The Malleability of Automatic Stereotypes and Prejudice

“…of IATs, participants were exposed to stimuli and procedures that ran counter to their presumed automatic biases; such manipulations influenced IAT outcomes without respondents having any specific conscious goal of controlling their performance (e.g., Blair, 2002; Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2005).”

“Furthermore, our findings support the contention that stereotyping is a malleable process by revealing that supervisors who are “owls” are least affected by this morning bias (Blair, 2002).”

“, Gawronski & LeBel, 2008; Gawronski & Strack, 2004), significant changes have been shown to be possible to some extent (for reviews, see Blair, 2002; Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006a). According to the APE model, changes in spontaneous affective reactions can be due to (1) momentary changes in the activated pattern of…”

“However, the available evidence suggests that implicit measures are at least as susceptible to contextual influences as explicit measures (for reviews, see Blair, 2002; Gawronski & Sritharan, 2010).”

“…IAT versions might not measure the exact same ‘‘attitudes’’ but different representations elicited by the relation of the specific stimuli sets to be classified and the category labels (e.g., Blair, 2002; Devos & Ma, 2008; Steffens et al., 2004; see also De Houwer, 2002; Govan & Williams, 2004).”

“These individuals provide counterstereotypical examples, which have been shown to reduce implicit biases (Blair, 2002; Dasgupta & Greenwald, 2001).”

“The actual presence of other individuals significantly modified spontaneous responses demonstrating that changes in the surrounding social environment were effective in producing a positive shift in automatic intergroup attitudes (Blair, 2002; Lowery et al., 2001).”

“Although automatic in nature, implicit attitudes can be changed and controlled through such effortful cognitive processes (Blair 2002), which might develop to more automatic process with practice (Kawakami et al. 2000).”

“In response to these findings, social psychologists have turned to investigating factors that might attenuate implicit bias (e.g., Blair, 2002; Sherman et al., 2008).”

“ditionally automatic phenomena rather than global, rigid, and unconditionally automatic biases (Blair, 2002; Casper, Rothermund, & Wentura, 2010, 2011; Müller & Rothermund, 2012; Wittenbrink, Judd, & Park, 2001).”

“As these authors also suggest, their and similar findings (see Blair, 2002 for a review) cast doubt on the idea of the existence of a single true attitude.”

“The bias is implicit whenever a stereotype, either favorable or unfavorable, about a certain group is automatically associated to members belonging to that group, and affects one’s understanding, actions and decisions in a way that typically takes place below our introspective radar (Blair 2002; Rudman 2004; Beattie 2…”

“…variability, or predictiveness of the measures must also be due only to associations in memory (e.g., the same stimuli activate different associations, the same associations are activated to a different extent, or the associations themselves are altered; Blair, 2002; Gawronski & Sritharan, 2010).”

“For instance, implicit evaluations have been shown to be situationally malleable (16).”

“Furthermore, they corroborate the results of studies that have shown that implicit associations (as assessed by the IAT) are sensitive to interventions (Blair, 2002; Westberg, Lundh, & Jönsson, 2007; but see also Schmukle & Egloff, 2004).”

“…different and almost completely disjoint literature using the experimental approach to implicit social cognition, which has documented myriad ways in which contextual influences can modulate implicit social attitudes and stereotypes (for reviews, see Blair, 2002; Lai, Hoffman, & Nosek, 2013).”

“Rather considerable recent research demonstrates that implicit measures display sensitivity to context (see Blair, 2002 for a detailed review). For example, implicit measures of racial attitudes respond appropriately to experimental manipulations designed to reduce racial bias (e.g. see Dambrun & Guimond, 2004; Dasgup…”

“1 3 of implicit and explicit attitudes (Blair, 2002; Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006).”

“This was in part due to our concerns related to contextual effects on IAT performance (e.g., Blair, 2002).”

“The order of the tasks was guided by the assumption that cognitive processes are quite malleable (Blair, 2002; Robinson & Neighbors, in press), and therefore, it makes sense to assess them prior to the collection of other variables.”

“By now, there is abundant evidence that implicit measures are highly sensitive to context effects, such that the same object can elicit different automatic evaluations, depending on the context in which it is encountered (Blair, 2002; Ferguson & Bargh, 2007; Mitchell, Nosek, & Banaji, 2003).”

“, race, sex; Brewer, 1988; Fiske & Neuberg, 1990) is processed automatically in most cases, simply seeing a member of a stereotyped group can activate, without awareness, thoughts and feelings about that group (Blair, 2002; Devine, 1989; Fiske, 1998).”

“Social cognition is situated and context dependent (Barsalou, 1999; Mesquita, Barrett, & Smith, 2010; Schwarz, 2007), and an important question in social priming research is how this context dependency can be explained (e.g., Bargh, 2006; Blair, 2002; Loersch & Payne, 2011; Mitchell, Nosek, & Banaji, 2003).”

“In social psychological literature, misreports of beliefs and attitudes have often been ascribed to self-presentation demand [7], the tendency of respondents to present themselves in a socially desirable manner.”

“Challenging this assumption, however, recent research has shown that spontaneous evaluations assessed with implicit measures are highly sensitive to contextual influences (for a review, see Blair, 2002).”

“This means that it is a function of both the preexisting content inside the person and the social circumstance in which it occurred (Blair, 2002; Gawronski & Sritharan, 2010; Lewin, 1943).”

“An accumulated body of evidence has since shown that scores on implicit attitude measures are responsive to variations among respondents, stimuli, and context (see Blair, 2002; Sherman, Gawronski, Gonsalkorale, Hugenberg, Allen, & Groom, 2008).”

