Story highlights People saw black men as more threatening, deserving of force

Black men with 'blacker' features were seen as bigger

(CNN) When we look at black men, what is and what we see are often different things. Namely, we may see black men as bigger, stronger, and scarier than white men, even if they are the same size.

In a new body of research published by the American Psychological Association , 950 online participants from the US were asked to rate black and white men based on their weight, height, strength and build.

"We found that these estimates were consistently biased. Participants judged the black men to be larger, stronger and more muscular than the white men, even though they were actually the same size," said the study's lead author, John Paul Wilson, of Montclair State University.

The findings got even more ominous from there. Not only did participants distort the size of the men, they also identified the black men as, essentially, more of a threat deserving of force.

"Participants also believed that the black men were more capable of causing harm in a hypothetical altercation and, troublingly, that police would be more justified in using force to subdue them, even if the men were unarmed," Wilson said.

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