How terrorism news reports increase prejudice against outgroups: A terror management account

Three studies tested predictions derived from terror management theory (TMT) about the effects of terrorism news on prejudice. Exposure to terrorism news should confront receivers with thoughts about their own death, which, in turn, should increase prejudice toward outgroup members. Non-Muslim (Studies 1-3) and Muslim (Study 3) participants were exposed to news about either Islamic terrorist acts or to control news. When Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered in Amsterdam by an Islamic extremist during data collection of Study 1, this event was included as a naturally occurring factor in the design. Consistent with TMT, terrorism news and Van Gogh’s murder increased death-related thoughts. Death-related thoughts, in turn, increased prejudiced attitudes toward outgroup members, especially when participants had low self-esteem, and when terrorism was psychologically close. Terrorism news may inadvertently increase prejudiced attitudes towards outgroups when it reminds viewers of their own mortality.     

When internalization leads to automatization: The role of self-determination in automatic stereotype suppression and implicit prejudice regulation

Recent evidence suggests that self-determined prejudice regulation is negatively related to both self-reported prejudice and automatic racial bias. However, the social-cognitive processes involved in this association have not yet been examined. Thus, the current project sought to test the ‘internalization-automatization hypothesis’, that is, to assess the extent to which prejudice regulation is automatic for those high and low in self-determined motivation to regulate prejudice. To this end, two different experimental paradigms were used. In Experiment 1 (N = 84), differences in the automatic activation and application of stereotypes were assessed for those high and low in self-determined prejudice regulation. As expected, both types of prejudice regulators showed similar stereotype activation. However, only self-determined individuals inhibited the application of stereotypes following a prime. Experiment 2 (N = 134), assessed the impact of self-regulatory depletion on the regulation of implicit prejudice. As anticipated, for the self-determined regulators, prejudice regulation did not vary between depleted and non-depleted individuals. However, when non-self-determined prejudice regulators were depleted, prejudice increased, relative to non-depleted controls. Results are discussed in terms of an increased understanding of prejudice regulation through self-determination. Evidence of the automatization of self-determined prejudice regulation offers promising implications for the reduction of prejudice.

Toward a diversity hypothesis: Multidimensional effects of intergroup contact

The long-standing and important contributions of the contact hypothesis in reducing prejudice in intergroup situations is augmented by the introduction of the diversity hypothesis. The diversity hypothesis argues that the positive consequences of diversity will occur when the following four conditions are met: (a) full participation occurs across all levels of society for membres of diverse ethnic, racial, and cultural groups; (b) the degree of participation approximates an appropriate index of representation for racial and ethnic groups; (c) common purpose across these levels of diversity is created; and (d) cultural identity is valued. The empirical evidence for these conditions and implications for the organizational advantages of diversity are discussed.     

Toward a diversity hypothesis: Multidimensional effects of intergroup contact

The long-standing and important contributions of the contact hypothesis in reducing prejudice in intergroup situations is augmented by the introduction of the diversity hypothesis. The diversity hypothesis argues that the positive consequences of diversity will occur when the following four conditions are met: (a) full participation occurs across all levels of society for membres of diverse ethnic, racial, and cultural groups; (b) the degree of participation approximates an appropriate index of representation for racial and ethnic groups; (c) common purpose across these levels of diversity is created; and (d) cultural identity is valued. The empirical evidence for these conditions and implications for the organizational advantages of diversity are discussed.     

Stereotype accuracy

Methodological issues and empirical findings from stereotype accuracy research are reviewed. Methodological issues include the limitations of accuracy criteria and three methods of comparing perceived to actual group characteristics--signed discrepancies, absolute discrepancies, and within-subject correlations. Empirical findings concern the roles of cognitive processes, status and power, and social ideology in intergroup perceptions; stereotype development; individual differences in stereotyping; and stereotype use. It is argued that stereotype accuracy research is neither easy to do nor politically popular, but that it may challenge existing theory and stimulate new ideas about the nature of stereotyping processes.     

