The invisible man: A replication study investigating whether interpersonal goals moderate White women’s inattentional blindness to African American men

Abstract

Anti-Black racism in America renders Black people both invisible and hypervisible, at times. Here, we draw on previous research on inattentional blindness, a phenomenon whereby people fail to perceive something or someone (e.g., a person walking about) in their environment when attending to another feature of their environment (e.g., other people playing a ball game). We sought to replicate past work examining the conditions under which heterosexual White women fail to perceive a Black man walking through a complex scene. Specifically, we investigated whether selective inattention to a task-irrelevant person walking through a scene of two teams passing basketballs may depend on two factors: (a) the race of the person walking through the scene (Black vs. White), and (b) the interpersonal goal of the viewer (searching for a coworker, neighbor, friend, romantic partner, or a control condition)—hence the reason we recruited heterosexual White women participants. Consistent with the original work, across three studies, we found a main effect of target race such that heterosexual White women participants were more likely to notice the White (vs. Black) man walking through the ball-passing scene. Inconsistent with the original work, we did not find that this effect was moderated by the interpersonal goal condition. We discuss the implications of the current findings and future directions.