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2011

Spontaneous Categorization: Assessment of Implicit Stereotype Content Awareness

Ivo Ivanov Gyurovski College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences

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Recommended Citation Gyurovski, Ivo Ivanov, "Spontaneous Categorization: Assessment of Implicit Stereotype Content Awareness" (2011). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539626670. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-jchz-v860

This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Spontaneous Categorization: Assessment of Implicit Stereotype Content Awareness

Ivo Ivanov Gyurovski

Haskovo, Bulgaria

Bachelor of Arts, Hampden-Sydney College, 2009

A Thesis presented to the Graduate Faculty of the. College of William and Mary in Candidacy for the Degree of Master of Arts

Department of Psychology

The College of William and Mary May 2011 APPROVAL PAGE

This Thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

Ivo Ivanov Gyuro\(^kl

Approved by the Committee^, April, 2011

Committee Chair Assistant Professor of Psychology, Dr. Cheryl Dickter College of Wijjidm a nd Mary

. ^ ______Professor of Psychology, Dr. Pamela Hunt College of William and Mary

Assistant Professor of Psychology, Dr. Paul Kieffaber College of William and Mary COMPLIANCE PAGE

Research approved by

Protection of Human Subjects

Protocol number(s): PHSC-2010-07-29-6799-cldickter

Date(s) of approval: July 29, 2010 ABSTRACT PAGE

The purpose of this project was to test whether social perceivers implicitly categorize racial stereotypes according to race. Stereotypes are thought to be based on the perception of exaggerated similarities within groups as well as the misperception that specific groups are associated with certain traits. Attention theory experiments demonstrate that majority traits are learned earlier, w hereas minority traits are learned later. Additionally, the traits most commonly associated with the minority are those that most saliently distinguish it from the majority, a phenomenon resulting from attentional asymmetry towards group-trait pairings, facilitating group differentiation. Research by Sherman and colleagues (2009) used AT to show that participants learn to associate group traits more strongly with contrived minority groups relative to contrived majority groups. Stemming from these findings, the current project sought to apply AT to examine the formation of racial stereotypes, by assessing the extent to which people are likely to group together stereotypic traits. Through a series of four studies, participants spontaneously grouped stereotypical traits into novel categories representing different social groups, without explicit instructions for group differentiation and without given feedback for their groupings. Results indicated that majority and minority racial stereotypes were placed in different categories. The tendency to form stereotypic groups was further moderated by explicit measures related to racial prejudice. These findings have implications for stereotype formation. CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 1

Spontaneous Categorization:

Assessment of Implicit Stereotype Content Awareness

After approximately half a century since the Civil Rights Movement, anti-Black prejudice remains a problem in the contemporary United States. The area has captured the attention of basic and applied researchers in the field of psychology, and has important implications for Blacks and other minority group members, as well as for the society in which we live. Social psychologists have determined that an important predecessor to stereotyping and prejudice is social categorization. Social categorization is a complex process denoting a human tendency to group individuals into social groups in which the members share similar physical characteristics (Macrae & Bodenhausen, 2000;

Whitley & Kite, 2006). Theoretically, social categorization allows perceivers to minimize the amount of effort required to negotiate the social world by compartmentalizing social information (Bodenhausen, 1990; Fiske & Taylor, 1991). Research has demonstrated that when social perceivers encounter a target person, they categorize that individual along race, gender, and age dimensions (Brewer, 1988; Fiske & Neuberg, 1987). This categorization generally occurs quickly and without effort (Banaji & Hardin, 1996;

Giner-Sorolla, Garcia, & Bargh, 1999; Ito & Urland, 2003). Thus, social categorization can be seen as adaptive — and perhaps necessary — for functioning in a complex world because it helps social perceivers make judgments about and easily respond to those whom they encounter (Fiske & Neuberg, 1987; Macrae et al., 1994).

By engaging in social categorization, people are able to function more efficiently, but this process is also likely to result in the division of ingroups and outgroups and the automatic activation of stereotypes (Devine, 1989; Dovidio, Evans, & Tyler, 1986). That CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 2 is, categorizing a target into a social group activates stereotypes, which influence the way individuals process information in regard to social group members (Hamilton, 1979), leading perceivers to draw inferences about personality, social roles, and other characteristics of a given group (Deaux & Lewis, 1984). Stereotypes contain trait and behavioral characteristics of ingroup and outgroup members (Hilton & von Hippel, 1996;

Jones, 1997) learned through family, friends, the media, literature or other sources of information (Stephan & Rosenfield, 1982). They can be positive or negative, and accurate or inaccurate (Ashmore & Del Boca, 1985), but even when there is truth to them, they are not necessarily correct for each individual within the group (Whitley & Kite, 2006).

It is important to study the activation of stereotypes because it may have consequences for behavior (Bargh, Chen, & Burrows, 1996; Dovidio, Evans, & Tyler,

1986; Dovidio, Kawakami, Johnson, Johnson, & Howard, 1997; Fazio, Jackson, Dunton,

& Williams, 1995; Gaertner & McLaughlin, 1983; Whitley & Kite, 2006). For example, research has demonstrated that individuals are faster to identify words consistent with a

Black stereotype (e.g., violent, lazy) when the ‘Black’ category is activated in memory than when the ‘White’ category is activated (e.g., Fazio, Jackson, Dunton, & Williams,

1995). Stereotype activation has been found to affect perceivers’ behavior in a laboratory setting. Individuals have been found to appear less friendly and engage in less eye contact towards a Black person, when avoiding the mentioning of race (Norton, Sommers,

Apfelbaum, Pura, & Ariely, 2006) unless having previously engaged in a value changing procedure (Penner, 1971). Stereotype activation can also be detrimental in real world settings as well. Such cases include employers interviewing a Black job candidate CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 3

(Jussim, Palumbo, Smith, & Madon, 2000) or police officers deciding whether or not to shoot a Black suspect (Correll, Park, Wittenbrink, & Judd, 2002; Payne, 2001).

In addition to behavioral consequences of stereotype activation, social cognitive and learning theorists have suggested that social categorization can lead to biased judgments of ingroup and outgroup members. For example, social categorization leads to outgroup homogeneity, in which outgroup members are perceived as more similar to one another (Hamilton, 1976) and ingroup favoritism, in which ingroup members are evaluated more favorably than outgroup members (Ostrom & Sedikides, 1992). In fact, children as young as three years old demonstrate unequivocal recognition and preference for their own race versus others (Katz, 1983). These evaluations persist and are resistant to change, even in the face of counterstereotypic information, as social perceivers pay more attention to stereotype-consistent information and dismiss stereotype-inconsistent information (Bodenhausen & Lichtenstein, 1987; Dijksterhuis & Knippenberg, 1996;

Fiske & Neuberg, 1987; Wigboldus, Dijksterhuis & Van Knippenberg, 2003).

