Racial Attitude Priming and Effectiveness of a "Black Rage" Defense
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
W&M ScholarWorks Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 1995 Racial Attitude Priming and Effectiveness of a "Black Rage" Defense Melissa Speck Garth College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd Part of the African American Studies Commons, Law Commons, and the Social Psychology Commons Recommended Citation Garth, Melissa Speck, "Racial Attitude Priming and Effectiveness of a "Black Rage" Defense" (1995). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539626008. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-tq0d-ep10 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]. RACIAL ATTITUDE PRIMING AND EFFECTIVENESS OF A "BLACK RAGE" DEFENSE A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of Psychology The College of William & Mary in Virginia In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Melissa S. Garth 1995 APPROVAL SHEET This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Author ^ Approved, May 1995 Kelly G. Sthaver, Ph.D. Allen A. Turnbulfi Ph.D. Michael P. Nidfols, Ph.D. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................... v LIST OF TABLES ..........................................................................................................................vi LIST OF FIGURES ..................................................................................................................... m ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................................viii CHAPTER I. Introduction........................................................................................................................ 1 The Priming Effect ..................... 1 Attribution Theory........................................................................................... 12 Types of Defenses........................................................................................... 17 II. M e th o d ........................................................................................................................ 19 Participants........................................................................................................ 19 M aterials ........................................................................................................... 19 P r o c e d u r e........................................................................................................... 21 III. Results............................................................................................................................22 IV. Discussion .............................................................................................................. 27 REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................... 33 TABLES ............................................................................................................................................37 FIGURES 40 APPENDICES Page A. Consent Form and Verbatim Script.................................................................. 44 B. Stimulus Materials .................................................................................................. 48 C. Sample SPSS Printout............................................................................................ 56 D. Raw Data .................................................................................................................. 60 VITA .................................................................................................................................................. 70 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are a number of people that I am indebted to for their assistance on this project. I would particularly like to extend my deepest gratitude to my committee chair, Dr. Kelly Shaver. His professional and personal guidance, enduring patience, and belief in my ability were the root of my success at William & Mary. His support and encouragement will not be forgotten. I would also like to thank Dr. Allen Turnbull and Dr. Michael Nichols, my committee members, for their careful reading of the manuscript and the helpful comments. I would also like to thank my family and friends. Thanks to my parents for their special care when I needed a shoulder and their strict advice when I needed to remember what was important. A special thanks to my grandparents for constantly reminding me how much they love and support me and to be happy no matter what might be going wrong. Thanks to my sister, Gilie, for being such a good friend and making me laugh when I really needed it. A warm thanks to my boyfriend, Steve, for all of the sweet things he did to make the tough times a little easier and the good times so wonderful. Finally, a thanks to the good friends I made at William and Mary. I will remember them for the great laughs and for always being there. v LIST OF TABLES Table Page 1. Loadings of Items Participating in the Accountability, Mental Illness, and Defensive Attribution Factors................................................ 37 2. Loadings of Items Participating in the Racism Scale........................... 38 3. Mean Scores for Attribution Scales, Collapsing Across Sex 39 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. Defense Type by Priming: Interaction for Accountability............................... 40 2. Defense Type by Priming: Interaction for Mental Illness............................... 41 3. Defense Type by Priming: Interaction for Defensive Attribution............... 42 4. Main Effect for Attribution......................................................................................... 43 vii Abstract Although it has never been used in an actual court trial, "black rage" has been discussed as a possible defense in criminal trials. This defense asserts that oppression suffered by African-Americans leads them to commit criminal acts. The present study examined what might have happened had a black rage defense been utilized in a current murder trial. The design wasa2x2x2x3; defense type (black rage or not guilty) by priming (prime or no prime) by participant sex by attributions (accountability, mental illness, and defensive attribution). Participants were 38 male and 56 female undergraduate college students enrolled in psychology classes. Results revealed significant main effects for participant sex and attributions and a significant three-way interaction of defense x priming x attribution. These results are discussed in terms of their relevance to the criminal justice system. Racial Attitude Priming and Effectiveness of a "Black Rage" Defense Racial Attitude Priming 2 Although there has been a great deal of research in the areas of priming, attribution, and psychology and law, there is a lack of research bringing the three together. An actual criminal case provides the background for a study combining all three fields of study with the result being research of both theoretical interest and applied interest. The case concerns a black male who committed a mass murder. Initially lawyers had discussed using the "black rage" defense, an insanity defense that claimed that the years of prejudice that he experienced led to his outbreak of anger. One of the things happening with race-based cases these days is measurement of bias among jurors, such as a questionnaire assessing jurors’ racist feelings. This measurement process can be considered priming in that it arouses certain feelings and attitudes regarding people of other races that may affect later opinions regarding the trial. Finally, this particular race-oriented case creates the opportunity to measure attributions that jurors make regarding the defendant’s personal accountability for the m urders. The Priming Effect The priming phenomenon has received much empirical support, which has led it to be applied to a variety of settings within social cognition (Fiske & Taylor, 1984; Gaertner & McLaughlin, 1983). A setting that interests both cognitive and social psychologists is racial attitude priming. Once priming was established as an area of study, many different types of priming became a topic of discussion. To go back to basics, a general definition of the priming phenomenon that has been well-accepted was given by Fiske and Taylor Racial Attitude Priming 3 (1984), "...recently and frequently activated ideas come to mind more easily than ideas that have not been activated" (p. 231). For present purposes, this concise definition needs to be extended to social situations where, "exposing people to positive and negative trait terms causes people at a later time to rate and recall ambiguous behavior as correspondingly positive or negative, because of the meaning that had been primed" (p. 231). To synthesize the two definitions, when selecting a person schema, the more recently activated information will be more accessible, even when it is irrelevant (Fiske & Taylor, 1984). The effect of prior information is even stronger when descriptive as well as evaluative meanings are primed. This can