“malleability of stereotypes (Blair, 2002) offers routes to challenge stigma and transform a psychological liability into an asset.”

“Unconscious bias and thinking play a central role in restraining the ability to think and respond flexibly and adaptively, whether it be concerning people, or with regards to thinking, problem-solving, reasoning, evaluating, and creating (Blair 2002; Devine 2012).”

“2 Unlike explicit biases, implicit biases are not necessarily based on animus or hostility toward the group and the biases can manifest outside of conscious awareness (Blair, 2002; Devine, 1989; Dovidio, Kawakami, Smoak, and Gaertner, 2009; Rudman, 2004).”

“Prior research demonstrated that willingness to express prejudice without compunction depends on situational factors, such as perceived social norms, motives, and focus of attention (Blair, 2002; Devine, Monteith, Zuwerink, & Elliot, 1991).”

“Several studies find that implicit attitudes toward racial groups are quite malleable (e.g., Blair, 2002), and our findings support this notion.”

“Social psychologists maintain that cultural bias is inevitable unless people are knowledgeable of cultural stereotypes and will consciously monitor and inhibit activation of stereotypes (Devine, 1989; Blair, 2002).”

“Although implicitly measured bias was once assumed to be highly stable (Bargh, 1999; Dovidio & Fazio, 1992; Fazio, Jackson, Dunton, & Williams, 1995), subsequent research has shown that it is, in fact, malleable (Blair, 2002).”

“First, although both groups were tested in the same class context and at the same moment in time, it should be noted that implicit attitudes are not stable constructs, but that they may change in function of several conditions (Blair, 2002).”

“…strategic manipulation than self-report measures (e.g., Fazio, Jackson, Dunton , & Williams, 1995), implicit measures have been shown to be valid (Fazio & Olson, 2003; Poehlman, Uhlmann, Greenwald, & Banaji, 2007) and sensitive to fluctuations in the social context (for a review, see Blair, 2002).”

“A growing body of literature suggests that so-called automatic stereotypes and prejudice are at least partially amenable to voluntary control (Blair, 2002; Blair, Ma, & Lenton, 2001; Devine, Plant, Amodio, Harmon-Jones, & Vance, 2000; Fazio, Jackson, Dunton, & Williams, 1995; Moskowitz, Gollwitzer, Wasel, & Schaal, 19…”

“In contrast, implicit measures bypass desirability issues and reflect automatic, or unconscious, attitudes towards specific groups (Bessenoff and Sherman, 2000; Blair, 2002; Greenwald and Banaji, 1995).”

“4 Effect size for multiple regressions in this article was calculated from the observed R(2) using software by Soper (2015) based on the work of Cohen (1988). 5 In Study 2, at the request of the human research ethics committee, student participants were not asked about their ethnicity as this factor was deemed to be u…”

“Consistent with studies of cognitive behavior, there is a psychological cost involved in being biased that increases in cases where it is easier for the biased party to relate to the individual being biased against (Goodwin et al., 2000; Blair, 2002).”

“of this process (e.g., Gilbert & Hixon, 1991; Macrae et al., 1997—for comprehensive reviews of this topic, see Bargh, 1999; Blair, 2002), it is widely accepted that the benefits of categorical thinking are considerable.”

“…examine implicit bias as the dependent measure of racial bias because implicit measures, like the IAT, tend to be very sensitive to shifts in the environment or recent learning history—stretching and contracting with relevant shifts in everyday experience (Blair, 2002; Dasgupta & Greenwald, 2001).”

“On the other hand, it has been also proposed that some motivational and contextual factors may block such automatic categorization (Blair, 2002).”

“This conception cannot only explain a wide range of IAT effects based on semantic similarity, salience, and perceptual features, but also accounts for their well-knownmalleability (Blair, 2002).”

“…Rudman & Goodwin, 2004; Rudman & Heppen, 2003), one can manipulate affective experiences experimentally and measure its effect on implicit attitudes (e.g., Blair, 2002), one can measure (or manipulate) cognitive consistency and note its effect on implicit attitudes (e.g., Greenwald et al., 2002).”

“66 For example, social psychologist Bernd Wittenbrink and colleagues found that negativity toward Black individuals was lower after watching a movie clip depicting Black Americans in a positive setting (relative to a negative setting).”

“As is the case with other kinds of implicit attitudes (Blair, 2002; Wittenbrink, Judd, & Park, 2001), infrahumanization is a contextually dependent bias, which can be activated or inhibited depending on the elements surrounding the assessment situation.”

“Finally, because several factors moderate implicit stereotyping (Blair, 2002), we conducted an exploratory investigation into the possibility that motivation to control prejudiced reactions, prejudice level, and previous experience (i.e., knowledge and involvement with Major League Baseball) might…”

“Stereotype malleability and political identity Although implicit stereotypes were once assumed immutable (e.g. Bargh, 1999), current research suggests their malleability (Blair, 2002; Dasgupta, 2009; Rudman, Ashmore, & Gary, 2001).”

“Training should also include experiences that run counter to one’s unconscious biases, such as exposure to and interaction with highly respected and accomplished Black people.(20,21) Implicit bias training has been found to be an effective strategy for changing implicit associations and prejudices,(22) although few st…”

“With some time, effort, or intensity of experience, the implicit system may change in an enduring way (Blair, 2002; Devine, Forscher, Austin, & Cox, 2012; Dovidio et al., 2011).”