At Racism Review, Jessie describes a fascinating study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology:

The findings reveal that whites subconsciously associate blacks with apes and are more likely to condone violence against black criminal suspects as a result of their broader inability to accept blacks as ‘fully human.’…And, in what I can only call a genius research design, they combine the lab studies of implicit bias with archival content-analysis research of the language used in newspaper accounts from criminal cases

To read more about the study’s nice mixed method design, see Jessie’s post, the original article and the authors’ lab website. Personally, I’ve been interested in the potential of briding sociological research and cognitive psychology for some time, and a 2005 article by Jennifer Eberhardt, one of the authors of this current study, called “Imaging Race” was key in piquing my interest. It’s about using new tools from neuroscience like fMRI to gain insight into how people think & feel about race. A fascinating read.