Effects of Different Attitudes Toward Racial Integration on Impressions of a Person

Abstract

Abstract The influence of attitudes toward integration on impressions from written descriptions of behavior was investigated with college students, 80 of whom favored and 80 of whom opposed integration. Subjects read descriptions suggesting that a target person, Joan, was pro-integration (P) or anti-integration (A) or read a combined communication in which one description followed immediately after the other (AP or PA). Subjects readily answered questions that generalized or transcended the communications. They were rather veridical in their appraisal of Joan-A's or Joan-P's views on integration. But there were striking differences in impressions of Joan's personality between subjects who were for or against integration. Those who were for integration strongly favored Joan-P, and those who were against integration showed a less strong tendency to favor Joan-A. Those who were for integration (the extreme revolutionaries on campus at the time of the study) showed more extreme responses after the first description, less contrast effects after the opposing description, and less primacy and more recency effects in the combined communications than the other subjects.