Effects of situational power on automatic racial prejudice

This study examined the influence of situational power on automatic racial prejudice. White females anticipated participating in either an interracial or same-race interaction in one of two roles: superior or subordinate. Their racial attitudes were measured via the Implicit Association Test (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). Results revealed that both the racial composition of the anticipated dyad and participants’ situational roles influenced automatic racial attitudes. Specifically, whites assigned to the high-power role of a superior of a black individual revealed more racial bias than whites assigned to the lower-power role of a subordinate. By contrast, situational power had no influence on the automatic bias of whites anticipating same-race interactions. These results reveal the manner in which situational power hierarchies serve to reinforce existing social stratification. Implications for diversity efforts and attitude change are discussed.     

Mimicry reduces racial prejudice

Humans are empathic animals. We automatically match other people's motor responses, allowing us to get “under the skin” of other people. Although this perception–action-coupling—a form of motor resonance—occurs spontaneously, this happens less readily with the outgroup (vs. the ingroup) and for those high (vs. low) in prejudice. Thus, prejudice diminishes our tendency to resonate with the outgroup. Here we suggest that the reverse is also possible—that resonating with the actions of an outgroup member can reduce prejudice. We predict, in other words, that explicitly mimicking the outgroup can reduce prejudice. Participants watched a 140-second video depicting actors repeatedly reaching for and drinking from a glass of water. They passively watched a video with Black actors; watched the video and mimicked the Black actors; or watched and mimicked a video with actors from their ingroup. Participants then completed the Affect Misattribution Procedure (Payne, Cheng, Govorun, & Stewart, 2005), a measure of implicit anti-Black prejudice, and an explicit symbolic racism measure. Results indicate that the outgroup-mimicry group had similar implicit preference for Blacks and Whites, unlike the other two groups, which preferred Whites over Blacks. The outgroup-mimicry group also reported less explicit racism towards Blacks than the ingroup-mimicry group, but no less than the ingroup-observation group. Mimicking specific outgroup members, therefore, reduces implicit, and possibly explicit, bias against the outgroup more generally.     

Cognitive costs of exposure to racial prejudice

This study examined how encountering racial prejudice affects cognitive functioning. We assessed performance on the Stroop task after subjects reviewed job files that suggested an evaluator had made nonprejudiced, ambiguously prejudiced, or blatantly prejudiced hiring recommendations. The cognitive impact of exposure to ambiguous versus blatant cues to prejudice depended on subjects' racial group. Black subjects experienced the greatest impairment when they saw ambiguous evidence of prejudice, whereas White subjects experienced the greatest impairment when they saw blatant evidence of prejudice. Given the often ambiguous nature of contemporary expressions of prejudice, these results have important implications for the performance of ethnic minorities across many domains.     

Effects of racial prejudice and race of target on aggression

Three studies were conducted to investigate the relationship between prejudice and physical aggression using the competitive reaction time paradigm. In Study 1, high and low prejudiced subjects competed against either a black or white opponent. The race of the opponent did not differentially affect the aggressive behavior of either high or low prejudiced subjects. In Study 2, high prejudiced subjects were confronted with a competitor who behaved in a nonaggressive fashion. Under these conditions, the high prejudiced subjects attacked the black target more than the white target. In Study 3, high prejudiced subjects competed against an opponent who communicated nonaggressive intentions. The subjects behaved in a nonaggressive manner toward both the black and the white target. It was proposed that prejudice facilitates indiscriminate aggression in the presence of a clear threat and selective aggression in the presence of ambiguous threat.     

Social tuning of automatic racial attitudes: the role of affiliative motivation

Consistent with the affiliative social tuning hypothesis, this study showed that the desire to get along with another person shifted participants' automatic attitudes toward the ostensible attitudes of that person. In Experiment 1, the automatic racial attitudes of women but not men emulated those of an experimenter displaying race-egalitarian attitudes or attitudes neutral with respect to race. Mediational analysis revealed that the gender difference in social tuning was mediated by liking for the experimenter. In Experiment 2, the likability of the experimenter was manipulated. Individuals who interacted with a likable experimenter exhibited social tuning more so than did those who interacted with a rude experimenter. These findings suggest that affiliative motives may elicit malleability of automatic attitudes independent of manipulations of social group exemplars.     