Furthermore, when faced with inconsistent stereotypes, individuals place those who deviate from the pre-conceived norms into subcategories, rather than change the existing stereotype about the group (Weber & Crocker, 1983). Individuals also actively seek out information about social outgroups that supports the existing stereotype, in order to justify these stereotypes (Klein & Kunda, 1992).

Lastly, social perceivers are also likely to perceive a relationship between certain social group members and specific behaviors, when no such relationship necessarily exists, a process known as illusory correlation (Hamilton & Gifford, 1976). In the basic demonstration of this effect (Hamilton & Gifford, 1976) two contrived groups of CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 4 individuals (A and B) are presented to participants. Group A is labeled a majority and performs 18 positive and 8 negative behaviors, whereas Group B is the minority and performs 9 positive and 4 negative behaviors. Although the two groups have equal proportions of positive to negative behaviors, participants are more likely to rate Group A more positively, overestimate the number of negative behaviors members of Group B, and to wrongly attribute Group A’s negative behaviors to Group B (see Stroessner &

Plaks, 2001, for a review). Hamilton and Gifford (1976) argued that this effect stems from the fact that the combination of Group B and negative behaviors is easily formed in peoples’ mind since both are numerically distinct, making their combination especially salient.

Automatic and controlled stereotyping

Despite reports of sizeable decreases in negative stereotypes about Blacks and anti-Black attitudes during the past several decades (e.g., Campbell, 1971; Devine &

Elliot, 1995; Dovidio & Gaertner, 2000; Schuman, Steeh, & Bobo, 1985), there is ample evidence that Whites still hold anti-Black beliefs about and discriminate against Blacks

(e.g., Donnerstein, Donnerstein, Simon, & Ditrichs, 1972; Duncan. 1976; Gaertner &

Dovidio, 1977; McConahay, 1983; Sigall & Page, 1971; Word, Zanna, & Cooper, 1974, as cited in Wittenbrink, Judd, & Park, 1997). This apparent inconsistency in the literature may be explained by the different measures used to assess stereotype activation and highlights a common distinction in the social psychological literature: that between automatic and controlled processes. Automatic processing refers to the effortless, spontaneous activation of learned information, whereas controlled processing is a result of intentional control and conscious thought (e.g., Bargh, 1997; Wittenbrink et al., 1997). CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 5

Although social categorization is an automatic, quick process, stereotype activation can be automatic or controlled (Whitley & Kite, 2006). Automatic stereotype activation occurs without effort and often outside the perceiver’s awareness (Bargh, 1999), while controlled processes require conscious control and the perceivers’ active attention.

Controlled processes are intentional and flexible, thus being an integral part of human behavior (Devine, 1989).

Research in the area has proposed that automatic and controlled process can work independently (Logan, 1980). For instance, in a semantic priming task, Neely (1977) demonstrated that if an automatic response contradicts a conscious expectancy, participants tended to inhibit the automatic response with a conscious intention. Further,

Neely showed that time and cognitive capacity determine whether automatically generated responses will be inhibited in favor of controlled ones. In a three study sequence Devine (1989) demonstrated that, when participants were unable to exert conscious control over the extent to which they are prone to stereotype activation, both high and low-prejudice individuals were equally likely to evaluate ambiguous behaviors in a stereotype-consistent way. It was only when participants had time to override automatic stereotype activation in a conscious thought-listing task that low-prejudiced participants replaced those thoughts with egalitarian and stereotype-negating answers

(Devine, 1989).

Because of the automatic nature of stereotype activation, much recent research has moved away from traditional self-report methods (thought to index conscious processing) and towards more implicit measures (associated with automatic processing).

Priming paradigms using reaction time (RT) as a measurement tool have dominated the CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 6

field of implicit attitude measurement. Because priming paradigms involve stimuli being

processed extremely quickly so that the participant cannot easily control thinking about

them, or even so rapidly that the participant cannot consciously recognize them, many

priming studies are thought to measure automatic processing, and thus can be used to

identify automatic stereotype activation (Bargh, 1997). Gaertner and McLaughlin (1983)

used a lexical decision task to demonstrate that priming race led high-prejudiced and low-

prejudiced participants to recognize letter strings as words or non-words faster and more

accurately when the words “Blacks” and “Whites” were matched with the corresponding

race stereotype. Other research utilizing priming paradigms has demonstrated that Black

and White primes facilitated White participants’ responses to stereotype congruent targets

(Dovidio, Evans & Tyler, 1986). More importantly, the same study demonstrated that

positive stereotypes were more strongly associated with Whites, and negative stereotypes

were more strongly associated with Blacks. In another project, subliminally presented

Black primes facilitated responses to negative stereotypic attributes, whereas White

primes facilitated responses to positive attributes, where the magnitudes of both effects

were related to participants’ self-reported prejudice level (Wittenbrink, Judd, & park,

1997).

Additionally, priming has been shown to affect behavior. For example, Kawakami,

Young, and Dovidio (2002) found that when participants were primed with pictures of

elderly faces, they categorized the photographs more slowly than did participants primed with younger faces. In a related study, participants first primed with elderly concepts walked more slowly away from the laboratory at the conclusion of the study than did participants who had been primed with neutral concepts (Bargh, Chen, & Burrows, CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 7

1996). Given the subtle nature of these measures and that their association with the primed concepts was not obvious, such results are thought to demonstrate the automatic, unconscious influence that primed categories have on perceivers’ behavior. Further research in the same area has systematically confirmed these findings (e.g., Zarate &

Smith, 1990), thus supporting the argument, for a clear difference between explicit and implicit stereotypes. Thus, automatic stereotype activation may influence perceivers’ thoughts and behaviors (Devine, 1989; Dovidio et al., 1997; Gaertner & McLaughlin,

1983). Furthermore, although individuals who may have a motivation to be non­ prejudiced may try to inhibit their racial stereotypes from affecting their behavior, these efforts are often unsuccessful (Amodio, Harmon-Jones, Devine, Curtin, Hartley, &

Covert, 2004; Devine & Monteith, 1999). Lastly, Gaertner and Dovidio (1986) have demonstrated that even though some White individuals hold strong egalitarian values they might feel discomfort or even fear when in the presence of Blacks.

Attention Theory

Taken together, the reviewed research demonstrates that social perceivers automatically engage in social categorization and divide the social world into ingroups or outgroups. Social categorization can lead to stereotype activation which leads to systematic biases in the judgments about others, solely based on group membership, such as outgroup homogeneity and perceptions of illusory correlations, as reviewed above.

Although theories on how stereotypes are formed have been explored previously, less research has focused on how the actual stereotype content becomes associated with different racial groups. Recent work in cognitive psychology (Sherman, Kruschke,

Sherman, Percy, Petrocelli, & Conrey, 2009) sought to provide a common framework for CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 8 the exaggeration of within group similarities (outgroup homogeneity) and the misperception of group differences (illusory correlation) by applying Kruschke’s

Attention Theory (AT; 1996, 2001, 2003) to the understanding how individuals form stereotypes.

