The Malleability of Automatic Stereotypes and Prejudice

“…this assumption, however, an accumulating body of research suggests that automatic responses can be highly context-sensitive, such that the same object may elicit different responses depending on the environment in which it is encountered (for reviews, see Blair, 2002; Gawronski & Sritharan, 2010).”

“The lower reliability might be explained by the fact that implicit measurement is influenced by subtle variations in the testing situation and stimuli used (Blair, 2002).”

“There is indeed evidence that strategies such as selective retrieval of memories can inXuence IAT eVects (see Blair, 2002, for a review).”

“…including different sources of motivation – affiliative motives, self-image motives, motivation to be non-prejudiced, motivation channeled by social identities, stereotype suppression strategies – implementation intentions and affective priming, and a wide range of contextual factors (Blair, 2002).”

“Although some have proposed that these automatic processes are beyond one’s control (Bargh, 1999), most research suggests that people can engage in controlled processes to diminish the expressions and consequences of bias (Blair et al., 2002; Cunningham et al., 2004; Devine, 1989).”

“…have different representational formats [implicit: dynamic associations; explicit: more stable if-then statements (Strack and Deutsch, 2004)], and in line with this idea, it has been found that implicit cognitions are more sensitive to context effects than explicit cognitions (Blair, 2002).”

“Although a major focus in recent research has been on the reduction of stereotype activation (see Blair, 2002, for a review), and a variety of methods focusing on the characteristics of the individual category members, stimulus cues, focus of attention, self-enhancement, and social motives have…”

“Several studies demonstrate that implicit attitudes are more malleable than previously thought (for a review, see Blair, 2002).”

“Whether and which attribute is activated and becomes salient, may largely depend upon the context and upon the affective or motivational status of the individual (Blair, 2002; Gheldof, de Jong, Vinck, & Houben, 2004).”

“Brewer, 2002) and stereotypic attributions (Blair, 2002; Blair, Judd, Sadler, & Jenkins, 2002).”

“…approach, research on automatic prejudice has shown that implicit measures can be changed using paradigms that involve exposing individuals repeatedly to either positive or negative examples of out-group members (for reviews, see Blair, 2002; Fazio & Olson, 2003; Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006).”

“However, there also is evidence that implicit attitudes are malleable (Blair, 2002) and respond to experimental manipulations in theoretically meaningful ways. For example, implicit SE can be raised through classical conditioning (Baccus, Baldwin, & Packer, 2004) and subliminal conditioning (Dijksterhuis, 2004). Hence…”

“…(e.g., Barden, Maddux, Petty, & Brewer, 2004; Blair, Ma, & Lenton, 2001; Dasgupta & Greenwald, 2001; Gawronski, Deutsch, & Seidel, 2005a; Karpinski & Hilton, 2001; Lowery, Hardin, & Sinclair, 2001; Mitchell, Nosek, & Banaji, 2003; Wittenbrink, Judd, & Park, 2001a; for a review, see Blair, 2002).”

“With respect to the implicit assessment factor, the situational malleability of implicit representations (e.g. Blair, 2002) may additionally play a role in decreasing implicit–explicit consistency.”

“The 6–7-year time gap that exists between the original GCVP communication data collection and the current study presents another limitation, given counselors’ implicit attitudes may change over time (Gschwendner et al., 2008; Blair, 2002).”

“This has led to its extensive use in areas such as stereotyping and prejudice (e.g., Blair, 2002; Greenwald et al., 1998; Nosek, Greenwald, & Banaji, 2005), health behaviors (e.g., Sherman et al., 2002), and self-esteem (e.g., Greenwald & Farnham, 2000; Jordan et al., 2003).”

“This hypothesis leads to the prediction of a Gestalt-like, superadditive effect of category and context information in stereotype activation as they were found in our experiments (Blair, 2002; Kunda & Thagard, 1996; Read, Vanman, & Miller, 1997).”

“There is evidence that with sufficient motivation, cognitive resources and effort, people can inhibit stereotypes and focus on individuals rather than the sociodemographic groups they represent (Blair, 2002; Fiske, Lin, & Neuberg, 1999).”

“Moreover, while our research focuses on the implications of social categorisation for evaluation, the causal order may be reversed (e.g., Hugenberg & Bodenhausen, 2004). ostensibly stable underlying associations, appear sensitive to the motivational and social context (see Blair, 2002, for review).”

