PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Research Article EFFECT OF SOCIAL CATEGORY PRIMING ON PERSONAL ATTITUDES Kerry Kawakami 1 John F Dovidio 2 and Ap Dijksterhuis3 1 University of Nijmegen Nijmegen the Netherlands 2Colgate University and 3University of Amsterdam Amsterdam the Netherlands Abstract In four studies we examined the spontaneous activation of specific attitudes related to social categories These studies investigated whether priming participants with concepts associated with the elderly and skinheads influenced participants attitudes The results consistently demonstrated that priming a social category can influence people s attitudes such that they become more similar to those of people in the primed category After participants were primed with the elderly category their attitudes became more conservative after participants were primed with the skinhead category their attitudes became more prejudiced We also found that these effects can occur without awareness and intention and are specific to the participants own attitudes The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are considered Research on stereotyping has shown that social category priming can automatically activate general attitudes Dovidio Kawakami Johnson Johnson Howard 1997 Fazio Jackson Dunton Williams 1995 Greenwald McGhee Schwartz 1998 and specific personality traits and physical characteristics Blair 2001 Devine 1989 Kawakami Dion Dovidio 1998 Kawakami Dovidio 2001 Kawakami Dovidio Moll Hermsen Russin 2000 Even behaviors associated with social categories are spontaneously activated upon presentation of a group representation People who are primed with specific categories actually tend to act in ways congruent with the stereotypic actions associated with these groups Bargh Chen Burrows 1996 For example Dijksterhuis and van Knippenberg 1998 found that participants primed for 9 min with the category professor answered significantly more general knowledge questions correctly than did participants in control conditions Theorizing on why these ideomotor effects occur Chartrand Maddux and Lakin in press and Dijksterhuis and Bargh 2001 suggested that people demonstrate automatic behaviors because it is often functional to modify one s behaviors to conform to the social environment For instance spontaneously activating behaviors associated with a social category upon presentation of that category and behaving in ways congruent with this representation can facilitate social interactions If social behaviors are automatically modified to be congruent with the social context Bargh et al 1996 Kawakami Young Dovidio 2002 Wheeler Petty 2001 and to facilitate social interactions Chartrand et al in press Dijksterhuis Bargh 2001 it is possible that people spontaneously assimilate their specific attitudes to social category targets in the same way Research has demonstrated that similarity of attitudes is a powerful determinant of interpersonal attraction even when the other person is not immediately physically present Address correspondence to Kerry Kawakami Department of Psychology York University 4700 Keele St Toronto Ontario Canada M3J 1P3 e mail kawakami yorku ca VOL 14 NO 4 JULY 2003 Byrne 1971 and people commonly emphasize their relevant similarities to others strategically to make a favorable impression Stevens Kristof 1995 Waldron Applegate 1998 Moreover to the extent that similarity enhances attraction it can positively influence group cohesion and effectiveness Mullen Copper 1994 and relationship stability Davis Rusbult 2001 Specific attitudes associated with a social category may therefore become automatically activated upon presentation of that category and influence perceivers attitudes by producing attitudes that are more congruent with the category The primary goal of the present research involving four studies was to investigate the effect of social category priming on participants attitudes toward topics that are normally associated with specific groups In Study 1 participants who were primed with the elderly category expressed attitudes more similar to attitudes normally associated with the elderly than did participants who were primed with the young people category In Study 2 we examined whether this priming effect was specific to the participants own attitudes or whether it generalized to their impression of others attitudes We expected that participants own attitudes would become more conservative after the elderly category was primed but that their estimates of most people s attitudes would not change In Study 3 we investigated whether subliminally priming social categories would produce effects like those observed in Study 1 Last in Study 4 we explored whether an analogous effect would occur for skinhead primes We expected that compared with participants who were not primed participants primed with the skinhead category would respond more extremely on items reflecting negative intergroup attitudes but not on items related to other attitudes STUDY 1 The primary aim of Study 1 was to examine the possibility that social category priming can spontaneously activate specific attitudes typically associated with the target group In this experiment participants first performed a task in which they were instructed to describe an elderly or a young person Next they were asked to respond to a questionnaire for an ostensibly unrelated attitude study The items on this questionnaire were associated with attitudes held by the elderly Participants were simply instructed to choose a response that best reflected their own attitude toward each issue We predicted that participants responses would be more consistent with elderly attitudes in the elderlypriming condition than in the young person priming condition Method Thirty six undergraduate students volunteered for a study that included a number of ostensibly unrelated tasks The first two activities were of particular importance The first task involved a priming procedure in which participants were presented with a photograph and instructed to describe the person in the photograph for 5 min Dijksterhuis van Knippenberg 1998 Macrae Stangor Milne Copyright 2003 American Psychological Society 315 PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Automaticity of Specific Attitudes 1994 Whereas half of the participants were asked to write down the hobbies personality traits and general character of an elderly woman the other half of the participants were asked to describe a young woman After
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