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Akrami, N. & Ekehammar, B. (2005). The association between implicit and explicit prejudice: the moderating role of motivation to control
prejudiced reactions. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 46, 361366.
The main aim of the present research was to assess the relationship between implicit and explicit ethnic attitude measures and to examine the
impact of motivation to control prejudiced reactions on this relation. Implicit ethnic prejudice was assessed by a response latency measure,
and a self-report modern prejudice scale was used to assess explicit prejudice. The results showed that an association between implicit and
explicit attitudes was observed only when the explicit attitude measure was corrected for motivational bias. The findings are discussed in relation
to previous research reporting either association or dissociation between implicit and explicit attitude measures.
Key words: Implicit prejudice, explicit prejudice, prejudice control.
Nazar Akrami, Department of Psychology, Uppsala University, Box 1225, SE-751 42 Uppsala, Sweden. Tel: +46 18 471 15 25; fax: +46 18 471
21 23; e-mail: Nazar.Akrami@psyk.uu.se
INTRODUCTION
Explicit and implicit ethnic attitudes
Greenwald and Banaji (1995) have emphasized the importance
of the distinction between explicit and implicit measures of
attitudes. Explicit attitudes are slow and intentional and
operate in a conscious mode. They can be measured by traditional self-report questionnaires. Implicit attitudes, in contrast, are fast and automatic and operate without intention,
often in an unconscious mode. They are assessed using indirect
measures, like response latency.
Important in the present context is the relationship
between implicit and explicit attitudes. Implicit and explicit
attitudes can be expected to be associated because of their
common root in peoples personal and cultural experiences
and socialization history (e.g., Dovidio, Kawakami, Johnson,
Johnson & Howard, 1997 ) or because implicit attitudes
are in fact internalized explicit attitudes (e.g., Brauer, Wasel
& Niedenthal, 2000). However, Devine (1989) argued that
because stereotypes, unlike personal beliefs, are culturally
shared, they can be automatically activated. Thus, a person
might hold a positive attitude toward a social group and at
the same time automatically activate negative stereotypes
on the mere presence of a stereotyped group member.
Consequently, implicit measures (like response latencies) and
explicit measures (like scores on self-report scales) of ethnic
prejudice might be dissociated. Given this state of affairs, to
what extent are implicit attitudes reflected in explicit attitude
measures? This issue is addressed in the present paper.
Since the 1970s, social psychologists have questioned the
traditional paper-and-pencil questionnaires ability to accurately
2005 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations/Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington
Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. ISSN 0036-5564.
362
Stimulus materials
The primes consisted of 132 color photographs of faces (head shots,
6 5 cm) taken from the Internet. Sixty-six of these represented faces
(33 men and 33 women) that had foreign-looking features (i.e., dark
hair, dark eyes, and sometimes dark skin) and 66 had a paler and
blonder appearance and represented Swedish faces (33 men and 33
women). The immigrant photographs were chosen based on a previous study of which particular national categories people associate
with the word immigrant in Sweden (Akrami, Ekehammar & Araya,
2003). The photographs represented the most frequent national
categories obtained in that study (e.g., Asian, African, Middle East,
South American, and Mediterranean). All photographs were modified
to have a white background and identical size.
Apparatus
The experiment was conducted using an AST Premmia GX P/133
computer with a NEC MultiSync XP 21 monitor run with a resolution of 1024 768 and 75 Hz refresh rate. The computer monitor
was controlled by the Authorware 3.1 program.
Procedure
On arrival, participants were greeted by the experimenter and were
told that the main purpose of the experiments was to examine various memory and language phenomena. The experimental procedure
was adopted from Fazio et al. (1995) and consisted of six phases,
described below, where the fourth phase involved the actual priming
task.
The first phase was run to obtain baseline data and involved the
presentation of words on the computer monitor. Participants were
led to believe that this phase involved a language-testing task
where the speed for assigning word-valence was measured. The participant had to press a key labeled negative or positive as quickly as
possible to indicate her/ his response to the valence of the word. The
list of words comprised 24 adjectives; 12 negative (aggressive, troublesome, stupid, deceitful, lazy, impolite, passive, careless, disturbed, gloomy,
boring, disgusting) and 12 positive ( pleasant, decent, intelligent, loyal,
reliable, tidy, smart, kind, sound, nice, handsome, honest). Participants
were instructed to respond as fast and accurately as possible. Each
adjective was presented twice and remained on the center of the
screen until the participant responded. The presentation order of the
adjectives was randomized for each participant. A 2.5 s interval
separated each trial. Response latency for each trial (from adjective
onset to response) was recorded to the nearest millisecond.
The second phase (face-memory-testing) ostensibly involved the
ability to memorize faces for later recognition. The participants task
was simply to attend to the faces presented on the computer screen.
They were told that they would be given a recognition task involving
these faces subsequently. The stimuli were 16 immigrant and Swedish
facial photographs (four male and four female faces from each
group). Each photograph was presented twice, and remained on the
screen for 5 s. A 2.5 s interval separated each presentation. The
presentation order of the photographs was randomized for each
participant.
