implicit associations

Running head: CURRENT AUTOMATIC RACIAL PREFERENCES

Automatic Preferences for African Americans

Kyle Barrett

PSY 290

An implicit association test regarding automatic racial preference was distributed

online to participants divided into two initial conditions. Participants were primed

with famous European American faces in the first condition, while participants in

the second condition were primed with famous African American faces. Those

who were placed in the second condition reported significantly higher automatic

preference for African Americans than those who were primed with European

American faces. These findings date previous research on the subject, and

suggest that further research is needed to assess the possibly changing nature

of current-day automatic racial preferences.

CURRENT AUTOMATIC RACIAL PREFERENCES

Introduction

Racial prejudice within the United States is a highly debated and

controversial issue. Over the last sixty years, an extensive body of research has

formed on the subject with various results. In 1997, nation-wide surveys were

conducted on racism, and found that it had been steadily declining since the

American Civil Rights Movement in the fifties (Schuman, Steeh, & Bobo, 1997).

The explicit nature of these surveys and notion of social desirability, however,

cast doubts upon the authenticity of such findings. In the following years after the

study, new findings were collected via the Implicit Association Test (IAT). These

findings held that racial prejudice was still common, as the IAT was able to

measure unconscious attitudes beyond participants’ control or immediate

awareness (Crosby, Bromley, & Saxe, 1980).

The IAT is a relatively new measure and multiple studies have been

conducted on assessing the test’s effectiveness on different levels- often in

comparison to explicit test measures such as surveys. The results indicate a

fairly high degree of credibility for the IAT. Not only has it been found as a reliably

valid measure for attitudinal relationships between concepts (Greenwald,

McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998), but it has specifically been found as an effective

measure for implicit racial attitudes (Banaji & Greenwald, 1995). Much of the

doubts regarding the IAT’s ability to correctly asses racial prejudice have been

put to rest, as the test has been proven to account for most extraneous variables

along with other proposed explanations (Dasgupta, Greenwald, Banaji, 2000).

Even further research with the IAT shows that not only can the test correctly

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CURRENT AUTOMATIC RACIAL PREFERENCES 3

detect racially related attitudes, but that it can also show how these attitudes are

being manipulated (Dasgupta, Greenwald, 2001).

This experiment was conducted with the intention of confirming the

findings of previous research in order to gain a greater understanding of the

Implicit Association Test and the experimental process. The study’s results,

however, were found to be divergent from previous research results. Rather than

indicating a prevalent European American preference, as found with previous

research, this study indicates a prevalent African American preference for those

who were primed with African American Faces. Much of the research done on

implicit associations and racism was conducted in the late 1990’s (Dasgupta,

Greenwald, Banaji, 2000) and, although this study alone is not enough to

discount those before it, it does suggest that that the nature of this relationship

may have possibly changed since its initial unearthing. Further research is

needed to assess current-day racial preferences, as a possible change in racial

attitudes due to a fluctuating socioeconomic and political climate cannot be

discounted.

Methods

Participants

The participants were 24 research methods students at Arizona State University

and 42 additional participants that those students recruited, making 66

participants in total. Students were required to take IAT online. They were then

requested to send out the test link to various acquaintances in order to gain


additional data. Age and sex were discounted within the final results, as too few

participants responded to these questions to provide significant data.

Materials

All participants received one of the two testing conditions online. In the

European American priming condition, participants were shown the faces of and

asked to identify: Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Katie Couric, John

Stewart, and Ellen Degenerous. Participants in the African American priming

condition were shown the faces of and asked to identify: Barack Obama, Michelle

Obama, Colin Powell, Whoopi Goldberg, Bill Cosby, and Oprah Winfrey. The

Implicit Association Test was hosted on a separate, external website.

Participants recorded their results by selecting their corresponding test results

from the IAT, indicating that they had either a strong, moderate, slight, or little to

no preference for European/African Americans. See Appendix B further details.

Procedure and Design

Although the two test forms were homogenous, the test itself was

distributed through two separate links, one for student data, and the other for the

convenient sample data. Before participants took the IAT, they were asked to

complete an approximately ten-minute long thought suppression study for a

separate class experiment. Participants were then presented with their

corresponding priming conditions and given a link to take the racial preference

IAT on a separate site. Participants were then asked to report their results for

data collection in order to conclude the experiment.

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Results

Participants were tested with the IAT for automatic racial preference and

then asked to record their results in the online experiment. Considerable

amounts of data had to be excluded due to test fatigue and a high drop out rate.

As shown in Appendix A, there is a significant difference reported in

automatic preferences depending on the European American faces or African

American faces priming conditions, with F(1,66)=8.741, p=.004. The participants

who were primed with famous African American faces reported significantly

higher automatic preference for African Americans than those who were primed

with famous European American faces. There was no significant difference

reported in automatic preference for European Americans in either priming

condition. These findings show no indication of an automatic preference for

European Americans, and suggest an overall higher preference for African

Americans within participants.

Discussion

The results from this experiment contradict the initial hypothesis that

looked to confirm previously found racial preferences for European Americans.

Rather, results indicate a significantly higher automatic preference for African

Americans and no significant change in preference for European Americans.

These findings suggest that a possible change in racial attitudes has taken place

over the last decade and that further research may be needed to assess it. An

overall change in racial attitudes is a very real possibility, as a high level of


socioeconomic and political change has taken place within the United States

during recent years, including the election of the first ever African American

president. It should be noted, however, that a social desirability bias may still be

present within this experiment’s design, as participants were asked to self-report

their test results for data collection.

What this study does not address is the concept of stimulus familiarity,

which is a possible measurement confound in the IAT. It suggests that

participants’ results are based off of recognition rather than racial preference.

Although these findings have been weeded out and checked for previous studies

regarding significantly higher European American preference (Dasgupta,

Greenwald, Banaji, 2000), they have not been checked with this study and the

notion of significantly higher African American automatic preference. In order to

build off of the data found in this experiment, a future study should be conducted

with special emphasis on weeding out known extraneous variables and, more

specifically, statistically controlling stimulus familiarity.

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References

Banaji, M. R., & Greenwald, A. G. (1995). Implicit gender stereotyping in

judgments of fame. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, pp.

181–198.

Crosby, F. J., Bromley, S., & Saxe, L. (1980). Recent unobtrusive studies of

black and white discrimination and prejudice: A literature review.

Psychological Bulletin, 87, pp. 546 –563.

Dasgupta, N., Greenwald, A. G., 2001. On the malleability of automatic attitudes:

Combating automatic prejudice with images of admired and disliked

individuals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol 81, pp.

800-814.

Dasgupta, N., McGhee, D. E., Greenwald, A. G., Banaji, M. R. (2000). Automatic

preference for White Americans: Eliminating the familiarity explanation.

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Vol 36, pp. 316-328.

Greenwald, A.G., Farnham, S.D. (2000). Using Implicit Association Test to

measure self-esteem and self-concept. Journal of Personality and Social

Psychology, Vol 79, pp. 1022-1038.

Greenwald, A. G., McGhee, D. E., & Schwartz, J. L. K. (1998). Measuring

individual differences in implicit cognition: The Implicit association test.

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol 74, pp. 1464-1480.

Schuman, H., Steeh, C., & Bobo, L. (1997). Racial attitudes in America: Trends

and interpretations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.


Zajonc, R. B. (1968). Attitudinal effects of mere exposure. Journal of Personality

and Social Psychology, Monographs, 9.

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Appendix A


Appendix B

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implicit associations

Spiritual