“The view that IAT effects reflect similarity therefore provides a natural account of the fact that IAT effects are highly context-dependent (see Blair, 2002, for a review).”

“The second concept emanating from social psychology, the “counter-stereotype”, consists of intentionally activating ideas or creating mental imagery in opposition to stereotypes (eg, create a mental image of an old man running).(58) This approach is based on the assumption that counter-stereotypes will challenge stere…”

“A competing line of research however has emerged which claims the opposite—that implicit attitudes are in fact quite malleable and can be readily changed by altering one’s environment (Blair, 2002; Dasgupta, 2009; Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006).”

“Additionally, both before and immediately following training, all participants completed a person categorization task which served as the measure of automatic prejudice (Blair & Banaji, 1996). This task assessed the speed with which participants classified Black and White faces following the subliminal presentation of…”

“So whereas implicit responses might be difficult to control, they are not necessarily difficult to change (see also Blair, 2002). In the long run, however, the utility of implicit self-esteem measures is likely to depend on their ability to predict psychological phenomena of interest above and beyond the predictive po…”

“…686–695 0022-3514/05/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.89.5.686 686 why, when, and for whom category-driven processing is triggered and implemented have dominated research and theorizing in social psychology for almost 50 years (see Allport, 1954; Bargh, 1999; Blair, 2002; Macrae & Bodenhausen, 2000).”

“As implicit attitudes are more stable than explicit attitudes (e.g., Bassili & Brown, 2005; Blair, 2002), we expected greater differences in attitudes as a function of experimental condition on the self-report measures compared to the indirect measure of attitudes.”

“However, it soon became apparent that implicit prejudice and stereotyping are malleable (Blair, 2002) and subject to internal and external motivation to respond without prejudice (Devine, Plant, Amodio, Harmon-Jones & Vance, 2002).”

“…within an implicit measurement procedure is not represented in a balanced manner or otherwise deviates from the concept as it is encountered in a specific social context, the validity of the measure is reduced markedly (Blair, 2002; Barden, Maddux, Petty, & Brewer, 2004; Rydell & Gawronski, 2009).”

“Although social categorization often occurs automatically, the biases that stem from it are avoidable (e.g., Blair, 2002).”

“This hypothesis leads to the prediction of a Gestalt-like, superadditive effect of category and context information in stereotype activation (Blair, 2002; Kunda & Thagard, 1996; Read, Vanman, & Miller, 1997).”

“…others reflected pre-existing knowledge, ideas and beliefs of the managers (see Fiske & Neuberg, 1990; Macrae & Bodenhausen, 2000, 2001) and was activated by their interests, goals and general attitudes toward ‘the other’ (e.g. Blair, 2002; Lepore & Brown, 1997; Wittenbrink, Judd, & Park, 1997).”

“We chose to target evaluative associations because their valence has been shown to be highly variable across situations (Blair, 2002), with the relative positivity of particular associations being automatically modulated in order to facilitate appropriate approach or avoidance behavior (Ferguson & Bargh, 2004).”

“…the impact of other mechanisms on the reduction of implicit bias (e.g., perspective taking, Todd, Bodenhausen, Richeson, & Galinsky, 2011; and counterstereotypical exemplars, Blair, 2002; Dasgupta & Greenwald, 2001; see also Gawronski & Strack, 2004; Page-Gould et al., 2008; Shook & Fazio, 2008).”

“…literature: in her discussion of moderating automatic stereotypes, Irene Blair claims that though ‘the evidence is compelling with regard to the possibility of moderating automatic stereotypes, the likelihood of such moderation in everyday social encounters is not yet known’ (Blair, 2002: 249).”

“Because our sample included a subset of all possible interventions designed to influence automatic attitudes (Blair, 2002), and we intended to ensure maximum generalizability of the findings, we used a random effects model in the overall integration of effect sizes and the examination of moderators (Hedges & Vevea, 19…”

“In other words, people may not be able to control the impact of their attitude on performance on the indirect task, and may not have that intention (Blair, 2002).”

“proposed in the literature related to stereotypes and prejudice (Bargh & Williams, 2006; Blair, 2002) and serves to keep feelings of failure, embarrassment, and shame at bay.”

“However, a recent theme in the literature concerns the malleability of implicit cognitions, which are believed to be less available to introspection and deliberate control (see Bargh, 1999; Blair, 2002).”