Kruschke attempted to investigate why distinctive traits are associated with minority groups by applying attention theory (AT; 1996, 2003) to account for both outgroup homogeneity and illusory correlation. According to his AT model, individuals acquire information about common categories before they learn about less common ones, due to the fact that people tend to have more experience with the common categories. In order for people to learn about the rare categories, after being well-acquainted with the common category, they shift their attention towards those features of the rare category that most saliently distinguish it from the previously learned common category.

Consequently, attention is shifted away from features shared by the two categories and towards those features that best distinguish the rare category from the common one. The shift that occurs in attention leads to a stronger association between a rare category and its features, relative to the majority and its features (Kruschke, 1992).

Sherman and colleagues (2009) tested whether Kruschke’s AT for category learning could also be applied to the formation of stereotypes about social categories, or majority and minority groups. During the “learning” stage of their experiment, Sherman and colleagues (2009) presented participants with the names and corresponding traits of fictitious individuals, contrived for the purposes of the study, and later, during the

“testing” stage the researchers asked them to indicate group membership when faced with a character trait. Results indicated that majorities are more likely to be associated with CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 9 common traits, whereas minorities are more commonly associated with the rare traits that most saliently distinguish them, thus providing support for the hypothesis that the formation of stereotypes is resulting from this attention-shifting process that facilitates social categorization.

Based on these findings, AT may be used to explain how specific racial stereotypes are formed about majority and minority racial groups. That is, people may first learn stereotypes about a common racial group (i.e., Whites), and later about a minority group (i.e., Blacks). Because of this learning pattern, perceivers may shift their attention to the character traits that most saliently distinguish the racial outgroup from the racial ingroup, and to a certain extent ignore the traits they share with the racial outgroup, thus explaining the formation of racial stereotypes. The current project extends the work of Sherman and colleagues (2009) in two important ways. First, it will use commonly held Black and White stereotypes in contemporary society, rather than using randomly chosen personality traits, and second, the paradigm used will not include a learning stage, but will rather test the readiness with which people are likely to group together stereotypes belonging to different races. This readiness is likely to be the result of years of experience with the participants respective racial ingroup and outgroups. More importantly, if we are able to demonstrate that social perceivers are implicitly aware of stereotype content, that would suggest that people form stereotypes according to the categorical learning tenets of AT. Furthermore, it will be a successful application of this theory to socially established groups, whereas in their experiments Kruschke (1996) and

Sherman and colleagues (2009) only used novel groups and a formal learning stage.

The current project CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 10

Stereotype formation results from the exaggeration of real group differences

(Tajfel & Wilkes, 1963) and the misperception of differences that do not exist (Hamilton

& Gifford, 1976). These two mechanisms were nicely integrated under the framework of

AT (Kruschke, 1996) and this model of social category learning was successfully applied to the formation of beliefs in regard to social groups (Sherman et al., 2009). It was argued that an attention-shifting mechanism leads social perceivers to direct their attention towards associations that facilitate group differentiation, regardless of whether group differences actually exist or not. According to the same model, if perceivers form an impression of one group earlier than the other, the attention-shifting processes will result in the formation of specific stereotypes, characterizing each group. Furthermore, participants are more likely to associate common character traits with the majority, even though they are equally likely to appear in both groups. According to AT (Kruschke,

1996), this results from blocking, a cognitive process that makes people less likely to draw an association between common traits and minority members since they have already learned to associate common traits with majority members. This is important since it relates to social categorization, as blocking leads people to draw associations between outgroups and specific behaviors, thus reducing the amount of effort necessary to navigate their interactions with different social groups (Bodenhausen, 1990; Fiske &

Taylor, 1991).

If the category learning model can be successfully applied to the learning of contrived majority and minority groups, it follows then, that the same model could shed light on the formation of stereotypes in regard to racial groups. Since learning order is crucial for the attention-shifting process one can logically apply the same model to the CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 11 learning of group attributes in regard to racial ingroups and outgroups. As individuals are bom and raised among racial ingroup members and are only later exposed to racial outgroups in social settings, such as school or vocation, that would suggest that social perceivers would form distinct stereotype content for each of the two groups.

Although previous research has investigated how stereotypes are formed, the current studies sought to examine how specific stereotypes are associated with different racial groups, which would help explain how specific stereotypes come to be associated with majority and minority racial groups. In this research, we attempted to determine the likelihood of spontaneous categorization of racial stereotypes into two unlabelled categories. More specifically, we hypothesized that the stereotype activation ensuing from the exposure to the stereotype will likely be associated with race-based categorization in discreet categories, outside the conscious awareness of our participants.

Our secondary hypothesis stemmed from Sherman and colleagues’ (2009) findings in regard to associating traits with novel social groups. We predicted that participants would be more likely to associate neutral character traits with Whites, and less likely to draw such an association with Blacks, Thus, a four study sequence tested the extent to which individuals are implicitly aware of racial stereotype content.

Overview of Studies

In order to examine the possibility of applying AT to the stereotype formation process in regard to racial ingroups and outgroups, four studies were conducted. The primary goal of the current project is to demonstrate that mere exposure to a racial stereotype is enough to trigger categorical thinking in regard to racial groups. Whereas previous studies (e.g., Bargh, Chen, & Burrows, 1996; Dovidio, Evans, & Tyler, 1986; CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 12

Dovidio, Kawakami, Johnson, Johnson, & Howard, 1997; Fazio, Jackson, Dunton, &

Williams, 1995; Gaertner & McLaughlin, 1983; Whitley & Kite, 2006) have successfully demonstrated that activating social categories leads people to stereotype, we sought to establish the fact that people engage in categorical thinking after exposure to social stereotypes. Thus, if a social perceiver encounters a word, in any context, and by any means, such as ’’violent,” then this perceiver is likely to draw inferences about the person who is described by it. Such inferences will encourage social perceivers to develop expectancies about that person’s race, likely behavior, or other personality information, which will determine the attitude perceivers have as well as their behavior towards that person.

In Study 1 we sought to demonstrate that social perceivers are implicitly aware of racial stereotype content, and can successfully socially categorize well-learned racial stereotypes about Blacks and Whites, after being induced to think stereotypically. In

Study 2, we sought to replicate this finding using only positive racial stereotypes, and in

Study 3 using only negative ones, in order to isolate the context in which we presented the stereotypes. Study 4 was designed to replicate the earlier findings without inducing participants to think stereotypically, and we sought to demonstrate tentative support for notion that traits that are equally likely to appear in both social groups would be more so associated with the majority group.

