Racial Stereotypes: Associations and Ascriptions of Positive and Negative Characteristics

With the assumption that a stereotype is in part, a collection of associations that link a target group to a set of descriptive characteristics, the present research engaged high-and low-prejudice scoring white subjects (19 males, Experiment 1; -9 males and 12 females, Experiment 2) in a lexical decision task patterned after Meyer and Schvaneveldt (1971, 1976). The task yields a measure of associative strength between two words (e.g., BLACKS:LAZY; WHITES:LAZY) based upon the amount of time subjects take to decide whether or not they are both words. Meyer and Schvaneveldt reported that high associates (NURSE.DOCTOR) yielded faster reaction times than low associates (DOCTOR:BUTTER). The results of the present research indicated that subjects, regardless of prejudice score, responded reliably faster when positive attitudes (e.g., SMART) were paired with WHITES than when they were paired with BLACKS (Experiment 1) or with NEGROES (Experiment 2). Nevertheless, negative attributes paired with BLACKS or NEGROES were responded to as quickly as when they were paired with WHITES. These results, together with Experiment 3, which involved the ascription of these characteristics more directly, suggest that white college students, no longer differentially associate or ascribe negative characteristics, but continue to differentially associate and ascribe positive attributes to blacks and to whites.