“In line with theories of prejudice (Blair 2002), anti-American views harbored by French consumers are negatively related to their attitudes toward brands perceived as strongly stereotypically American.”

“The general implications of our results are consistent with recent research on the contextual malleability of implicit attitudes [53-55] and overall cognition [56-61] (also Ibáñez A, Toro P, Cornejo C, Weisbrod M, Schröder J: High contextual sensitivity of metaphorical expressions and gesture blending: A video ERP des…”

“Nonetheless, it is not yet clear that any particular implicit measure taps this long-term memory store and not recent, short-term interventions (Blair, 2002; Ferguson & Bargh, 2004).”

“…the similarities they have with a Black interaction partner (Mallett et al., 2008) or on the particular qualities their interaction partner may have outside of their social group membership (Blair, 2002) can also lead toward more positive expectations and attitudes surrounding those interactions.”

“Blair, I. V. (2002). The malleability of automatic stereotypes and prejudice.”

“While implicit procedures are susceptible to contextual forces such as prior exposure, the nature of the task, and situational demands (see Blair, 2002; Dasgupta & Asgari, 2004; Ferguson & Bargh, 2007), we know very little about whether they are sensitive to the language in which they are assessed.”

“The present research contributes to a burgeoning body of research showing that implicit attitudes and beliefs about social groups are not fixed and immutable representations in one’s mind, but rather are remarkably malleable (for a review, see Blair, 2002; Dasgupta, 2009).”

“While biased associations have proven difficult to completely overturn, they have proven malleable given appropriate strategies and conditions (see Blair, 2002 for a review).”

“Past research suggests that individuals’ perceptions of out-group members are predicated on the situation (Wittenbrink et al., 2001; Blair, 2002).”

“Mitchell, Nosek, and Banaji (2003) demonstrated in their study the value of such an approach, that by magnifying counter-stereotypic information, stereotypes are minimized or altered (see also Blair, 2002).”

“However, we prefer to interpret this dissociation between the pattern of predictors for the explicit and implicit attitudes as further evidence for a now-established literature providing evidence of dual-process models of attitudes (Blair, 2001; Nosek, 2007; Nosek & Smyth, 2007), including in the specific case that at…”

“The findings are strengthened by the number and diversity of demonstrations to this effect (Blair, 2002).”

“Recent research into the malleability of attitudes and implicit beliefs (Blair, 2002; Mitchell, Nosek, & Banaji, 2003) suggests that the expression of implicit associations could be influenced by previously activated cognitive processes and by the context.”

“studies reported by Hahn, Judd, Hirsh, and Blair (2014). Hahn et al.”

“…research suggests that while these biases cannot be directly “unlearned,” our implicit and explicit behaviors are malleable, that is, they can be altered by repetitive exposure and reconditioning (e.g., Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006; Rudman, Ashmore, & Gary, 2001; for a review, see Blair, 2002).”

“In particular, it appears that those who are motivated to avoid or control the influence of implicit biases on behavior may be able to do so (Blair, 2002; Fazio and Towles-Schwen, 1999; Olson and Fazio, 2004; Towles-Schwen and Fazio, 2003) and it is possible that exposure to counter-stereotypical…”

“From the constructivist reenactment perspective the dynamic pattern is inherently unstable and dynamic and the search for the ideal implicit assessment strategy may be in vain (cf., Barsalou et al., 2003; Blair 2002; Mitchell et al., 2003).”

“Yet, deviating from the overarching focus of the two approaches on various kinds of context effects (for reviews, see Blair, 2002; Gawronski & Sritharan, 2010), Gawronski et al.’s representational account is specifically concerned with the effects of incidental visual cues of the environmental…”

“Despite the lack of developmental research, there is a healthy literature on formation, malleability, and change of implicit social cognition (Blair, 2002; Gawronski & Sritharan, 2010).”

“Blair, I. V. (2002). The malleability”

“There is much research showing the malleability of implicit attitudes, for example by repeated exposure to admired and disliked individuals (Dasgupta et al., 2009), emotions (Dasgupta and Greenwald, 2001), and several self and social motives (for a review, see Blair, 2002).”

“For researchers, the message is that greater attention to the particular task and goals of the perceiver will provide more powerful analyses of automatic processes (Blair, 2002).”