title: The Relationship Between Mental Representations of Welfare Recipients and Attitudes Toward Welfare.
abstract: Scholars have argued that opposition to welfare is, in part, driven by stereotypes of African Americans. This argument assumes that when individuals think about welfare, they spontaneously think about Black recipients. We investigated people's mental representations of welfare recipients. In Studies 1 and 2, we used a perceptual task to visually estimate participants' mental representations of welfare recipients. Compared with the average non-welfare-recipient image, the average welfare-recipient image was perceived (by a separate sample) as more African American and more representative of stereotypes associated with welfare recipients and African Americans. In Study 3, participants were asked to determine whether they supported giving welfare benefits to the people pictured in the average welfare-recipient and non-welfare-recipient images generated in Study 2. Participants were less supportive of giving welfare benefits to the person shown in the welfare-recipient image than to the person shown in the non-welfare-recipient image. The results suggest that mental images of welfare recipients may bias attitudes toward welfare policies.
authors.affiliation: 1 Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky.
authors.forename: Jazmin L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Brown-Iannuzzi
authors.affiliation: 2 Department of Psychology, Utrecht University.
authors.forename: Ron
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Dotsch
authors.affiliation: 3 Department of Psychology, Colgate University.
authors.forename: Erin
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Cooley
authors.affiliation: 4 Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
authors.forename: B Keith
authors.initials: BK
authors.lastname: Payne
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001741:Black or African American; D001290:Attitude / Q000208:ethnology*; D015982:Bias; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011203:Poverty / Q000523:psychology; D012923:Social Class; D012946:Social Welfare / Q000208:ethnology / Q000523:psychology*; D013240:Stereotyping; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: open data; open materials; social cognition; socioeconomic status; stereotyped attitudes