Specifically, Roth is trying to understand how others view individuals who change their racial identity after completing an at-home DNA test. Backed by a grant from the National Institutes of Health, Roth will spend 18 months conducting an online survey experiment. Some 9,000 participants will view profiles of fictional individuals describing their experience taking a DNA test and their newly formed racial identities stemming from those test results. These fictional profiles will appear in various contexts, for example in a college application or to join a cultural group or donate bone marrow. The individuals’ race and profile photo will also vary.
“We have a sense of which influences are likely to be most significant,” she says. “By far the strongest influence so far is what the photograph looks like. People tend to put more emphasis on that than any of the other characteristics, including the genetic ancestry results.”