Study 1

In order to test the hypothesis that social perceivers are implicitly aware of stereotype content, participants were presented with a simple categorization task in which participants were shown racial stereotypes and neutral words, one at a time, which they CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 13 were told represented character traits of an individual. Their task was to group each individual, as described by the trait, into one of two groups. Importantly, they were not told any rules about categorization, and were not given feedback on their performance. In order to induce participants to think stereotypically, the first 40 trials contained only racial stereotypes. Our primary hypothesis was that on average stereotype exposure will lead people to categorize the racial stereotypes in the two distinct groups, along the race dimension. A secondary hypothesis, based on Sherman and colleagues’ experiments

(2009) was that individuals would be more likely to categorize the neutral words in the same category used to categorize White stereotypes.

Method

Participants

Forty-nine predominantly White (26 White females, 12 White males, 2 Black females, 7 Asian females, and 2 Asian males) undergraduates enrolled in an introductory psychology course at a medium-sized public university participated for partial fulfillment of course credit. All participants had normal or corrected-to-normal vision.

Materials

The stimuli were Black stereotypes, White stereotypes and neutral words. The words were obtained from a previous study conducted with participants from the same student population (Gyurovski & Dickter, 2010; see all stereotype words in Appendix A).

The neutral words were obtained from a study in which participants rank ordered 500 words in terms of likeability (Anderson, 1968); words in the middle of the list, which were neither liked nor disliked, were used (see neutral words in Appendix B). CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 14

All stimuli were presented on an LCD computer monitor using E-Prime software

(Psychology Software Tools, Inc., Pittsburg, PA). Each trial presented one word centrally located on the computer screen. Participants were told that it is a character trait describing an individual. Participants’ task was to place the trait in either Group A or in

Group B with a corresponding key press. On the bottom of the screen, the labels “Group

A” appeared on the left and “Group B” appeared on the right. For each trial, the word remained on the screen until the participant made a response. The inter-trial interval was randomly varied between 1000 and 4000 milliseconds. The first 40 trials of the computer task presented either a Black or a White stereotype, in order to induce stereotypic thinking.

Procedure

Testing was done with one to four participants at a time, seated in individual privacy cubicles, to ensure privacy. Upon arrival at the lab, participants were given consent forms and were seated approximately 70 cm from the computer screen. They were told that the computer task involved the presentation of a series of trials, in which a character trait describing a fictitious individual would appear in the middle of the computer screen. Participants were told to place this individual either in Group A or

Group B based on their personal preferences. They were not given other categorization instructions or feedback on their performance. The task consisted of 280 trials. When finished, all participants were debriefed and given credit for their participation. All participants finished within a half hour.

Results CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 15

Analyses were conducted using data from all 49 participants unless otherwise specified. Greenhouse-Geisser-adjusted /rvalues are reported where appropriate.

Since participants were instructed to group words into arbitrary categories (i.e.,

Group A or Group B), it was necessary to first determine for each participant which race had been associated with each of the two groups. Given that stereotype words were associated with the racial categories White and Black, there were a total of four possible responses: Black A, Black B, White A, and White B. Thus, proportions were calculated within each participant for each of the possible responses reflecting the probability of a particular group assignment given a specific racial stereotype. For example, if a participant was presented with a total of 100 black stereotypes and these words were classified as Group A 70 times and as Group B 30 times, then/?(A|Black) was defined as

70/100=.7 and/?(B|Black) was defined as 30/100=.3. Labels (i.e., Black and WTiite) were then assigned to the two groups (i.e., Group A and Group B) in the following way:

(1) A difference score was used to estimate the extent to which group assignment was determined by stereotype content for each of the two classes of racial stereotype. For example, Db =/?(A|Black) -/>(B|Black) and Dw =/?(A| White) -/?(B| White). (2) The ratio Db/Da was used to determine the assignment of labels to groups. If the value of the ratio was positive, and greater than one, or if it was negative and less than one, then

Group A was assigned the Black label. If the value was negative and greater than one, or if it was positive and less than one, then Group B was assigned the Black label. The same steps were repeated for each participant and the conditions were labeled accordingly.

Having the formula ensured consistent coding and were not open to interpretation in cases where the differences were less clear. CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 16

Our two hypotheses were tested by subjecting the data to a 2 (Categorization

Response: Black, White) x 2 (Stereotype: Black, White, or Neutral) repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA). The dependent variable was the participants’ stereotype categorization decision, expressed in the form of a proportion. Because there were specific hypotheses about differences between proportions for each category, a series of paired comparisons were also conducted to test these hypotheses. All significant effects are reported below.

The data revealed a main effect for Categorization Response, F (1, 48) = 12.43, p

Z • • • < 0.001,tj = .21,qualified by a Categorization Response x Stereotype Presented interaction, F (1, 48) = 75.55,p< 0.001,rj = .61.Planned comparisons revealed a significant preference for Black Stereotype — Black Categorization (M= 0.60,SD = 0.11) relative to Black Stereotype - White Categorization {M— 0.40,SD = 0.11), £(48)= 5.87, p < .001,

White stereotypes into different groups. In addition, a significant preference was revealed to White Stereotype - White Categorization (M= 0.68,SD = 0.15),relative to White

Stereotype - Black categorization (M= 0.32,SD = 0.15), £(48)= -8.15,p< .001, d=2.40.

The hypothesis that participants would group White stereotypes and neutral words together was not supported, as there was not a significant difference between groups for neutral traits, £(48) = - 0.346,/? = .731. See Table 1 for all means.

Discussion

The results from Study 1 revealed that participants grouped the stereotypes into meaningful categories associated with the racial groups Black and White without any instructions to do so and without having access to feedback indicating their performance. CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 17

These findings suggest that the stereotypic words served to activate specific racial categories; as there were no directions regarding race or social categorization, it appears that this occurred automatically. Thus, it is likely that this information was encoded through years of experience rather than accidental and/or goal directed learning. Our secondary hypothesis, that participants would be more likely to categorize neutral words with the same key press, as they categorized White stereotypes, was not supported.

Participants were equally likely to use Black or White key press when encountering a neutral word, and thus we were unable to demonstrate support for categorical learning of established categories, as outlined in AT (Kruschke, 1996). Though preliminary, the findings of the current study may have implications for human behavior as individuals will form expectancies of others’ behavior based on what they believe their social category implies (Jones, 1990). That is, socially categorizing target individuals by race may affect the perceivers’ behavior towards these individuals (e.g., Bargh, Chen, &

Burrows, 1996). For instance, research has shown that activating a racial stereotype can result in negative outcomes for the perceived, such as during a job interview when a

White person interviews a Black job candidate (Jussim et al., 200), when police officers decide whether to shoot a Black suspect (Correll et al., 2002), or even when individuals perceive ambiguous race individuals on social networking sites (Newton, Dickter, &

Gyurovski, 2011).

