Who was Richard LaPiere and what did he study

1934 Chinese couple study (Richard LaPiere) ..

- The second part of the experiment focused on symbolic behavior.
- In this part of the study Lapiere mailed questionnaires to all of the establishments six months after the Chinese couple and him had visited them.

In 1931, a Stanford sociologist toured the country with two Chinese students to test a hypothesis: Do attitudes about racial discrimination differ from actions? In an illustrated feature story, graphic novelist Jonathan Fetter-Vorm, '05, explores Professor Richard LaPiere's study, which presented a discrepancy between white Americans' stated biases and their on-the-ground behaviors, and illuminated the limits of questionnaires in sociological research.

Click on each image to read the story.

Introduction This experiment was done by a psychologist named Richard LaPiere in 1934.

The orientations can be variously described: qualitative versus quantitative, subjective versus objective, observing and empathizing versus counting and measuring, inductive interpretavism versus deductive positivism. Richard LaPiere�s classic study of discrimination lends support to the qualitative-subjective-empathizing-interpretative orientation. Quantitative studies on discrimination reveal an image of the world that is very different from the image qualitative research offers us.