INTER-OBSERVER AGREEMENT AND THE EFFECTS OF ETHNICITY ON OBSERVATIONAL CODING OF AFFECT

Observational research has shown that ethnicity of coders can bias their coding of people of different ethnic origin. However, observational coding systems of affect assume that emotion is universal and can be reliably coded across culture. The current study examined whether the ethnicity of the coder interacts with the ethnicity of the observed participant to influence judgments of the participants' affect displays. Couples engaged in a conflict discussion and their affect displays were coded using the Specific Affect Coding System (SPAFF; Gottman, McCoy, Coan, & Collier, 1996). Although it was predicted that coders would show a positive bias towards “in-group” (ethnically matched) participants and a negative bias towards “out-group” (not ethnically matched) participants, result suggest that no such biases exist Rather, Caucasian coders coded more neutral affect for Caucasian couples than African American coders coded for Caucasian couples. This only significant difference between coders on judgments of positive or negative codes suggests that SPAFF is relatively robust against ethnic stereotyping.