Research Article Prejudice From Thin Air The Effect of Emotion on Automatic Intergroup Attitudes

Two experiments provide initial evidence that specific emotional states are capable of creating automatic prejudice toward outgroups. Specifically, we propose that anger should influence automatic evaluations of outgroups because of its functional relevance to intergroup conflict and competition, whereas other negative emotions less relevant to intergroup relations (e.g., sadness) should not. In both experiments, after minimal ingroups and outgroups were created, participants were induced to experience anger, sadness, or a neutral state. Automatic attitudes toward the in-and outgroups were then assessed using an evaluative priming measure (Experiment 1) and the Implicit Association Test (Experiment 2). As predicted, results showed that anger created automatic prejudice toward the outgroup, whereas sadness and neutrality resulted in no automatic intergroup bias. The implications of these findings for emotion-induced biases in implicit intergroup cognition in particular, and in social cognition in general, are considered. Since the heyday of frustration-aggression and scapegoating theories of prejudice (e.g., Dollard, Miller, Doob, Mowrer, & Sears, 1939), social psychologists have recognized that intergroup relations, and the stereotypes and prejudices that inevitably accompany them, are influenced by perceivers ’ emotional states. As in the case of attitudes more generally, emotions have been found to influence when, and to what extent, people express positive or negative attitudes toward, and beliefs about, members of in- and outgroups (Bodenhausen, Mussweiler