Why Do White Americans Oppose Race‐Targeted Policies? Clarifying the Impact of Symbolic Racism

Measures of symbolic racism (SR) have often been used to tap racial prejudice toward Blacks. However, given the wording of questions used for this purpose, some of the apparent effects on attitudes toward policies to help Blacks may instead be due to political conservatism, attitudes toward government, and/or attitudes toward redistributive government policies in general. Using data from national probability sample surveys and an experiment, we explored whether SR has effects even when controlling for these potential confounds and whether its effects are specific to policies involving Blacks. Holding constant conservatism and attitudes toward limited government, SR predicted Whites' opposition to policies designed to help Blacks and more weakly predicted attitudes toward social programs whose beneficiaries were racially ambiguous. An experimental manipulation of policy beneficiaries revealed that SR predicted policy attitudes when Blacks were the beneficiary but not when women were. These findings are consistent with the claim that SR's association with racial policy preferences is not due to these confounds.     

Disgust sensitivity selectively predicts attitudes toward groups that threaten (or uphold) traditional sexual morality

Previous research has linked disgust sensitivity to negative attitudes toward gays and lesbians. We extend this existing research by examining the extent to which disgust sensitivity predicts attitudes more generally toward groups that threaten or uphold traditional sexual morality. In a sample of American adults (N = 236), disgust sensitivity (and particularly contamination disgust) predicted negative attitudes toward groups that threaten traditional sexual morality (e.g., pro-choice activists), and positive attitudes toward groups that uphold traditional sexual morality (e.g., Evangelical Christians). Further, disgust sensitivity was a weaker predictor of attitudes toward left-aligned and right-aligned groups whose objectives are unrelated to traditional sexual morality (e.g., gun-control/gun-rights activists). Together, these findings are consistent with a sexual conservatism account for understanding the relationship between disgust sensitivity and intergroup attitudes.     

Language Signaling High Proportions and Generics Lead to Generalizing,but Not Essentializing,for Novel Social Kinds

Generics (e.g., “Dogs bark”) are thought by many to lead to essentializing: to assuming that members of the same category share an internal property that causally grounds shared behaviors and traits, even without evidence of such a shared property. Similarly, generics are thought to increase generalizing, that is, attributing properties to other members of the same group given evidence that some members of the group have the property. However, it is not clear from past research what underlies the capacity of generic language to increase essentializing and generalizing. Is it specific to generics, or are there broader mechanisms at work, such as the fact that generics are terms that signal high proportions? Study 1 (100 5–6 year-olds, 140 adults) found that neither generics, nor high-proportion quantifiers (“most,” “many”) elicited essentializing about a novel social kind (Zarpies). However, both generics and high-proportion quantifiers led adults and, to a lesser extent, children, to generalize, with high-proportion quantifiers doing so more than generics for adults. Specifics (“this”) did not protect against either essentializing or generalizing when compared to the quantifier “some.” Study 2 (100 5–6 year-olds, 112 adults) found that neither generics nor visual imagery signaling high proportions led to essentializing. While generics increased generalizing compared to specifics and visual imagery signaling both low and high proportions for adults, there was no difference in generalizing for children. Our findings suggest high-proportion quantifiers, including generics, lead adults, and to some extent children, to generalize, but not essentialize, about novel social kinds.     

The effects of happy and angry expressions on identity and expression memory for unfamiliar faces

We investigated the influence of happy and angry expressions on memory for new faces. Participants were presented with happy and angry faces in an intentional or incidental learning condition and were later asked to recognise the same faces displaying a neutral expression. They also had to remember what the initial expressions of the faces had been. Remember/know/guess judgements were made both for identity and expression memory. Results showed that faces were better recognised when presented with a happy rather than an angry expression, but only when learning was intentional. This was mainly due to an increase of the "remember" responses for happy faces when encoding was intentional rather than incidental. In contrast, memory for emotional expressions was not different for happy and angry faces whatever the encoding conditions. We interpret these findings according to the social meaning of emotional expressions for the self.     

Thanks for asking: Self-affirming questions reduce backlash when stigmatized targets confront prejudice

Two experiments tested the prediction that stigmatized individuals can avoid backlash when they confront others about bias if they first ask questions designed to activate self-affirmation processes. Experiment 1 showed that compared to a no-strategy control condition, highly prejudiced perceivers tended to express less desire to meet an Arab-American when he asked them to take his perspective on prejudice, but they expressed more desire to meet him when he asked self-affirming questions prior to making the perspective-taking request. Experiment 2 replicated this effect with a different affirmation and revealed that asking self-affirming questions reduced perceptions that the target was being confrontational when asking others to take his perspective. Together, these studies show that stigmatized targets can effectively challenge prejudiced individuals to reduce their biases if they first use a subtle strategy that reduces defensiveness.