title: What's in a flag? Subliminal exposure to New Zealand national symbols and the automatic activation of egalitarian versus dominance values.
abstract: Three experiments tested whether the subliminal presentation of national symbols automatically elicited societally prescribed normative values in the New Zealand (NZ) context using a lexical decision task. Consistent with research in the United States, the presentation of the NZ flag (Study 1), but not another consensually validated NZ national symbol (The Silver Fern, Study 2), increased the cognitive accessibility of egalitarian value concepts. The NZ flag did not, however, activate values in a comparable sample of foreign nationals (Study 3). National flags, it seems, automatically activate normative values for ingroup members, and this effect is not limited to nations with a high frequency of flag-display behavior such as the United States.
authors.affiliation: University of Auckland, Department of Psychology, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand. c.sibley@auckland.ac.nz
authors.forename: Chris G
authors.initials: CG
authors.lastname: Sibley
authors.forename: William James
authors.initials: WJ
authors.lastname: Hoverd
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Duckitt
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000533:Altruism; D003463:Cues; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology; D004616:Emblems and Insignia; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009520:New Zealand; D011209:Power, Psychological; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012930:Social Dominance; D012945:Social Values; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology; D013360:Subliminal Stimulation; D013561:Symbolism; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D055815:Young Adult