Reducing automatically activated racial prejudice through implicit evaluative conditioning

The authors report a set of experiments that use an implicit evaluative conditioning procedure to reduce automatically activated racial prejudice in White participants in a short period and with relatively few trials. Experiment 1 demonstrated that participants were unaware of the repeated conditioned stimulus-unconditioned stimulus (CS-US) pairings of Black-good and White-bad. In Experiment 2, the procedure was found to be effective in reducing prejudice as indicated by an evaluative priming measure of automatically activated racial attitudes. In Experiment 3, this reduction in prejudice was found to persist throughout a 2-day separation between the conditioning procedure and the administration of the dependent measure. The implications of the present findings for the persistence of automatically activated racial prejudice are discussed.     

Social power increases implicit prejudice

The effects of power on implicit and explicit attitudes towards racial groups were examined. In Study 1, participants who had power showed a stronger facilitation of positive words after exposure to White faces, and negative words after exposure to Black faces, compared to participants who did not have power. In Study 2, powerful participants, compared to controls and powerless participants, showed more positive affective responses to Chinese pictographs that followed White compared to Black faces. Power did, however, not affect explicit racial attitudes. In Study 3, powerful participants showed greater racial prejudice toward Arabs in an Implicit Association Test than did powerless participants. This effect was driven by the power of the perceiver rather than the power of the target. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Controlling racial prejudice: social-cognitive goals affect amygdala and stereotype activation

The malleability of stereotyping matters in social psychology and in society. Previous work indicates rapid amygdala and cognitive responses to racial out-groups, leading some researchers to view these responses as inevitable. In this study, the methods of social-cognitive neuroscience were used to investigate how social goals control prejudiced responses. Participants viewed photographs of unfamiliar Black and White faces, under each of three social goals: social categorization (by age), social individuation (vegetable preference), and simple visual inspection (detecting a dot). One study recorded brain activity in the amygdala using functional magnetic resonance imaging, and another measured cognitive activation of stereotypes by lexical priming. Neither response to photos of the racial out-group was inevitable; instead, both responses depended on perceivers' current social-cognitive goal.     

Multisensory stimulation with other-race faces and the reduction of racial prejudice

This study investigated whether multisensory stimulation with other-race faces can reduce racial prejudice. In three experiments, the faces of Caucasian observers were stroked with a cotton bud while they watched a black face being stroked in synchrony on a computer screen. This was compared with a neutral condition, in which no tactile stimulation was administered (Experiment 1 and 2), and with a condition in which observers’ faces were stroked in asynchrony with the onscreen face (Experiment 3). In all experiments, observers experienced an enfacement illusion after synchronous stimulation, whereby they reported to embody the other-race face. However, this effect did not produce concurrent changes in implicit or explicit racial prejudice. This outcome contrasts with other procedures for the reduction of self-other differences that decrease racial prejudice, such as behavioural mimicry and intergroup contact. We speculate that enfacement is less effective for such prejudice reduction because it does not encourage perspective-taking.     

Saying no to negativity: The effects of context and motivation to control prejudice on automatic evaluative responses

The current research explored the interaction of context and motivation to control prejudice reactions (MCPR) on automatic evaluative responses toward individuals of different races. Three studies incorporated contextual backgrounds into an evaluative priming procedure. Across all three studies, White participants low in MCPR demonstrated automatic ingroup biases when threatening contexts were presented. However, in contexts where targets could be construed as threatening, Whites high in MCPR showed automatic outgroup biases in favor of Blacks over Whites. Importantly, this outgroup bias was driven by an automatic inhibition of negative responses toward Blacks. The results indicate that even at the automatic level, people high in motivation to control prejudice can inhibit negative responses toward Blacks in contexts that have cues associated with prejudice.     

The relationship between parental racial attitudes and children’s implicit prejudice

Although many researchers assume that implicit racial attitudes develop via exposure to prejudicial socializing agents (e.g., parents, peers, and the media) starting in childhood, there is a dearth of research on implicit attitudes in children. This study looks at the effect of one socializing agent—parents—on children’s or implicit racial prejudice. Specifically, we examine Allport’s (1954) contention that children’s identification with their parents moderates the intergenerational transmission of prejudice. Fourth- and fifth-grade children completed measures of implicit and explicit pro-White/anti-Black prejudice, as well as a survey assessing child-parent identification. Parents completed a survey that measured their attitudes toward Blacks. As hypothesized, we found greater correspondence between parents’ prejudice and children’s prejudice among children who were highly identified with their parents than less identified children.     