Study 1 has two important limitation. First, participants were induced to think stereotypically by presenting only racial stereotypes in the first 40 trials. This was done since social perceivers are likely to associate social groups mostly with actions or character traits that most saliently distiniguish them from one another (Sherman et al., CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 18

2009). As expected, this led participants to group stereotypes into racial categories. It is unclear from this study whether the same effects would have been found if the trials were randomly presented to be stereotypical and non-stereotypical. To address this limitation,

Studies 2 and 3 test how robust this categorization effect is by presenting trials that are equally likely to have neutral words as well as stereotypes throughout the entire paradigm.

Second, a likely reason for our failure to demonstrate significant differences in the categorization of neutral words could have been the fact that they were presented in the context of positive and negative Black and White stereotypes. Thus, a neutral word lacking any valence might have been equally likely to belong in either of the two categories. Thus in studies 2 and 3 we either include only positive or only negative stereotypes.

Study2

Studies 2 and 3 include either only positive (Study 2) and negative (Study 3) stereotypes and will thus allow to separately examine the effects of stereotype valence on categorization decision. It is important to parse out the effects of valence, as negative behaviors and minority members tend to be numerically distinct, and thus perceivers may draw stronger associations between negative behaviors and Blacks than they do between positive behaviors and Blacks (Hamilton & Gifford, 1976). Thus, in Study 2, Black

Positive, White Positive, and Neutral words were used, and all trials were completely randomized, to avoid inducing our participants to think stereotypically.

Method

Participants CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 19

Fifty-two undergraduates (4 Black females, 31 White females, 3 Asian females,

10 White males, 1 Asian males, and 3 females of mixed racial origin) enrolled in an introductory psychology course at a medium-sized public university participated for partial fulfillment of course credit. All had normal or corrected-to-normal vision.

Experimental Paradigm

The experimental paradigm and procedure was identical to the one used in Study

1, with the exception that the current study included only positive Black and White stereotypes (see Appendix A for stereotypic words used in Studies 1, 2, 3, & 4), and all trials were completely randomized.

Results

In order to test the hypothesis that participants are likely to racially categorize

Black and White stereotypes, the data were subjected to a 2 (Categorization Response:

Black, White) x 3 (Stereotype Presented: Black, White, and Neutral) repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA). All significant effects are reported below.

The data revealed a Categorization Response x Stereotype Presented interaction,

F (1, 51) = 60.70,p < 0.001, rf = .54. Planned comparisons revealed a significant preference for Black Stereotype - Black Categorization (M= 0.62, SD = 0.22) relative to

Black Stereotype - White Categorization (M= 0.38, SD = 0.22), /(51) = 3.95, /?=.000,

<7=1.09, demonstrating that participants were more likely to place the Black stereotypes into the “Black” group than the “White” group. In addition, a significant preference was revealed to White Stereotype — White Categorization (M= 0.66, SD = 0.22), relative to

White Stereotype — Black Categorization (M= 0.34, SD — 0.22), /(51) = -5.36,/?=.000, CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 20

<7=1.45. As in Study 1, the Neutral character traits yielded no significant findings in regard to participants’ categorization decision, t(51) = -0.47,/?=.637 (See Table 1).

Discussion

Results of Study 2 confirmed the effects of Study 1, in that participants grouped the stereotypes into racial categories. In this case, they were not induced to think stereotypically, as all trials were equally likely to contain stereotypic or non-stereotypic content. Thus, Study 2 demonstrates that participants implicitly categorized Black negative and White negative stereotypes into their respective racial categories.

Similarly to Study 1, we were once again unable to find support for our second hypothesis that participants would be more likely to categorize neutral words with the same key press they use to categorize White stereotypes. In order to continue our examination of the effects of valence on the participants’ categorization decisions we included only negative stereotypes in Study 3.

Study 3

The purpose of Study 3 was to replicate the effects found in Studies 1 and 2 including only Black Negative, White Negative, and Neutral words. As with Study 2, stereotypic and non-stereotypic trials were equally likely so as not to explicitly establish stereotypic thinking.

Method

Participants

Sixty-seven predominantly White (4 Black females, 33 White females, 2 Asian females, 1 Black male, 17 White males, 1 Asian male, 2 females and 7 males of mixed racial origin) undergraduates enrolled in an introductory psychology course at a medium- CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 21 sized public university participated for partial fulfillment of course credit. All had normal or corrected-to-normal vision.

Experimental Paradigm

The experimental paradigm was identical to the one in Study 2, with the exception that it included only negative Black and White stereotypes and neutral words.

Results

In order to test the hypothesis that participants are likely to group Black stereotypes under one key press and White stereotypes under the other, the data were subjected to a 2 (Categorization Response: Black, White) x 3 (Stereotype Presented:

Black, White, and Neutral) repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA). All significant effects are reported below.

The data revealed a Categorization Response x Stereotype Presented interaction,

F(l, 66) = 21.20,/* < 0.001, rj = .24. Planned comparisons revealed a significant preference for Black Stereotype - Black Categorization (M= 0.67, SD = 0.23) relative to

Black Stereotype - White Categorization (M= 0.33, SD = 0.23), ^(66) = -6.19,/? < .001, d

= 1.47, demonstrating that participants were more likely to place the Black stereotypes into the “Black” group than the “White” group. In addition, a significant preference was revealed to White Stereotype — White Categorization (M= 0.56, SD = 0.25), relative to

White Stereotype - Black Categorization (M— 0.44, SD = 0.25), t(66) = -5.36,/? = .042, d

= 0.48. Participants did not exhibit preference for the categorization of Neutral character traits, t{66) = 1.00,/?=.317 (See Table 1).

Discussion CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 22

Study 3 supported the main hypothesis once again, and it demonstrated that participants were implicitly aware of stereotype content, by being more likely on average to group the Black stereotypes under one key press and the White ones under the other.

Interestingly, in the current study, when participants were only faced with negative or neutral words, the effect size for the Black stereotype grouping was quite a bit larger than the effect size for the White stereotypes, suggesting a stronger tendency to categorize

Black stereotypes. This finding is in contrast to the findings of Studies 1 and 2, which showed larger effect sizes for the White stereotypes.

This result may suggest that participants are not only implicitly aware of stereotype content in regard to Blacks, but that negative stereotypes may be particularly easily associated with this racial group (Wittenbrink, Judd, & Park, 1997). This finding fits nicely with cognitive theories and empirical findigs, suggesting that rare groups, or minorities, such as Blacks and rare behaviors, such as negative ones, make a particularly salient piece of information when combined, thus being remembered and associated easily (Hamilton & Gifford, 1976; Sherman et al., 2009).

