Reducing prejudice through priming of control-related words.
We investigated the effect of incidentally presented constructs that imply self-control on activated stereotypes associated with immigrants. To activate immigrant stereotypes, participants responded to a scale that measures people's prejudice toward immigrants. They were then primed, using scrambled sentences, with words that were related to self-control (e.g., control, restrain, self-regulate) or with neutral words. After the priming task, participants evaluated an ambiguous behavior of a target person. On the basis of three experiments, the results showed that participants primed with the control-related words rated the target behavior more positively than those primed with neutral words. The results are discussed in relation to previous research on self-control, automatic influence of activated constructs, and prejudice reduction.
Araya
Tadesse
T
Department of Psychology, Uppsala University, Box 1225, SE-751 42 Uppsala, Sweden. Tadesse.Araya@psyk.uu.se
Akrami
Nazar
N
Ekehammar
Bo
B
Hedlund
Lars-Erik
LE
D000328:Adult; D004641:Emigration and Immigration; D005006:Ethnicity / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007389:Internal-External Control; D008297:Male; D010153:Paired-Associate Learning; D011287:Prejudice; D013240:Stereotyping; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology; D013548:Sweden