Automatic Prejudice Research Articles

Evaluative versus Conceptual Judgments in Automatic Stereotyping and Prejudice

The goal of the study reported in this article was to examine whether automatic processes in stereotype and prejudice activation are sensitive to task characteristics of the assessment procedure and whether these influences may account for existing inconsistencies that have recently been reported in the literature on automatic racial prejudice. Using a sequential priming paradigm with subliminal primes (“BLACK” and “WHITE”) to examine automatic prejudice, the study varied the judgment task in which the priming procedure was presented. Whereas half of the participants were asked to perform a lexical decision task (word/nonword), the remaining participants made evaluative judgments (good/bad). Results showed reliable influences of the judgment task on the observed pattern of priming effects. Moreover, the priming effects found in both conditions replicated the respective results reported in previous research that had used either evaluative or conceptual judgment tasks (Fazio, Jackson, Dunton, & Williams, 1995; Wittenbrink, Judd, & Park, 1997). In addition, the response time measure also showed different relationships with explicit measures of racial prejudice, depending on the judgment condition. In addition to their implications for the assessment of automatic stereotyping and prejudice these results suggest that automatic responses are not as invariant as it is sometimes posited.

Social influence effects on automatic racial prejudice.

Although most research on the control of automatic prejudice has focused on the efficacy of deliberate attempts to suppress or correct for stereotyping, the reported experiments tested the hypothesis that automatic racial prejudice is subject to common social influence. In experiments involving actual interethnic contact, both tacit and expressed social influence reduced the expression of automatic prejudice, as assessed by two different measures of automatic attitudes. Moreover, the automatic social tuning effect depended on participant ethnicity. European Americans (but not Asian Americans) exhibited less automatic prejudice in the presence of a Black experimenter than a White experimenter (Experiments 2 and 4), although both groups exhibited reduced automatic prejudice when instructed to avoid prejudice (Experiment 3). Results are consistent with shared reality theory, which postulates that social regulation is central to social cognition.

On the malleability of automatic attitudes: combating automatic prejudice with images of admired and disliked individuals.

Two experiments examined whether exposure to pictures of admired and disliked exemplars can reduce automatic preference for White over Black Americans and younger over older people. In Experiment 1, participants were exposed to either admired Black and disliked White individuals, disliked Black and admired White individuals, or nonracial exemplars. Immediately after exemplar exposure and 24 hr later, they completed an Implicit Association Test that assessed automatic racial attitudes and 2 explicit attitude measures. Results revealed that exposure to admired Black and disliked White exemplars significantly weakened automatic pro-White attitudes for 24 hr beyond the treatment but did not affect explicit racial attitudes. Experiment 2 provided a replication using automatic age-related attitudes. Together, these studies provide a strategy that attempts to change the social context and, through it, to reduce automatic prejudice and preference.

AGEISM: PUBLIC PREJUDICE AND PRIVATE PRECONCEPTIONS*

The concept of “ageism” or automatic prejudice towards elderly people solely on the basis of their age, is not new. Recently, however, comment has been developed, especially in relation as to how ageism may be decreasing the quality of life and appropriate care of our senior citizens. Professor Robert Butler, to whom authorship of the term is ascribed identified five myths on which he believed ageism is built. This paper greatly expands the number of these myths and discusses some ways in which they may be addressed to reduce the level of ageism in society.