Modern Racism as a Predictor of the Linguistic Intergroup Bias

Abstract

Despite the fact that Maass, Salvi, Arcuri, and Semin's linguistic intergroup bias (LIB) seems to be an indicator of prejudice, research has failed to consider whether this phenomenon differs according to people's dispositional level of prejudice. The present study hypothesized that European Americans higher in prejudice against African Americans would demonstrate linguistic abstraction of stereotypical behaviors to a greater degree than EuropeanAmericans who are lower in prejudice. As predicted, high-prejudiced participants described African Americans' stereotypical behaviors in a more abstract fashion, whereas low-prejudiced participants described African Americans' stereotypical behaviors in a more concrete fashion. Because overall negativity of the descriptions was not influenced by level ofprejudice, the LIB appears to be a more subtle measure of prejudice level than degree of negativity.