Across these three studies, the secondary hypothesis of this project, that participants would be more likely to associate neutral traits with the White category, was not supported. As a result, Study 4 was designed to test the hypothesis that individuals high in prejudice would be more likely to group neutral words with White stereotypes, as they view the racial ingroup as more highly individualistic and diverse. Furthermore, they perceive the outgroups as homogenous and only exhibiting behaviors that most saliently distinguish them from the ingroup, even though they are equally likely to be described with the neutral words used in this project. CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 23

Study 4

Together, the first three studies have demonstrated that perceivers implicitly categorize racial stereotypes, which supports previous theories of illusory correlation between traits and groups (Hamilton & Gifford, 1976). A secondary hypothesis of the current project, however, was that AT (Kruschke, 1996) would predict that individuals are more likely to associate common or neutral personality traits more so with Whites than

Blacks, because Whites are the majority group. This hypothesis was based on findings that social perceivers are more likely to draw a connection between common traits and majority-specific traits and the majority group, whereas they associate only minority- specific traits with the minority group (Sherman et al., 2009). Furthermore, the first three studies also demonstrate that categorical learning in regard to social groups can be used to understand stereotype formation not only to novel groups, as Sherman and colleagues

(2009) demonstrated, but it can be also applied to established social groups, such as races in contemporary American society. However, the results from the first three studies clearly demonstrate that this hypothesis was not supported, as neutral words were no more likely to be associated with either the Black or the White category. One possible explanation for the lack of support for this hypothesis is that individuals with different levels of stereotype activation may have learned different associations between these social categories. That is, individuals with personality types such as those high in need for cognitive closure (Kruglanski & Webster, 1996) and high in racism (Brigham, 1993) who activate stereotypes more so than other individuals may show more of an association between neutral traits and Whites, which is likely stemming from the fact that such individuals rely on stereotypes when perceiving outgroups, and also perceive those CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 24 groups as more homogenous than they actually are, perhaps because they are less familiar with them.

The current study was designed to examine whether individual differences in prejudice would affect the likelihood of placing stereotypes in racial categories, due to greater activation of stereotypes typically seen with individuals with high levels of prejudice (Moskowitz, 1993; Neuberg & Newsom, 1993). Research efforts in prejudice have demonstrated a strong link between holding stereotypic beliefs about racial groups and having prejudicial attitudes against them as well as discriminatory behaviors

(Brigham, 1971). Prejudice against Blacks is often assessed with the Attitudes towards

Blacks Scale (Brigham, 1993). Perhaps, those who tend to be prejudiced against outgroups seek information that most strongly and saliently distinguishes the outgroups from their ingroup, or the majority (e.g. Hamilton & Gifford, 1976; Sherman et al.,

2009). Thus, it is expected that individuals high in prejudice against Blacks will more strongly associate Black stereotypes with Blacks compared to those lower in racial prejudice, in order to delineate them from the majority or Whites. Individuals high in prejudice are also expected to group neutral stereotypes with the White category, since the ingroup is often thought of as highly individualistic (Hamilton & Troiler, 1986).

Support for the notion that the ingroup is perceived as highly individualistic also comes from AT (Kruschke, 1996, 2001). Due to the sequential learning of racial groups, where people first and for the most part encounter the ingroup, and after that engage in arguably limited experience with outgroups, people perceive the ingroup as being able of having many and diverse charteristics. On the other hand, attention in regard to the outgroup is CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 25 primarily oriented towards these traits that are mostly prominent in the outgroups, and distinguish them from the ingroup (Sherman et al., 2009).

In addition, research has demonstrated that those who are high in need for cognitive closure (Kruglanski & Webster, 1996) are more likely to recall stereotype- consistent information in regard to target groups, whereas those low in need for closure were more likely to recall stereotype-inconsistent information (Dijksterhuis et al., 1996).

People high in cognitive closure have urgency and permanence tendencies when processing information. They tend to permanently freeze on the initially obtained closure and are unwilling to give way to challenging (Kruglanski & Webster 1996). Thus, it is expected that individuals high in need for closure will be more likely to strongly associate racial stereotypes with the corresponding race, relative to those who are low in this need.

Method

Participants

Thirty-nine predominantly White (11 White males, 20 White females, 1 Black female, 3 Asian females, 2 Black males, and 2 Asian males) undergraduates enrolled in an introductory psychology course at a medium-sized public university participated for partial fulfillment of course credit. All participants had normal or corrected-to-normal vision.

Personality Measures

The Attitudes Toward Blacks Scale (ATB; Brigham, 1993) was used to measure explicit racism. The measure is composed of twenty items (e.g., “Black and White people are inherently equal.”), and participants were asked to indicate their level of agreement CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 26 on a seven-point scale, ranging from 1, “Strongly Disagree” to 7, “Strongly Agree.”

Higher scores are associated with higher levels of explicit racial prejudice.

Motivation in regard to information processing was measured through the Need for Closure Scale (NFCS; Kruglanski, Webster, & Klem, 1993). The measure consists of

47 items tapping into one’s desire for clear rules and answers (e.g., “I think that having clear rules and order at work is essential for success.”). Participants rated their level of agreement on a six-point scale, ranging from “disagree strongly” to “agree strongly.”

High scores indicate a high need for cognitive closure, which is demonstrated as a preference for order and predictability, and lack of tolerance for ambiguity.

Experimental Paradigm and Procedure

The experimental paradigm and procedure were similar to those of Studies 1, 2 and 3. All trials were randomized, and positive, negative, and neutral words were used.

After completing the experimental paradigm, participants completed the two personality measures using an online questionnaire.

Results

Behavioral Data

In order to test the hypothesis that participants are likely to group Black stereotypes under one key press and White stereotypes under the.other, the data were subjected to a 2 (Categorization Response: Black, White) x 3 (Stereotype Presented:

Black, White, and Neutral) repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA). All significant effects are reported below.

The data revealed a main effect for Categorization Response, F (1, 39) = 5.22, p =

0.028, rj =.11, qualified by a Categorization Response x Stereotype Presented CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 27 interaction, F( 1, 39) = 30.69, p < 0.001, t f = .44. Planned comparisons revealed a significant preference for Black Stereotype — Black Categorization (M= 0.54, SD = 0.11) relative to Black Stereotype - White Categorization (M= 0.46, SD = 0.11), /(39) = 2.22, p = .032, d = 0.72, demonstrating that participants were more likely to place the Black stereotypes into the “Black” group than the “White” group. In addition, a significant preference was revealed for White Stereotype - White Categorization (M= 0.65, SD =

0.11), relative to White Stereotype — Black Categorization (M= 0.35, SD = 0.11), t(39) =

-8.67, p < .001, d = 2.72. Again, the Neutral words did not reveal results differences between categories, t(39) = 0.798,/?=.430 (See Table 1).

Personality Measures

In order to test the hypothesis that individual levels of racial prejudice and need for closure would moderate grouping of the racial stereotypes, two scores were used.

