Advice-taking as an unobtrusive measure of prejudice

A new unobtrusive measure of prejudice is proposed based on an advice-taking task. The computer-based task requires participants to find a token hidden behind one of two boxes. Prior to making their choice, however, someone (depicted by a name or a face) provides advice as to the token’s location. An unobtrusive measure of prejudice is derived by manipulating the advice-giver’s social group (e.g., male or female, Asian or White) and comparing the proportions of advice taken from each group. In Experiment 1, although the participants were not aware of it, they took more advice from males than from females. In Experiment 2, the relative proportion of advice taken from Asian versus White advice-givers correlated with responses to a news story pertaining to Asians. In Experiment 3, the relative proportion of advice taken from Asian versus White advice-givers correlated with scores on the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and predicted discriminatory behaviour, as indexed by the lost e-mail technique, better than other measures. In Experiment 4, scores on the advice task were uncontaminated by social desirability concerns and reactance and reflected the relative amounts of trust that people placed in different social groups. Taken together, these findings suggest that the advice task may be a useful tool for researchers seeking an unobtrusive measure of prejudice with predictive validity.