Intergroup contact buffers against the intergenerational transmission of authoritarianism and racial prejudice

The present study focused on the buffering role of positive intergroup contact in the intergenerational transmission of authoritarianism and racial prejudice in a sample of adolescents and one of their parents. In accordance with our expectations, adolescents’ intergroup contact experiences moderated the mediated relationships between parental authoritarianism and adolescents’ prejudice, both via adolescents’ authoritarianism and via parental prejudice. These relationships were stronger among adolescents with lower, rather than higher, levels of intergroup contact. We conclude that intergroup contact buffers the indirect relationship between parents’ authoritarianism and adolescents’ racial prejudice and therefore constitutes a promising means of reducing the intergenerational transmission of prejudice.     

On the malleability of automatic attitudes: combating automatic prejudice with images of admired and disliked individuals.

Two experiments examined whether exposure to pictures of admired and disliked exemplars can reduce automatic preference for White over Black Americans and younger over older people. In Experiment 1, participants were exposed to either admired Black and disliked White individuals, disliked Black and admired White individuals, or nonracial exemplars. Immediately after exemplar exposure and 24 hr later, they completed an Implicit Association Test that assessed automatic racial attitudes and 2 explicit attitude measures. Results revealed that exposure to admired Black and disliked White exemplars significantly weakened automatic pro-White attitudes for 24 hr beyond the treatment but did not affect explicit racial attitudes. Experiment 2 provided a replication using automatic age-related attitudes. Together, these studies provide a strategy that attempts to change the social context and, through it, to reduce automatic prejudice and preference.     

"Unlearning" automatic biases: the malleability of implicit prejudice and stereotypes.

The present research suggests that automatic and controlled intergroup biases can be modified through diversity education. In 2 experiments, students enrolled in a prejudice and conflict seminar showed significantly reduced implicit and explicit anti-Black biases, compared with control students. The authors explored correlates of prejudice and stereotype reduction. In each experiment, seminar students' implicit and explicit change scores positively covaried with factors suggestive of affective and cognitive processes, respectively. The findings show the malleability of implicit prejudice and stereotypes and suggest that these may effectively be changed through affective processes.     

Perspective taking combats automatic expressions of racial bias

Five experiments investigated the hypothesis that perspective taking--actively contemplating others' psychological experiences--attenuates automatic expressions of racial bias. Across the first 3 experiments, participants who adopted the perspective of a Black target in an initial context subsequently exhibited more positive automatic interracial evaluations, with changes in automatic evaluations mediating the effect of perspective taking on more deliberate interracial evaluations. Furthermore, unlike other bias-reduction strategies, the interracial positivity resulting from perspective taking was accompanied by increased salience of racial inequalities (Experiment 3). Perspective taking also produced stronger approach-oriented action tendencies toward Blacks (but not Whites; Experiment 4). A final experiment revealed that face-to-face interactions with perspective takers were rated more positively by Black interaction partners than were interactions with nonperspective takers--a relationship that was mediated by perspective takers' increased approach-oriented nonverbal behaviors (as rated by objective, third-party observers). These findings indicate that perspective taking can combat automatic expressions of racial biases without simultaneously decreasing sensitivity to ongoing racial disparities.     

Classical and modern racial prejudice: a study of attitudes toward immigrants in Sweden

In two studies we develop and validate a Classical — overt or direct — and a Modern — covert or subtle — Racial Prejudice Scale, concerning attitudes toward immigrants, for a Swedish (Scandinavian) context. Further, we examine whether these two forms of prejudice are distinguishable. Confirmatory factor analyses showed that, although highly correlated, classical and modern racial prejudice are distinguishable. This conclusion was also supported by various construct validations. The findings are discussed in relation to other studies that compare the content and structure of modern and classical racism. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Social desirability of subtle and blatant prejudice scales

The present paper analyzes the relation between the measurement of subtle and blatant prejudice proposed by Pettigrew and Meertens in 1995 and the tendency to give socially desirable responses. It also tests whether items that measure subtle prejudice are judged as more socially desirable than those that measure blatant prejudice. Data were obtained from two groups, one of 497 Italian high school students and one of 77 university students. In the first case, the analysis concerns the relation between the prejudice scores and scores on a shortened form of Marlowe and Crowne's Social Desirability Scale. In the second case, we analyzed the social desirability judgments expressed on single items of the Petrigrew and Meertens scales. Analyses indicate that (1) neither Subtle nor Blatant Prejudice scores correlate with the tendency to give socially desirable responses and (2) when the items of the two prejudice scales are placed in order on the social desirability continuum, with very few exceptions the Blatant Prejudice items are situated at the not socially acceptable pole and Subtle Prejudice items at the socially acceptable pole.