DOI QR코드

DOI QR Code

Assuming the Role of a Racist and an Egalitarian Both Decreases Spontaneous Discriminatory Behavior

  • Received : 2015.01.19
  • Accepted : 2015.05.08
  • Published : 2015.06.30

Abstract

This study employed the first-person shooter task(FPST: Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink, 2002) paradigm to examine racial bias toward Blacks in a population unrelated to the Black-White racial context. We tested whether having Korean participants play the role of a White police officer portrayed as nonracist (vs. racist) would attenuate the bias to shoot Black suspects. Participants were told that they would perform a police simulation task as a White police officer, who was described as racist or nonracist, or was presented without a description. They then performed the FPST. Although nonracist description lowered shooter bias, racist description weakened it even more, contrary to our prediction. The latter result is interpreted as due to activation of an egalitarian goal after reading about racism-related description, especially as the description was about someone who was to be incorporated to the self. Supporting this interpretation, a mediation analysis involving Racist and Control conditions revealed that the racist description was associated with stronger perception of the officer's racial bias, which in turn was correlated with weaker shooter bias.

Keywords

References

  1. Bargh, J. A., Chen, M., & Burrows, L. (1996). Automaticity of social behavior: Direct effects of trait construct and stereotype priming on action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71(2), 230-244. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.71.2.230
  2. Correll, J., Park, B., Judd, C. M., & Wittenbrink, B. (2002). The police officer’s dilemma: Using ethnicity to disambiguate potentially threatening individuals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83(6), 1314-1329. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.83.6.1314
  3. Correll, J., Park, B., Judd, C. M., Wittenbrink, B., Sadler, M. S., & Keesee, T. (2007). Across the thin blue line: Police officers and racial bias in the decision to shoot. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(6), 1006-1023. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.92.6.1006
  4. DeMarree, K. G., Wheeler, S. C., & Petty, R. E. (2005). Priming a new identity: Self-monitoring moderates the effects of nonself primes on self-judgments and behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89(5),657-671. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.89.5.657
  5. Devine, P. G. (1989). Stereotypes and prejudice: Their automatic and controlled components. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56(1), 5-18. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.56.1.5
  6. Devine, P. G., Plant, E. A., Amodio, D. M., Harmon-Jones, E., & Vance, S. L. (2002). The regulation of explicit and implicit race bias: The role of motivations to respond without prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82(5), 835-848. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.82.5.835
  7. Galinsky, A. D., & Moskowitz, G. B. (2000). Perspectivetaking: Decreasing stereotype expression, stereotype accessibility, and in-group favoritism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(4), 708-724. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.78.4.708
  8. Glaser, J., & Knowles, E. D. (2008). Implicit motivation to control prejudice. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44(1), 164-172. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2007.01.002
  9. Greenwald, A. G., & Banaji, M. R. (1995). Implicit social cognition: Attitudes, self-esteem, and stereotypes. Psychological Review, 102(1), 4-27. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.102.1.4
  10. Lai, C. K., Marini, M., Lehr, S. A., Cerruti, C., Shin, J.-E. L., Joy-Gaba, J. A., Nosek, B. A. (2014). Reducing implicit racial preferences: I. A comparative investigation of 17 interventions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(4), 1765-1785. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0036260
  11. Park, S. H., Glaser, J., & Knowles, E. D. (2008). Implicit motivation to control prejudice moderates the effect of cognitive depletion on unintended discrimination. Social Cognition, 26(4),401-419. https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.2008.26.4.401
  12. Park, S. H., & Kim, H. J. (2015). Assumed race moderates spontaneous racial bias in a computer-based police simulation. Asian Journal of Social Psychology.
  13. Wheeler, S. C., DeMarree, K. G., & Petty, R. E. (2007). Understanding the role of the self in prime-to-behavior effects: The Active-Self account. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11(3), 234-261. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868307302223