Most people who meet a new acquaintance, or merely pass someone on the street, need only a glance to categorize that person as a particular race. But, sociologist Asia Friedman wondered, what can we learn about that automatic visual processing from people who are unable to see? “The visual process of assigning race is instantaneous, and it’s an example of automatic thinking — it happens below the level of awareness,” Friedman said. “With blind people, the process is much slower as they piece together information about a person over time. Their thinking is deliberative rather than automatic, and even after they’ve categorized someone by race, they’re often not certain that they’re correct.”
Friedman’s study breaks new ground, with little previous research done on the subject. An earlier study found that blind people think of race in visual terms, even though they rely on senses other than sight. But Friedman’s subjects generally did not think of race visually. Additionally, unlike the earlier study, which included only people who were born blind, Friedman’s study considered individuals who were born without sight as well as people who became blind later in life. Friedman found some differences between those groups.