Ghanaian Students Relate Attractiveness, Success to Fair Skin

Newswise — The image of the blonde, blue-eyed woman as the epitome of beauty is no stranger to American culture. Indeed, many experts suggest that lighter-skinned Americans enjoy societal advantages over darker-skinned individuals because of culture-driven perceptions. The perceptions are believed to extend to such qualities as opportunity, power and acceptance.

But these cultural forces are not unique to America and, in fact, can be seen throughout the world, according to Jocelyn Mackey, an assistant professor of psychology at Southern Connecticut State University. Mackey recently completed two studies that examine such perceptions among students aged 8 to 18 in Ghana. Despite a population in which 98 percent of its citizens are black, the students consistently equated attractiveness, opportunity, power and acceptance with having fair skin.

The studies were launched last summer and presented to the National Association of School Psychologists in late March. Mackey's research has been accepted for presentation at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association to be held in August.

Mackey said that previous studies have shown that even among olive- and brown-skinned populations, such as in South America, Central America, Italy, the Caribbean, India and Asia, there seem to be cultural biases toward lighter-skinned individuals. But she said the results of these studies are perhaps even more of a concern because the Ghanaian population is almost exclusively black-skinned.

"Certainly, the results from this study speak to the impact that the social and cultural climate has on the self-esteem of the Ghanaian students," Mackey said. "But you also have to keep in mind that Accra is the capital city and its population has been more exposed than most of the country to Western culture and its ideals of beauty and success." She also suggested that Ghana's status as a former British colony (achieving its independence in 1957) may have contributed to the results, as well.

Mackey says the Western-based ideals are, indeed, global. "The perceptions are the result of learned behavior and beliefs due to social factors and opportunities, rather than simply a preference for a lighter skin tone," Mackey says. "People of color are largely aware of their innate beauty, but this recognition is tempered by the reality of how a person is perceived within their own group and by society as a whole. Many Ghanaians who I spoke with believe that lighter skin is associated with wealth and power, and then the other positive characteristics, such as attractiveness, flow from those perceptions."

Mackey distributed questionnaires to more than 200 students from two schools in Accra, the Ghanaian capital. One school was public, while the other was private. They were given a series of questions related to attractiveness, familiarity, wealth, nurturance, academic ability and social acceptance. The first study asked students to relate certain qualities to one of the five dolls " who were placed on a continuum from very light skinned to very dark skinned and were presented to the students. Generally, the lightest skin doll was associated most often with various positive characteristics.

The second study asked the same questions and gave the students a choice between only two dolls " the lightest-skinned doll and the darkest-skinned doll. Again, the students associated the lighter doll with the positive characteristics. The results of the second study were similar to those from studies designed by Kenneth and Mamie Clark during the 1940s in the United States. The Clarks were called upon as expert witnesses during the landmark 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education case, which led to the banning of segregation laws across the nation. Mackey said the Clarks' studies helped to show that the previous legal standard of "separate but equal" was, in effect, a contradiction because of the low self-esteem demonstrated by the African-American students at that time.

Mackey said that before the studies, she thought the darker-skinned dolls would have scored higher in the areas of nurturance, academic performance and familiarity, but that the lighter-skinned dolls would have scored higher in questions related to opportunity and economics. But almost across the board, the lighter-skinned dolls scored more highly.

A notable exception was with regard to the "smartest" dolls. In the second study, the darkest-skinned dolls were a close second to the lightest, but in the second study, the darker-skinned doll was considered smarter than the lighter-skinned doll. Yet, both portions of the study showed the white dolls are associated with the best chance of going to college and getting the best grades.

Age and gender were a factor in the studies with older students and males more likely than younger students and females to select the darker-skinned dolls, but all demographic groups generally favored the lighter-skinned dolls. Mackey also said that private school students tended to select the lighter-skinned dolls in slightly larger numbers than their public school counterparts in the second study.

"I have a tremendous amount of respect for Ghanaian culture and would love to go back to Ghana to do a follow-up study with students in the more rural areas of the country," Mackey said.