Cognitive Ability, Prejudice and Social Desirability. An Analysis of Explicit and Implicit Prejudice Measurements

Previous research has shown that a substantial fraction of the negative relation between education and prejudice is mediated by cognitive capacity. However, the nature of the direct relation between cognitive capacity and prejudice remains ambiguous, and the role of social desirability often remains underinvestigated. We conducted a survey among undergraduate students (N=143) including different dimensions of cognitive ability, explicit (i.e. intergroup emotions) as well as implicit measures of prejudice (i.e. the Implicit Association Test), and a social desirability scale. We find a significant relation between linguistic cognitive ability and the explicit prejudice measure, but not for the implicit prejudice measure. However, the significant results of the explicit prejudice scale are rendered less robust when we correct for the influence of social desirability. We close with some observations on how the remaining effects for cognitive ability and prejudice could be explained.status: publishe