Effects of Stereotypical Television Portrayals of African-Americans on Person Perception

An experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that stereotypical television portrayals of African-Americans increase the likelihood that whites will make negative social perception judgments of an African-American (but not a white) target person. Forty white subjects were exposed to comedy skits featuring stereotypical or neutral portrayals of AfricanAmerican characters. Subjects then read a vignette describing an incident in which a college student was allegedly assaulted by his roommate. In half of the conditions, the alleged offender was assumed to be white; in the other half he was assumed to be AfricanAmerican. Subjects rated the likelihood that the alleged offender was guilty of the assault. Guilt ratings of the white target did not differ significantly between the stereotypical and the neutral comedy skit conditions. In contrast, guilt ratings of the African-American target were higher in the stereotypical comedy skit condition than in the neutral comedy skit condition. Television portrayals of AfricanAmericans and other minorities have been shown to influence whites' perceptions of those groups. Greenberg (1972), for instance, found that over half of the white children sampled reported that television was a principal source of information about AfricanAmericans. Furthermore, children who experienced a high degree of exposure to AfricanAmericans on television were particularly likely to believe that the portrayal of African