Changing prejudice: The effects of persuasion on implicit and explicit forms of race bias

The 20th century produced some of the most sweeping campaigns of persuasion the world has ever witnessed, and at their cores were issues of race. In the most notorious act of mass persuasion, Adolf Hitler convinced millions of people to support the genocide of the Jewish people in Europe—a most extreme form of racism. In the United States, the mid–20th cen-tury was marked by the rise of the civil rights movement, and leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr. campaigned with messages of racial tolerance and equality. The effect of Hitler’s message of hate was undeniable. But what has been the effect of campaigns for racial toler-ance? Have people’s prejudices changed? Psychologists might ask the question: In what ways have racial attitudes changed, and how can such changes be measured?1 If there is one thing that researchers of racial prejudice can agree on, it is that prejudice is exceedingly complex. At its core, however, racial prejudice has been defined in a straight-forward manner. Social psychologist Gordon Allport defined prejudice as a negative attitude that puts the object of prejudice at a disadvantage (Allport, 1954). As will become clear later in the chapter, this definition may be deceptively simple when evaluating evidence concern-ing changes in racial prejudice and the effects of persuasive campaigns. To set the stage fo