First, the proportion of trials in which each participant categorized a neutral word with the same key press used for White stereotypes (Neutral word - White Press) was used to assess the association between neutral traits and the majority group. Second, the proportion of trials in which each participant categorized a Black stereotype with the same key press used to categorize White stereotypes (Black Stereotype - White Press) was used to assess the association between Black stereotype and the majority group.

Correlational analyses were conducted between participants’ ATB and NFC scores and the proportion of Black Stereotype — White Press and Neutral word — White Press.

Analyses revealed that need for cognitive closure was significantly correlated with Black

Stereotype - White Press, r(37)= -.50, p =.003, such that participants who were high in need for cognitive closure were less likely to categorize a Black stereotype with the same CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 28 key press they used to categorize a White stereotype (see Figure 1). In addition, racial prejudice correlated positively with the Neutral word - White Press, r(39)=.35, /?=.027, such that participants who were racially prejudiced against Blacks more likely to categorize a Neutral character trait with the same key press they used to categorize White stereotypes (see Figure 2).

Discussion

Study 4 replicated the stereotype categorization in the first three studies by demonstrating that participants are able to implicitly group stereotype content into the categories associated with Blacks and Whites. In addition, the likelihood with which participants categorized the stereotypes correlated with explicit measures of personality traits. Specifically, individuals high in the need for cognitive closur e were less likely to categorize Black stereotypes with the same key press, they used for White stereotypes, and those high in racial prejudice were less likely to attribute race neutral traits to minority members.

General Discussion

A sequence of four studies demonstrated support for Attention Theory, such that people implicitly categorize Black and White stereotypes according to race. To the best of our knowledge the current findings are unique because whereas previous research has consistently demonstrated that activating social categories in people’s minds leads them to use stereotyping (Bargh, Chen, & Burrows, 1996; Dovidio, Evans, & Tyler, 1986;

Dovidio, Kawakami, Johnson, Johnson, & Howard, 1997; Fazio, Jackson, Dunton, &

Williams, 1995; Gaertner & McLaughlin, 1983; Whitley & Kite, 2006), the current set of studies demonstrated that people automatically socially categorize racial stereotypes. CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 29

Our findings have important implications for expectancies. During the social perception process people often form expectations about the behavior of others, and often these expectations can be based on the group membership of the perceived individual

(Jones, 1990). Our project has demonstrated that upon perception of a given racial stereotype, social perceivers are likely to categorize the individual to whom this stereotype belongs in a group along with other stereotype congruent traits. Thus, it is likely that people not only expect others to behave in a certain way, but based on limited information they have likely made an expectancy about their race, and furthermore what other behaviors they are likely to engage in. Although processing information in this way is beneficial as it saves cognitive resources (Fiske & Neuberg, 1987; Macrae et al., 1994) it may result in overt discriminatory behavior based on race (Jussim, Palumbo, Smith, &

Madon, 2000; Correll, Park, Wittenbrink, & Judd, 2002; Payne, 2001).

The current project used a novel paradigm which carries two important strengths.

First, throughout the paradigm racial stereotypes were not mentioned. Participants were told that they will categorize character traits into two groups. Second, as the participants were progressing through the trials, they were not given feedback as to how they categorize the stereotypes. Thus, it was impossible for them to estimate proportions or assigned content to either of the two categories. Given these two features, the current paradigm adds a new venue for research to the already existing paradigms. Traditionally used priming paradigms (e.g.,Kawakami & Dovidio, 2001; Blair & Banaji,. 1996) have been successful at eliciting automatic categorization responses after racial priming.

However, the paradigm we used was successful at identifying categorization decisions without the additional step of priming. A mere exposure to a racial stereotype triggered CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 30

our participants to activate racial social categories in mind, without a formal learning

stage, and without a prime, the target word was enough to evoke a stereotype congruent

categorization decision.

It is important to note the extent to which people engaged in categorization. The

results revealed that their categorization was not perfect, even if better than chance,

according to conventional statistical levels. An examination of effect sizes offered insight

as to which racial stereotypes (Black or White) were more easily discernible to put into

separate categories and in what conditions. When positive and negative stereotypes were

used in a paradigm (Studies 1 and 4) and when participants were induced to think

stereotypically (Study 1) the larger estimates of the effect sizes for the difference between

White stereotype —Black press and White Stereotype - White compared to the Black

stereotype conditions, reveals that participants more likely to activate categorical thinking

after exposure to a White stereotype relative to a Black stereotype, which is not consistent with previous reports that minorities are more strongly associated with their

corresponding stereotypes, relative to the majorities and their stereotypes (Hamilton &

Gifford, 1976). However, we were able to obtain results consistent with such earlier reports when using only negative stereotypes (Study 3). When exposed to negative stereotypes, an examination of the effect sizes between the Black press and the White stereotype reveal that participants were much more sensitive to and were more likely to activate categorical thinking after exposure to a Black stereotype, relative to a White one.

Although unfortunate, this is not surprising as much empirical evidence exists that has consistently found that social perceivers link Blacks with danger and violence, (e.g.,

Devine, 1989; Payne, 2001) thus when only faced with negative stereotypes, participants CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 31 in Study 3 were more likely to distinguish the Black stereotypes, relative to the White ones.

Although the first three studies concretely supported a robust finding in regard to the association of each social group with its corresponding stereotypes, the studies were unable to demonstrate support for the other argument of AT, namely that participants will be more likely to associate neutral personality traits more so with the majority, relative to the minority. This was expected since AT posits that imperfect predictors tend to be more strongly associated with common outcomes, or social groups as is the case here, whereas this association is blocked when it concerns rare outcomes, or social groups. Since the sample of interest was generally egalitarian, as is the case on many U.S. college campuses, it is possible that this was the reason we weren’t able to find support for our prediction. To address this possibility, explicit measures of stereotype activation and racism were administered in Study 4. Results demonstrated that there were individual differences in the tendency to place stereotypes into racial categories, and also to group neutral words with the majority group. More specifically, it became evident that higher levels of prejudice were associated with a higher likelihood of associating neutral traits with the majority and not with the minority, thus providing preliminary support for AT as an explanation of stereotype formation. Furthermore participants who are high in need for cognitive closure and subscribe to categories, favor order and predictability and do not tolerate ambiguity are more likely to use stereotypes are also less likely to implicitly group Black and White stereotypes in the same category. This finding is important since it provides a link between an explicit self-report measure and an implicit behavioral tendency. It also supports earlier research demonstrating that people high in Need for CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 32

Cognitive Closure are more likely to activate and maintain stereotypes, relative to people who score lower on this scale (Kruglanski & Webster, 1996). Thus, the results of Study 4 suggest that personality traits are an influential factor when considering how stereotypes are formed. The cognitive processes of highlighting and blocking are more strongly at work within racist individuals. People who are prejudiced against Blacks are more likely to attribute neutral character traits to Whites, suggesting that prejudiced social perceivers have formed outgroup stereotypes by orienting their attention to features that most saliently distinguish the outgroup from their ingroup. This finding shed more light on

Kruschke’s AT (1996, 2003). It is important to note that implicit awareness of stereotype content is independent of racist attitudes, but the categorization of common traits is not.

