Why do so many African women lighten their skin?

In Nigeria, 77% of women use skin-lightening products — a much higher rate than other parts of the world AFP via Getty Images In certain African countries, more than 50% of women regularly use skin-lightening products. In South Africa, this rate is 32% and, in Nigeria, it reaches 77% — a much higher number than in other regions of the planet. These treatments can have significant consequences. Skin-lightening pills and creams are sold freely and have been linked to serious skin discoloration, organ damage, neurological conditions and dangerous complications during surgery. But researchers still aren’t sure why women use these products. And this is an important question, as the answer to this question should guide the creation of public health solutions. An intuitive explanation is that women lighten their skin because they are dissatisfied with their color. But it’s surprisingly difficult to confirm this hypothesis. Most body image research relies on explicit measures—essentially, surveys that directly ask participants how they feel about their appearance. But my work as a mixed methods researcher and clinical psychologist indicates that this method has limits. Trending videos on g1 People don’t always answer these questions accurately. There are situations where preferring to have lighter skin may seem, or be considered, a self-deprecating confession. In these cases, strong social pressures define how people respond to this type of direct questioning. To solve the problem, my colleagues and I approached the issue another way. Skin lightening products have been linked to several medical conditions AFP via Getty Images In our recently published study, we looked at whether an implicit assessment, the Skin Implicit Association Test (Skin IAT), can reveal something that self-report scales might not capture. The exam is adapted from the Implicit Association Test by social psychologist Anthony Greenwald and his colleagues. It assesses how quickly participants associate images of light and dark skin tones with positive or negative words. The logic is simple. If someone automatically associates light skin with positive words and dark skin with negative terms, this association shows up in their response time, even if that person never says it directly in a survey. Developers of implicit measures point out that these tests eliminate self-report bias by determining automatic, instinctive associations rather than asking for expressed beliefs, behaviors, or evaluations of oneself. Implicit association tests can bypass the filter that shows what people are comfortable admitting. And they were also used to assess other implicit preferences, such as race, weight, religion and age. Our findings revealed a surprising imbalance: About 79% of participants demonstrated an automatic preference for lighter skin in the implicit test, while our study’s standard surveys identified less than a third of those surveyed. These conclusions are important because they highlight the fact that the forces leading to skin lightening across the African continent cannot be reduced to a simple psychological construct. Its roots lie in centuries of colonial history, in the global circulation of Eurocentric beauty ideals, in economic systems that link social capital to lighter skin, and in media environments that incessantly reinforce these hierarchies. A research project that addresses this complexity must be equally multidimensional, combining implicit and explicit measures with qualitative approaches that create spaces for women to articulate, in their own terms, how skin color influences their lives. Assessing unconscious responses Our study included a sample of 221 black, predominantly South African, women. This sample represented the largest share of participants for this online survey, aimed at black African women across the continent. We asked them to complete two self-assessments of satisfaction with their skin color, in addition to the Implicit Skin Association Test. To be able to participate in the study, participants needed to identify as black African women, be at least 18 years old and be willing to answer questions about their physical appearance. After the implicit test, 78.5% showed a preference for lighter skin. The two self-assessments identified much lower percentages (18.5% and 29.8%, respectively). The test result implied by our study (78.5%) was closer to the upper limit of skin lightening rates on the continent (77% in Nigeria). This imbalance in assessment is important. It may indicate that for a substantial number of black African women, skin color preference may operate below the conscious level. Or, perhaps, below the level they feel comfortable expressing. These are women who, in a survey, might respond that they are satisfied with their skin, but their automatic associations tell a different story. Skin-lightening products have been linked to several medical conditions AFP via Getty Images Better Research As researchers, we are not advocating abandoning self-assessments. They record issues such as conscious behaviors, values ​​and beliefs. Therefore, they remain indispensable for many researches. In fact, our findings indicate the need to use more than one method to investigate what participants really think and feel. Implicit assessments examine associations that may operate below the threshold of deliberate reflection. In-depth interviews, focus groups, and community-based methods can reveal a varied texture of experiences in a way that no scale, implicit or otherwise, can capture. Therefore, mixed methods are not a reconciliation of imperfect tools. They are the appropriate response to a phenomenon that is at once structural, cultural and deeply personal. With African countries facing the public health dimensions of a common but little understood practice, the research community has an obligation to do its best. This includes investing in assessment tools developed specifically for and in conjunction with Black African women. This means considering regional variety. And also take seriously the possibility that what women say about their bodies does not always coincide with their intimate feelings or unconscious experiences. * Oyenike Balogun is a professor of psychology at Bentley University, in the United States. This article was originally published on the academic news website The Conversation and is republished under a Creative Commons license.

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