Do you have good hair bias? That’s the question the folks over at SheaMoisture and Perception Institute claim to be able to answer in a simple quiz.
With the natural hair craze continuing to boom, the natural beauty company and consortium of researchers, advocates, and strategists decided to share how people really feel about textured hair that naturally grows out of individuals scalps by surveying more than 4,000 individuals (both men and women), including 688 naturalistas. Crazy to think some are ashamed or biased towards what God gave them, right? But that’s another topic for another day.
Dubbed the ‘Good Hair’ Study: Explicit and Implicit Attitudes Toward Black Women’s Hair, the companies claimed that the study they conducted would be able to determine whether or not someone has a subconscious bias for or against natural hair. They also made history with groundbreaking technology, as the study implemented the first-ever Hair Implicit Association Test using a series of images and word associations to gauge subconscious responses to natural hair.
Unfortunately but not unexpected, regardless of race, the majority of individuals that participated in the study were found to have negative bias towards natural hair. Some of the key findings ranged from “Black women who consider themselves to be naturalistas have more positive attitudes toward textured hair than all women, including other black women” to “Millennial naturalistas had the most positive perception than any other group in the study,” and “White women showed explicit bias, rating textured hair as less beautiful and less professional.”
While the data skews more negative than positive, SheaMoisture proclaimed that they see the findings of this study to be an opportunity to create dialogue for change.
“The report finds that hair bias can be overridden through communities like [SheaMoisture], where there’s inclusivity of men and women with all different hair textures learning, empowering, and communicating with one another,” the brand shared on social media.
Want to see how you rank? Take the 10-minute test yourself s.
