Priming Guilt, Priming Control: Anticipating Self-Conscious Emotions Can Reduce Overt Prejudice

1. Priming Guilt, Priming Control: Anticipating Self-Conscious Emotions Can Reduce Overt Prejudice Roger Giner-Sorolla Pablo Espinosa Research funding: UK ESRC grantRES-000-22-0004 Presentation at SESP 2006, Philadelphia, PA

2. Guilt and other self-conscious emotions – good or bad for intergroup relations?

3. 3 approaches • Feelings of “collective guilt” for past or present situation of discrimination • Vicarious feelings about specific acts of others • Personal responsibility and self-control of acts of discrimination / expressions of prejudice

4. Guilt feelings help prejudice reduction? • Compunction feelings, as well as behavioral inhibition and compensation, aroused by reminders of one’s own prejudice (Fazio & Hilden, 2001; Monteith, 1993, 1996; Monteith & Voils, 1998; Monteith, Voils, & Ashburn Nardo, 2001; Monteith, Ashburn Nardo, Voils, & Czopp, 2002; Son Hing, Li & Zanna, 2002) • Mediational role of compunction not so clear

5. Emotion concepts vs. emotional feelings • Two different things (Robinson & Clore, 2002; Innes-Ker & Niedenthal, 2002) • How do they matter to self-control? • Freud: Civilization and its Discontents (1930) – guilt is more effective when anticipated (i.e., as concept); also, Frank (1988)

6. Anticipated feelings • Explicit thought about feelings after (vs. before) breaking self-control in health domains leads to greater self-control • Abraham & Sheeran, 2003; Caffray & Schneider, 2000; Richard, de Vries & van der Pligt, 1998; Richard, van der Pligt & de Vries, 1996

7. Anticipated compunction • In “grim necessity” dilemmas, high self-control associated with higher accessibility of self-conscious affect associations (Giner-Sorolla, 2001) • Implicit priming of compunction words leads to greater self-control among dieters (Giner-Sorolla, 2001)

8. Impicit priming of control motives • Araya, Akrami, Ekehammar, & Hedlund (2002) • Scrambled sentence priming of regulation words such as “control” and “restrain” reduces negative stereotype salience, only if prejudice is made salient • Moskowitz, Salomon & Taylor (2000): priming chronic egalitarian goals increases stereotype control

9. The present study • Subliminally prime compunction related words in addition to regulation words and neutral words • Test prejudice via responses to overt stereotypical statements • Compunction should have same effect as regulation, reducing prejudice

10. Method • 120 White British participants; Blacks as the target group • Complete version of Modern Racism questionnaire beforehand (as in Araya et al., 2002, to activate outgroup concept)

11. Manipulation • Parafoveally primed with words in “word recognition” task, 16 ms with mask after • Either neutral words (“cheese”), regulation words (“control”), or compunction words (“guilt”, “shame”, “regret”)

12. Measures • Nonspecific stereotype activation: Srull & Wyer (1978) “Donald” task with stereotypic adjectives • Explicitly expressed prejudice: stereotypes about British Blacks from Lepore & Brown (1997), both positive (e.g. ATHLETIC) and negative (e.g. UNINTELLIGENT), as well as non-stereotypic negative words (e.g., CLUMSY) and factual traits (e.g. BROWN-EYED); participants endorse as more typical of Blacks than Whites

13. Afterwards • Plant & Devine (1998) IMS-EMS scales • EMS example: “If I acted prejudiced toward Blacks I would be concerned that others would be angry with me” • IMS example: “I am personally motivated by my beliefs to be non-prejudiced toward Blacks”.

14. Implicit stereotypic traits No effects of priming on generalized “Donald” story negative stereotypic trait activation Donald story showed expected effect from prior expression of attitudes toward Blacks (r with racism = .22, p < .05; nonST negative r = -.07)

15. Overt stereotype endorsement Effects of both priming conditions found on yes/no endorsement of negative stereotypical beliefs about Blacks, interacting with prejudice level (19% yes overall) – people with high modern racism most affected No such effects on unrelated negative terms (all p > .40).

16. Regulation priming’s effect on negative stereotype endorsement Racism main beta = .60, p < .001; interaction beta = .-19, p < .05

17. Compunction priming’s effect on negative stereotype endorsement Racism main beta = .55, p < .001; interaction beta = -.26, p < .01

18. Effects on positive stereotype endorsement? • In both manipulation contrasts, marginally significant relation with modern racism (high racism = high positive stereotyping; zero order r = .15 , p = .096) • No interaction of manipulations with racism; regulate contrast shows weak main effect, beta = .21, p = .06, such that regulation priming promotes less positive stereotyping

19. Effects on post-measure of external and internal prejudice control motives • Manipulations tended to reduce high prejudice individuals’ subjective motivation, as opposed to neutral group and other research (high prej. = more external, low prej. = more internal)

20. Regulation priming’s effect on subjective external motivation Racism main beta = .24, p < .05; interaction beta -.25, p < .05 No effect on internal motivation

21. Compunction priming’s effect on subjective external motivation Racism main beta = .27, p < .05; interaction beta = -.21, p = .059

22. Compunction priming’s effect on subjective internal motivation Racism main beta = -.49, p < .05; interaction beta = -.27, p < .01

23. Conclusions • Priming regulatory and compunction concepts didn’t affect mere stereotype activation, but did reduce explicit negative stereotype endorsement • The most prejudiced were the most affected, possibly because they had the most room to change on the yes-no measure • Contrast with other results of our studies in which people told they are prejudiced feel more compunction, change their behavior (e.g., give more money to minority oriented groups), but felt compunction has nothing to do with behavior change.