Perhaps as far as social groups are concerned, relevant variables such as prejudice level and tendency to activate and use stereotypes are likely moderators of the inverse-base rate effect, discussed by Sherman and colleagues (2009).

However, the results we have found are only preliminary evidence for the notion that neutral or common traits would be more so associated with the racial majority, relative to the minority following blocking and highlighting effects, as predicted by AT

(e.g. Kruschke, 1996; Sherman et al., 2009). As it was originally hypothesized all participants were expected to associate neutral words with Whites, since they are the racial majority and are expected to be more individualistic and heterogeneous. However, the results revealed that only those who are prejudiced tend to draw such an association.

This may suggest that individual difference, and more specifically, overt prejudice will be likely to influence the way people form stereotypes. Those who are prejudiced will be more likely to form stereotypes about social groups in line with Kruschke’s (1996) CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 33 categorical learning model. Being exposed first to the predominant category leads processing of later-introduced groups or categories to activate an attention orienting mechanism that highlights the traits of the rare category most saliently distinguishing it from the common one. Thus prejudiced individuals are more likely to develop a strong link between a minority and its corresponding stereotypes, and on the other hand will be more likely to ascribe a wider range of specific and non-specific traits to the majority or their ingroup, which is seen as highly individualistic. Those who are not prejudiced on the other hand, are still likely to be aware of stereotype content, as demonstrated by their ability to categorize racial stereotypes, but they will be more likely to perceive outgroup members as individuals rather than group members, or they will perceive them as equally individualistic as their ingroup, being aware that common traits are not group specific and are equally likely to appear in both groups. Perhaps personality traits are only one side of the story and the choice of neutral or common words the other side of it. A future direction would be to find additional support, for the findings in Study 4 that neutral words are more strongly associated with majority. Future efforts can focus on examining the role of familiarity with outgroups and racial minorities in determining what factors lead prejudiced individuals to implicitly associate Blacks with only race specific stereotypes, and not be aware that they can also share race neutral traits, as do Whites.

Correlations are only tentative suggestions and should be interpreted with caution, even though they appear to support AT. Thus, future research should use different “neutral” words. That is, AT argues that imperfect predictors, which are equally associated with the two social groups, would be more easily associated with the majority group at later testing. Perhaps the neutral words used in this sequence of studies were not reflecting CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 34 what AT argues. The words, utilized in this project were selected from a likeability ranking of 500 personality traits (Anderson, 1968), and were rated as neither liked nor disliked. We believed that words than are valence neutral would fit the requirements of

AT fro neutral words, as they are equally likely to appear in both races. However, when arguing for the use of common predictor traits for two groups (Sherman et al., 2009) it might be reasonable to utilize words that frequently appear in both races, and ignore their corresponding valence. Thus other studies should not use valence neutral words, but words that are most frequently used, thus being imperfect predictors of either race. Using more frequently used character traits as neutral words in an experiment with a similar paradigm is in accordance with other reports (Sherman, 2009) which have argued that minority traits tend to be strongly associated with minority members because both are very distinct and rarely appear in the social environment.

The planned fifth study of the current project, data for which is currently being collected, will use another implicit measure of person perception - electroencephalography (EEG). EEG refers to the electrical activity on the scalp that is the result of the processing of a stimulus (Luck, 2005). Using a physiological measure of neural activation when perceiving stereotype will enable us to examine participants’ pre­ potent motor responses. Thus even if in the current four studies results were affected by desire for political correctness an EEG study would reveal what categorization participants were implicitly ready to do, even if acting otherwise.

In sum, the findings of the current four studies provides some initial support that attention theory can explain the formation of racial stereotypes. Our data revealed that individuals are implicitly aware of racial stereotype content and engage in social CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 35 categorization based on race, without being aware of doing so. The data from the last study argue for the importance of assessing explicit character traits that are relevant and related to the extent of which the cognitive process of highlighting and blocking are operation in the formation of stereotypes. These findings are important since both implicit stereotype awareness and explicit attitudes influence judgment and behaviors towards social groups. With planned future studies we are hoping to develop a more complete and accurate understanding of exactly attention theory can be used to explain the formation of racial stereotypes. CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 36

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Table 1.

Categorization proportions for Black stereotypes, White stereotypes and neutral words.

Condition Study 1 Study 2 Study 3 Study 4

Black Stereotype

Black Press 0.60a 0.54b 0.62c 0.68“

White Press 0.40a 0.46b 0.38° 0.32“

Effect Size . 1.81 1.09 1.47 0.72

White Stereotype

Black Press 0.32e 0.35f 0.34g 0.44h

White Press 0.68e 0.65f 0.66s 0.56h

Effect Size 2.40 1.45 0.48 2.72

Neutral Stereotype

Black Press 0.46 0.52 0.51 0.48

White Press 0.54 0.48 0.49 0.52

Note. Significant differences (p < .05) between conditions are marked with the same letter. NFC 1. Figure CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES RACIAL OF CATEGORIZATION

Black Stereotype White Categorization 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0 The correlation of Black Stereotype — White Categorization likelihood and likelihood —Categorization Stereotype White Black of correlation The 5.53.5 3 4 NFC Score . 5 4.5 Figure 2. Figure CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES RACIAL OF CATEGORIZATION

Neutral Word - White Categorization 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0 The correlation of neutral word - White Categorization likelihood and ATBand likelihood Categorization White - word neutral of correlation The 1 1.5 2 . 3 2.5 ATBScore 3.5 4 4.5 CATEGORIZATION OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES 52

Appendix A. Racial Stereotypes and Neutral Words

Black Positive Stereotypes

Athletic, Rhythmic, Musical, Strong, Religious, Cheerful, Streetwise, Expressive,

Muscular, Charming

Black Negative Stereotypes

Poor, Criminal, Aggressive, Lazy, Violent, Threatening, Ignorant, Complaining, Dirty,

Stupid

White Positive Stereotypes

Intelligent, Wealthy, Successful, Educated, Responsible, Preppy, Ambitious, Industrious,

Ethical, Focused

White Negative Stereotypes

Boring, Selfish, Exploitative, Materialistic, Uptight, Arrogant, Greedy, Stuffy, Callous,

Condescending

Neutral Words

Realistic, Relaxed, Informal, Calm, Candid, Idealistic, Normal, Subtle, Shy, Blunt,

Average, Choosy, Eccentric, Worrying, Busy, Decent, Innocent, Excitable, Lucky, Serious