KZBlog

In a study by MediaCurves, Americans were asked to judge a women’s personality based on a picture. The trick was that all participants were given a picture of the same woman, but 50% of the time she was wearing a headscarf and 50% of the time she had her hair down and was wearing an open-collar shirt. Guess what?

There’s a nice nice summary on MonkeyCage:

1) The covered woman was perceived as more “traditional” and, in personality terms, less “warm.” She is also described as living a more insular life…The covered woman was perceived as wealthier…Slightly more considered the covered woman “beautiful” (27%) than did the uncovered woman (16%)…The vast majority of respondents thought the uncovered woman was “an American” (82%). The vast majority of subjects thought the covered woman was “a Middle-Eastern person” (78%) and also Muslim (87%)….While 89% said that they would like the uncovered woman as their next-door neighbor or in their neighborhood, only 62% said that about the covered woman. One-fifth (19%) actually said they wanted her to live “outside of the US.”

It amuses me because while a lot of this is predictable, and accurate for me as well–If I see a woman in a headscarf I will tend to assume she is Muslim, religious, traditional, and therefore more insular–I also had the opportunity once to be in a mentoring position to some traditionally Muslim children and for several months after that, if I saw a headscarf, I became instantly nurtuing and protective. Even of total strangers on the street. Some sort of Pavlovian response, I suppose.