Preconsciously Controlling Stereotyping: Implicitly Activated Egalitarian Goals Prevent the Activation of Stereotypes

Abstract

The current research showed that individuals with chronic egalitarian goals did not have the cultural stereotype for the group African Americans activated when exposed to a picture of an African American. These individuals did show increased accessibility for words related to egalitarianism upon seeing a photograph of an African American. Participants were primed over a series of trials with Caucasian or African American faces. Primes were followed after 200 ms by words. In Experiment 1, a pronunciation task, participants were to speak the word aloud into a microphone. The words were either stereotype relevant or stereotype irrelevant. Individuals without chronic egalitarian goals pronounced stereotype relevant (but not stereotype irrelevant) words faster when they followed stereotypic primes. Chronic egalitarians did not differ in their response times as a function of either word type or prime type: no activation of the stereotype was evidenced. Experiment 2 was a lexical decision task, and words were ei...