similar data from other sources, facilitating multicenter research on skin tone in healthcare. A prospectively collected EHR-linked skin tone measurements database in a common data model with emphasis on pulse oximetry disparities.

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