The third phase involved a recognition test of the previously presented faces. The photographs from the previous phase and 16 new
filler photographs were presented on the computer monitor. Participants were told to press the key labeled yes if the face had appeared,
and no if the face had not appeared in the previous phase. Each face
remained on the screen for 5 s and a 2.5-s interval separated each
trial. The participants responses were recorded.
The fourth phase involved the actual priming task. Participants were
led to believe that this phase involved a combination of a language
and a face-memory task. Twenty-four Swedish (12 men and
12 women) and 24 immigrant (12 men and 12 women) facial photographs (not used in the previous phases) served as primes. The 24
adjectives from the first phase were used as target adjectives. On any
given trial, a prime photograph was presented for 315 ms, followed
by a 135-ms interval before the onset of the target adjective. A 2.5-s
interval separated each trial. Four blocks of trials were presented.
Each block consisted of 48 trials in which the primes appeared once,
followed by one of the adjectives. Over the course of the four blocks,
each prime was paired, randomly, with two positive and two negative
adjectives. The instruction and procedures were identical, with one
exception, to those of the first phase. Participants were told that it
was important to attend to the presented faces because they would
be asked to recognize these faces later. The participants responses
regarding the valence of the adjective, and the response latencies
were recorded to the nearest millisecond.
The fifth phase involved a recognition test of the faces presented in
the previous phase. Those photographs and 48 new filler photographs were presented on the computer monitor. Participants were
told to press the key labeled yes if the face had appeared, and no if
the face had not appeared in the previous phase. Each photograph
remained on the screen for 5 s. A 2.5-s interval separated each trial.
The sixth and final phase involved attractiveness ratings of the
facial photographs presented in the fourth phase. Participants were
told that we were interested in assessing the extent to which the
attractiveness of a face had an effect on their performance on previous
tasks (in the fourth phase). They were instructed to press one of the ten
keys labeled 1 (not attractive) to 10 (very attractive) to indicate their
rating of the attractiveness of each face. Each photograph remained
on the screen until the participant had made her or his response.
After completing this task, participants were, seemingly, thanked
and dismissed. Before leaving the experiment room, however, participants were asked if they had a few minutes time to spare to help a
research colleague from another university. They were told that a
colleague was doing research in social psychology and was currently
collecting material for his research. The experimenter informed them
that we had promised to help him in collecting some of the data in
our laboratory. Participants were then guided to another room and
asked to complete a booklet containing the Modern Racial Prejudice
Scale, and a Swedish version of the Motivation to Control Prejudiced
Reactions Scale.
The Modern Racial Prejudice Scale was constructed by Akrami
et al. (2000) for measuring modern (covert, subtle, symbolic) racial /
ethnic prejudice in a Scandinavian context following the item contents of McConahays (1986) Modern Racism Scale. Reliability and
validity data for the scale are provided by Akrami et al. (2000). The
scale contains 9 items (example: Discrimination against immigrants is
no longer a problem in Sweden). The scale had an internal consistency
reliability (Cronbachs alpha) of 0.78 in the present sample. The
Motivation to Control Prejudiced Reactions Scale was adapted to a
Swedish context from Dunton and Fazio (1997) and consisted of
7 items. The scale had a reliability of 0.70 in the present sample and
includes such items as In todays society its important that one not be
perceived as prejudiced in any manner and If I have a prejudice thought
or feeling, I keep it to myself. The answers on the two scales were
indicated on a 5-step scale ranging from Do not agree at all (1) to
Agree fully (5). In order not to arouse participants suspicion about
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the main purpose of the study the scale items were embedded in
items concerning general subjects (e.g., The social insurance system
should be further developed.).
Participants were given a pre-paid envelope addressed to our alleged
colleague at another university. The experimenter informed participants to put it in a mailbox after completion and left the room.
However, on their way to the mailbox the experimenter informed the
participants that they could hand him the envelope and he could
himself put it in the mailbox.
None of the participants reported any suspicion about any part of
the experiment, or noted any relation between the experiment and
the booklet containing the Modern Racial Prejudice Scale and the
Motivation to Control Prejudiced Reactions Scale. Participants were
debriefed, thanked, and dismissed.
RESULTS
Control analyses
Outliers. Multivariate outliers, defined as those having standardized residuals above z = 2.5 or below z = 2.5, were
identified (n = 2) and excluded from further analyses.
Detection data. During the second and the fourth phase,
participants were instructed to attend to the presented
photographs for later recognition. Thus, the recognition data
served as a measure of the participants attention, thereby
testing whether participants had followed the instruction.
The mean proportion of correctly recognized photographs
was 0.98 in the third phase, and 0.87 in the fifth phase. This
was statistically higher than chance level (0.50), t(39) =
130.52, p < 0.001, and t(39) = 34.24, p < 0.001, respectively.
Attractiveness ratings. To examine whether attractiveness of
the presented faces had an impact on the response latencies,
participants were instructed to rate the faces on the photographs as to their attractiveness. Mean attractiveness for
immigrant (M = 4.80, SD = 1.14) and Swedish (M = 4.56,
SD = 1.17) facial photographs were computed. No significant difference was found, t(39) = 1.76, p = 0.09.
