Women with headscarf get less help

A man carelessly throws a coffee Cup on the platform. A young woman waiting for the train, asking him for his garbage pick up. Then your phone rings. When she answers, she drops a bag of oranges out of Hand.

This scene is followed by stations of the actor hundreds of times in German – in the order of science, researchers wanted to find out, what is the role of the appearance of the woman. A fair-skinned woman gets more support than a woman whose appearance suggests a migration background and wearing a hijab – a kind of head cloth?

More than 7000 Participants

The answer is: Yes, a little more often. The apparently German got in 84 percent of cases, the help of, the woman with hijab in 73 percent of the cases, as the researchers in the “Proceedings” (PNAS) reports the US national Academy of Sciences. The Experiment took place in around 30 railway stations in North Rhine-Westphalia, Saxony and Brandenburg. The researchers observed in a good three weeks between July and August of 2018, a total of 1614 of such scenes. More than 7,000 pedestrians were involved in the scientific investigation, without even knowing it.

The man was in the played scene, always light-skinned. The woman was the origin of either a light-skinned, apparently German, or had a Turkish, Egyptian, Syrian, or Kurdish.

To find out which factors of discrimination still play a role, changes in the researchers of the scenes. The woman had warned the man about the discarded Cup, she got generally less support. In the case of a white German in 73 percent of the cases, in the case of a woman with a headscarf in 60 percent of cases.

The same behavior for the woman with hijab will always be less support. However, it was also for the woman with hijab have a positive effect, if you had previously rejected the husband: she was then helped in, about as often as the pale-skinned woman, the garbage on the platform was apparently no matter.

“We have found that prejudices are more pronounced towards Muslims and not through exemplary behavior such as Stopping to pick up trash can be overcome,” said Nicholas Sambanis of the University of Pennsylvania, lead author of the study. For the Experiment they had been selected specifically Germany, because people in this country as being particularly orderly.

“There are symbols that indicate foreignness”

Another result of the study: Wore the actress with a migration background, no scarf, inconspicuous clothing, and a cross or any religious Symbol, got you in the cut are just as likely to help as the fair-skinned woman. The headscarf and the associated Religion when dealing with immigrants, concluded a more important role than the appearance, conclude the researchers.

“We found no indication of ethnic discrimination per se”, they write in the study, with a view to your own Experiment. However, they asked passers-by whether they had helped the woman with hijab in fact, because of their visible adherence to Islam rare. Or whether other factors played a role, for example, that it was because of your headscarf, a lack of integration will.

“There are certain symbols that indicate foreignness,” says the social psychologist Ulrich Wagner of the University of Marburg, who was not involved in the investigation. “And I would agree that this is at the Moment in Germany, in fact, obvious Muslim affiliation.”

According to Wagner, it always comes back, and in very many societies, to the exclusion of people belonging to certain groups. Which group would be just excluded, depends on the political and social circumstances.