PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Research Article VOL. 14, NO. 4, JULY 2003 Copyright © 2003 American Psychological Society 315 EFFECT OF SOCIAL CATEGORY PRIMING ONPERSONAL ATTITUDES Kerry Kawakami, 1 John F. Dovidio, 2 and Ap Dijksterhuis 3 1 University of Nijmegen, Nijmegen, the Netherlands; 2 Colgate University; and 3 University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Abstract— In four studies, we examined the spontaneous activation ofspecific attitudes related to social categories. These studies investi-gated whether priming participants with concepts associated with theelderly and skinheads influenced participants’ attitudes. The resultsconsistently demonstrated that priming a social category can influ-ence people’s attitudes such that they become more similar to those ofpeople in the primed category. After participants were primed with theelderly category, their attitudes became more conservative; after par-ticipants were primed with the skinhead category, their attitudes be-came more prejudiced. We also found that these effects can occurwithout awareness and intention and are specific to the participants’own attitudes. The theoretical and practical implications of these find- ings are considered. Research on stereotyping has shown that social category primingcan automatically activate general attitudes (Dovidio, Kawakami,Johnson, Johnson, & Howard, 1997; Fazio, Jackson, Dunton, & Wil-liams, 1995; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) and specific per-sonality traits and physical characteristics (Blair, 2001; Devine, 1989;Kawakami, Dion, & Dovidio, 1998; Kawakami & Dovidio, 2001;Kawakami, Dovidio, Moll, Hermsen, & Russin, 2000). Even behav-iors associated with social categories are spontaneously activatedupon presentation of a group representation. People who are primedwith specific categories actually tend to act in ways congruent with thestereotypic actions associated with these groups (Bargh, Chen, & Bur-rows, 1996). For example, Dijksterhuis and van Knippenberg (1998)found that participants primed for 9 min with the category professoranswered significantly more general knowledge questions correctlythan did participants in control conditions.Theorizing on why these ideomotor effects occur, Chartrand, Mad-dux, and Lakin (in press) and Dijksterhuis and Bargh (2001) suggestedthat people demonstrate automatic behaviors because it is often func-tional to modify one’s behaviors to conform to the social environment.For instance, spontaneously activating behaviors associated with a so-cial category upon presentation of that category and behaving in wayscongruent with this representation can facilitate social interactions.If social behaviors are automatically modified to be congruent withthe 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 possiblethat people spontaneously assimilate their specific attitudes to socialcategory targets in the same way. Research has demonstrated that sim-ilarity of attitudes is a powerful determinant of interpersonal attractioneven when the other person is not immediately physically present(Byrne, 1971), and people commonly emphasize their relevant simi-larities to others strategically to make a favorable impression (Stevens& Kristof, 1995; Waldron & Applegate, 1998). Moreover, to the extentthat similarity enhances attraction, it can positively influence groupcohesion and effectiveness (Mullen & Copper, 1994) and relationshipstability (Davis & Rusbult, 2001). Specific attitudes associated with asocial category may therefore become automatically activated uponpresentation of that category and influence perceivers’ attitudes byproducing attitudes that are more congruent with the category.The primary goal of the present research, involving four studies, wasto investigate the effect of social category priming on participants’ atti-tudes toward topics that are normally associated with specific groups. InStudy 1, participants who were primed with the elderly category ex-pressed attitudes more similar to attitudes normally associated with theelderly than did participants who were primed with the young-peoplecategory. In Study 2, we examined whether this priming effect was spe-cific to the participants’ own attitudes or whether it generalized to theirimpression of others’ attitudes. We expected that participants’ own atti-tudes would become more conservative after the elderly category wasprimed, but that their estimates of most people’s attitudes would notchange. In Study 3, we investigated whether subliminally priming socialcategories would produce effects like those observed in Study 1. Last, inStudy 4, we explored whether an analogous effect would occur for skin-head primes. We expected that compared with participants who werenot primed, participants primed with the skinhead category would re-spond more extremely on items reflecting negative intergroup attitudesbut not on items related to other attitudes. STUDY 1 The primary aim of Study 1 was to examine the possibility that so-cial category priming can spontaneously activate specific attitudes typi-cally associated with the target group. In this experiment, participantsfirst performed a task in which they were instructed to describe an el-derly or a young person. Next, they were asked to respond to a question-naire for an ostensibly unrelated attitude study. The items on thisquestionnaire were associated with attitudes held by the elderly. Partici-pants were simply instructed to choose a response that best reflectedtheir own attitude toward each issue. We predicted that participants’ re-sponses would be more consistent with elderly attitudes in the elderly-priming condition than in the young-person-priming condition. Method Thirty-six undergraduate students volunteered for a study that in-cluded a number of ostensibly unrelated tasks. The first two activitieswere of particular importance. The first task involved a priming proce- dure in which participants were presented with a photograph andinstructed to describe the person in the photograph for 5 min(Dijksterhuis & van Knippenberg, 1998; Macrae, Stangor, & Milne, Address correspondence to Kerry Kawakami, Department of Psychology,York University, 4700 Keele St., Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3; e-mail:[email protected] SCIENCE Automaticity of Specific Attitudes 316 VOL. 14, NO.
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