Main analyses
Correlation analysis. A product-moment correlation was
computed between the Modern Racial Prejudice scores and
the scores on the Motivation to Control Prejudiced Reactions Scale. The analysis revealed a significant correlation
between the scales (r = 0.51, p = 0.001).
Implicit ethnic prejudice. The Implicit Ethnic Prejudice scores
(M = 0.05, SD = 0.11) were analyzed by conducting a onesample t-test. The analysis revealed that the mean was significantly different from zero, t(39) = 2.99, p < 0.005, which
shows that the participants displayed more negative implicit
attitudes when exposed to immigrant as compared to Swedish
faces.
Implicit and explicit ethnic prejudice. To make possible comparisons with previous research (e.g., Devine, 1989; Lepore
& Brown, 1997; Kawakami, Dion & Dovidio, 1998), we first
examined whether participants with high and low explicit
racial/ ethnic attitudes (also) differ in their implicit ethnic
attitudes. Based on the Modern Racial Prejudice scores (the
explicit attitude measure) participants were classified by
a median split as high and low on explicit prejudice. A onetailed t-test revealed no significant difference in Implicit
Ethnic Prejudice between the groups (M = 0.06, SD = 0.11, n =
19 for high, and M = 0.05, SD = 0.11, n = 21 for low), t(38)
= 0.27, p = 0.40. Thus, participants high and low in explicit
Fig. 1. Mean implicit prejudice for people with high and low scores
on uncorrected and corrected (for motivational bias) explicit prejudice.
DISCUSSION
With few exceptions (e.g., Dunton & Fazio, 1997; Fazio et al.,
1995; Plant & Devine, 1998), previous research has not
emphasized the importance of examining the role of peoples
motivation to control prejudiced reactions when measuring
ethnic attitudes. Responding to this state of affairs, and
following Fazio et al. (1995; Dunton & Fazio, 1997), we
investigated the role of motivation and its impact on the
association between implicit and explicit ethnic attitude
measures.
The results of our study revealed evidence for participants
implicit ethnic prejudice. Specifically, following immigrant
primes, response latencies were slow to positive adjectives and
fast to negative adjectives, as compared to Swedish primes.
In addition, the correlation analysis showed a strong negative
relationship between modern ethnic prejudice (our explicit
measure) and motivation to control prejudiced reactions, which
demonstrates the reactivity of the Modern Racial Prejudice
Scale and its sensitivity to motivational factors.
More important, the analyses revealed no significant correlation between implicit and explicit ethnic prejudice, thus,
no association between explicit and implicit prejudice was
found. However, when the modern ethnic prejudice scores
were corrected for motivational biases, a significant correlation (i.e., association) was obtained. The same pattern of
results was obtained when analyzing people high and low
(median-split) on explicit prejudice. Thus, the results confirm our hypothesis that motivation to control prejudiced
reactions has a moderating role in the association between
explicit and implicit prejudice. However, it should be noted
that the association between explicit and implicit prejudice
even after the correction was not especially strong. In accord
with Fazio et al. (1995) and Dunton and Fazio (1997), we
can conclude that peoples motivation to control or conceal
prejudiced reactions seems to be an important factor to take
into account when studying the relationship or association
between implicit and explicit prejudice. Finally, it must be
added that other factors can also be of importance for the
implicit-explicit prejudice relationship, for example, whether
the outgroup is normatively protected against discrimination
or not (Franco & Maass, 1999).
Devine (1989), in her dissociation model, argued that a
person might hold a positive attitude toward a social group
and at the same time automatically activate negative stereotypes on the mere presence of a stereotyped group member.
On this basis, Devine predicted that implicit and explicit
measures of ethnic prejudice might be dissociated and she
obtained empirical verification of this prediction as well.
Several studies, however, have shown that Devines assumption might not be valid and various explanations have
been offered (e.g., Kawakami et al., 1998; Lepore & Brown,
1997; Locke, MacLeod & Walker, 1994; Moskowitz, Wasel,
Gollwitzer & Schaal, 1999; Wittenbrink, Judd & Park, 1997).
Although the present study seems to speak against Devines
(1989) dissociation model as well, we argue that it provides
convergent evidence for automatic stereotype activation
and confirms the assumption that stereotypes are activated
automatically on the mere presence of a stereotyped group
member.
In conclusion, the present research has demonstrated the
utility of the adjective evaluation technique as a method for
measuring implicit prejudice and the sensitivity of self-report
instruments to motivational biases when measuring explicit
prejudice. Our findings lend additional support to the evidence
presented by Fazio et al. (1995; Dunton & Fazio, 1997) for
the impact of motivation on the implicit-explicit prejudice
relation in a different social context, a European country, and
in relation to a different target group, immigrants in general.
However, to arrive at a firm conclusion and test the external
validity of the findings, the present study should be replicated using non-student samples of participants. Finally, in
future research the importance of also exploring other variables that may moderate the relationship between implicit
and explicit prejudice must be emphasized.
This research was supported by Grant F0890/97 to Bo Ekehammar
from the Swedish Council for Research in the Humanities and
Social Sciences. The authors would like to thank Tadesse Araya for
his insightful comments on an earlier version of this article.
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