Effects of situational power on automatic racial prejudice

This study examined the influence of situational power on automatic racial prejudice. White females anticipated participating in either an interracial or same-race interaction in one of two roles: superior or subordinate. Their racial attitudes were measured via the Implicit Association Test (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). Results revealed that both the racial composition of the anticipated dyad and participants situational roles influenced automatic racial attitudes. Specifically, whites assigned to the highpower role of a superior of a black individual revealed more racial bias than whites assigned to the lower-power role of a subordinate. By contrast, situational power had no influence on the automatic bias of whites anticipating same-race interactions. These results reveal the manner in which situational power hierarchies serve to reinforce existing social stratification. Implications for diversity efforts and attitude change are discussed. 2002 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved. Effects of situational power on automatic racial prejudice Individuals in positions of power relative to others often engage in thoughts and behaviors that serve to maintain their positions of authority. For instance, powerful individuals tend to disregard individuating information about their interaction partners, compared to individuals who do not hold positions of power, relying instead on category-based information such as stereotypes (Erber & Fiske, 1984; Goodwin, Gubin, Fiske, & Yzerbyt, 2000). Because situational power is often confounded with sociocultural group status, the cognitive biases of individuals who hold positions of relative situational power also serve to maintain existing social stratification (Fiske, 1993; Jost & Banaji, 1994; Operario, Goodwin, & Fiske, 1998). That is, during interactions between members of stigmatized and nonstigmatized groups (i.e., intergroup dyads), members of dominant groups are more often in positions of power visa-vis members of stigmatized groups (Sidanius & Pratto, 1993). Consequently, the cognitive biases of powerful individuals serve to maintain the dominance of powerful sociocultural groups. The purpose of the present study was to examine whether the influence of situational power on cognitive biases, such as stereotyping, extends to attitudinal biases. Specifically, we examined the influence of holding situational roles of differential power for an upcoming interracial interaction on white Americans automatic racial prejudice against black Americans. Just as power-discrepant cognitive biases support social stratification, individuals in positions of relative situational power may also reveal attitudes that are more biased than individuals in lowerpower positions. Individuals attitudes and beliefs concerning racial and gender groups can seemingly be activated without conscious awareness of the activation (Bargh, Chaiken, Govender, & Pratto, 1992; Bargh, Chaiken, Raymond, & Hymes, 1996; Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powell, & Kardes, 1986; Purdue & Gurtman, 1990). Fazio, Jackson, Dunton, and Williams (1995) demonstrated, for instance, the automatic activation of racial attitudes. Specifically, white participants responded faster to negative target adjectives when they were preceded by primes that were photographs of black Americans compared to when they were preceded by photographs of white Americans. Presumably, because participants held negative attitudes towards blacks, it was relatively Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 39 (2003) 177–183 www.elsevier.com/locate/jesp Journal of Experimental Social Psychology Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (J.A. Richeson). 0022-1031/02/$ see front matter 2002 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S0022-1031(02)00521-8 easy for them to process, and therefore to respond to, adjectives that were also negative (i.e., congruent with the valence of the racial prime). Differential automatic evaluations of different racial groups have also been detected using a method developed by Greenwald and his colleagues (i.e., the Implicit Association Test: IAT) (Dasgupta, McGhee, Greenwald, & Banaji, 2000; Dasgupta & Greenwald, 2001; Greenwald et al., 1998; Ottaway, Hayden, & Oakes, 2001). Specifically, white participants have been found to associate ‘‘pleasant’’ words and white names more readily than they associate ‘‘pleasant’’ words and black names. The differential ease with which pleasant is associated with white names rather than black names reflects an automatic preference for the racial category ‘‘white’’ relative to ‘‘black’’—that is, a biased racial attitude. Despite the apparent robustness of automatic attitude biases, some recent research finds that they may be quite malleable to contextual influences. For instance, imagining an agentic woman reduced automatic gender stereotyping (Blair, Ma, & Lenton, 2001), and exposure to a black experimenter reduced whites automatic racial bias (Lowery, Hardin, & Sinclair, 2001). Similarly, Rudman, Ashmore, and Gary (2001) found that white students taking a diversity seminar led by and black professor showed a significant decrease in racial bias at the end of the course, whereas students taking a methods course with a white professor did not. Further, Dasgupta and Greenwald (2001) found that white and Asian American participants revealed less implicit prejudice regarding blacks during an IAT if they had recently been exposed to admired blacks (e.g., Michael Jordan) and disliked whites (e.g., Jeffrey Dahmer), compared to recent exposure to disliked blacks (e.g., Mike Tyson) and admired whites (e.g., John F. Kennedy). Thus, participants automatic racial prejudice was attenuated when assessed in a context in which they were reminded of ‘‘positive’’ black individuals. Quite remarkably, this effect lasted for at least 24 h, suggesting that situational influences on implicit attitudes may be relatively enduring. Taken together, this research suggests that exposure to relatively atypical exemplars of stigmatized groups (e.g., agentic women, atypical blacks) can reduce automatic prejudice and stereotyping toward those groups. In the present study, we explored the extent to which exposure to stigmatized individuals holding a highpower situational role may also reduce automatic bias. If atypical exemplars of groups generate different attitudes than more prototypical group exemplars, then recent, accessible experiences with a member of a stigmatized social group holding an atypical situational role may also influence participants attitudes regarding that group. Direct evidence in support of this hypothesis stems from the work examining the influence of situational power on stereotyping. As mentioned previously, powerful individuals tend to disregard individuating information about their interaction partners, relying more on category-based sources of information, compared to individuals who do not hold positions of power (Operario et al., 1998). For instance, powerful individuals pay more attention to stereotype-consistent, rather than stereotype-inconsistent, evidence regarding their interaction partners (Fiske, 1993; Goodwin et al., 2000). By contrast, individuals in lower-power positions are known to individuate their partners, presumably because they are dependent on them for important outcomes and, therefore, are motivated to pay particular attention to them (Fiske, 1993). If the influence of situational power on automatic attitudes mirrors its impact on stereotype activation, then individuals in positions of power should reveal a greater degree of automatic prejudice than individuals in lower-power positions. Specifically, individuals in subordinate positions with black superiors should attend to available individuating information regarding their partners, rather than to category-based knowledge. Attending to individuating information regarding a black interaction partner (so long as that information is not negative) should lead participants in subordinate roles to view their black interaction partners relatively positively, in comparison to the perception of blacks in general. Furthermore, recent exposure to a positive black exemplar should lead individuals to find it easier to associate ‘‘black with pleasant’’ and harder to associate ‘‘black with unpleasant,’’ during an assessment of automatic racial attitudes such as the IAT. Consequently, they are likely to reveal attitudes that are less biased. By contrast, individuals in higher-power positions with black interaction partners should ignore individuating characteristics about their partners, attending only to category-based information. Thus, their racial attitudes should be more biased than those generated by participants in lower-power roles with black interaction partners. In sum, the prediction of the present study is that white participants racial bias in anticipation of an interracial dyadic interaction will depend on their relative situational power.