Lighter-skinned candidates preferred.

• Position: YOUR LIFE - Brief article

Government instability prompts both black and white Americans to show a preference for lighter- over darker-skinned political candidates, researchers at the University of Chicago (Ill.), Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J., and New York University have found. In addition, their findings, which appear in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, show that whites express a greater interest in voting for a lighter-skinned candidate than a darker-skinned candidate for an important political position, regardless of whether they think the government is stable or unstable. Alternatively, blacks express greater interest in voting for a darker-skinned candidate when they see the government as stable.

"Our results show that, when the system is seen as running smoothly, people engage in behaviors to enhance the social standing of their group, which explains preferences for a darker-skinned candidate among the study's black participants," says Chadly Stern, a doctoral candidate in NYU's Department of Psychology and the...