Seeing Black: Race, Crime, and Visual ProcessingJennifer L. EberhardtStanford UniversityPhillip Atiba GoffThe Pennsylvania State UniversityValerie J. PurdieYale UniversityPaul G. DaviesUniversity of California, Los AngelesUsing police officers and undergraduates as participants, the authors investigated the influence ofstereotypic associations on visual processing in 5 studies. Study 1 demonstrates that Black faces influenceparticipants’ ability to spontaneously detect degraded images of crime-relevant objects. Conversely,Studies 2– 4 demonstrate that activating abstract concepts (i.e., crime and basketball) induces attentionalbiases toward Black male faces. Moreover, these processing biases may be related to the degree to whicha social group member is physically representative of the social group (Studies 4–5). These studies, takentogether, suggest that some associations between social groups and concepts are bidirectional and operateas visual tuning devices—producing shifts in perception and attention of a sort likely to influencedecision making and behavior.The stereotype of Black Americans as violent and criminal hasbeen documented by social psychologists for almost 60 years(Allport & Postman, 1947; Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink,2002; Devine, 1989; Duncan, 1976; Greenwald, Oakes, & Hoff-man, 2003; Payne, 2001; Sagar & Schofield, 1980). Researchershave highlighted the robustness and frequency of this stereotypicassociation by demonstrating its effects on numerous outcomevariables, including people’s memory for who was holding adeadly razor in a subway scene (Allport & Postman, 1947), peo-ple’s evaluation of ambiguously aggressive behavior (Devine,1989; Duncan, 1976; Sagar & Schofield, 1980), people’s decisionto categorize nonweapons as weapons (Payne, 2001), the speed atwhich people decide to shoot someone holding a weapon (Correllet al., 2002), and the probability that they will shoot at all (Correllet al., 2002; Greenwald et al., 2003). Not only is the associationbetween Blacks and crime strong (i.e., consistent and frequent), italso appears to be automatic (i.e., not subject to intentional control;Payne, 2001; Payne, Lambert, & Jacoby, 2002).The paradigmatic understanding of the automatic stereotypingprocess—indeed, the one pursued in all of the research highlightedabove—is that the mere presence of a person can lead one to thinkabout the concepts with which that person’s social group hasbecome associated. The mere presence of a Black man, for in-stance, can trigger thoughts that he is violent and criminal. Simplythinking about a Black person renders these concepts more acces-sible and can lead people to misremember the Black person as theone holding the razor. Merely thinking about Blacks can leadpeople to evaluate ambiguous behavior as aggressive, to miscat-egorize harmless objects as weapons, or to shoot quickly, and, attimes, inappropriately. In the current article we argue that just asBlack faces and Black bodies can trigger thoughts of crime,thinking of crime can trigger thoughts of Black people—that is,some associations between social groups and concepts arebidirectional.Although contemporary social psychological research has ex-haustively documented the fact that social groups can activateconcepts (e.g., Bargh, Chen, & Burrows, 1996; Brewer, Dull, &Lui, 1981; Chen & Bargh, 1997; Dovidio, Evans, & Tyler, 1986;Dovidio, Kawakami, Johnson, Johnson, & Howard, 1997; Fazio,Jackson, Dunton, & Williams, 1995; Gaertner & McLaughlin,1983; Gilbert & Hixon, 1991; Kawakami, Dion, & Dovidio, 1998;Lepore & Brown, 1997; Macrae, Bodenhausen, & Milne, 1995;Macrae, Bodenhausen, Milne, Thorn, & Castelli, 1997; Macrae,Stangor, & Milne, 1994; Moskowitz, Gollwitzer, Wasel, & Schaal,1999; Perdue & Gurtman, 1990; Wittenbrink, Judd, & Park, 1997),only a small number of studies have probed the converse: thepossibility that concepts (by themselves) can activate social groups(Blair & Banaji, 1996; Kawakami & Dovidio, 2001; Kawakami,Dovidio, Moll, Hermsen, & Russin, 2000). In one such study, Blairand Banaji (1996) found that participants exposed to feminine ormasculine primes were able to more quickly categorize as femaleor male those targets consistent with the primes. For instance, afterJennifer L. Eberhardt, Department of Psychology, Stanford University;Phillip Atiba Goff, Department of Psychology, The Pennsylvania StateUniversity; Valerie J. Purdie, Department of Psychology, Yale University;Paul G. Davies, Department of Psychology, University of California, LosAngeles.This research was supported by National Science Foundation GrantBCS-9986128 and a grant from the Research Institute of ComparativeStudies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University awarded to Jennifer L.Eberhardt. We thank Nalini Ambady, R. Richard Banks, Anders Ericsson,Hazel Markus, Benoit Monin, Jennifer Richeson, Lee Ross, Claude Steele,and Robert Zajonc for their helpful comments on versions of this article.Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to JenniferL. Eberhardt, Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Jordan Hall,Building 420, Stanford, CA 94305. E-mail: [email protected] of Personality and Social Psychology Copyright 2004 by the American Psychological Association2004, Vol. 87, No. 6, 876– 893 0022-3514/04/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.87.6.876876participants were exposed to such words as flowers or diet, theycategorized female targets faster than male targets. Using the sametechnique, Kawakami and colleagues (Kawakami & Dovidio,2001; Kawakami et al., 2000) later demonstrated that Black ste-reotypic primes could facilitate the racial categorization of Blackfaces as well. In their studies, stereotypic traits appeared to auto-matically prime the Black racial category just as the Black racialcategory automatically primed stereotypic traits.These results seem perplexing when considered in the context ofstandard associative network models of stereotyping (Anderson &Klatzky, 1987; Fazio et al., 1995; Lepore & Brown, 1997). Theassociative network approach suggests that social category nodeswill more readily activate concept nodes than the reverse. Accord-ing to such models, the likelihood that one node will activate theother depends on the strength of the associative link (Fazio, San-bonmatsu, Powell, & Kardes, 1986; Fazio, Williams, & Powell,2000; Neely, 1977). Social categories (e.g., Black Americans) tendto be strongly associated with a limited,
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