Media and the priming of stereotypes : Direct effect of news articles racial stereotypes on individuals judgements of people of foreign extraction.

The present research examined both automatic and controlled processes in newpapers ability of priming racial stereotypes via the portrayals of people of foreign extraction. The automatic process were examined through articles which; a) involved an illegal act or b) the act was not illegal but morally questionable. Swedish-born subject’s explicit opinions against foreign people were also measured through “The Modern Racial Prejudice Scale”. In the experiment participants read four different articles which included; Swedish person/noncrime, foreign person/noncrime, Swedish person/crime and foreign person/crime. The central hypothesis was that news containing people of foreign extraction primes racial stereotypes which are subsequently brought to bear on subject’s evaluations of that person’s characteristics. A 2 ´ 2 ´ 2 ANOVA splitt-plot design revealed that there was no significant difference in judgments of the different articles depending on race or content . A distinction between sterotype activation and sterotype application are discussed.tessan_d@hotmail.co