What's in a Flag? Subliminal Exposure to New Zealand National Symbols and the Automatic Activation of Egalitarian Versus Dominance Values

ABSTRACT

Three experiments tested whether the subliminal presentation of national symbols automatically elicited societally prescribed normative values in the New Zealand (NZ) context using a lexical decision task. Consistent with research in the United States, the presentation of the NZ flag (Study 1), but not another consensually validated NZ national symbol (The Silver Fern, Study 2), increased the cognitive accessibility of egalitarian value concepts. The NZ flag did not, however, activate values in a comparable sample of foreign nationals (Study 3). National flags, it seems, automatically activate normative values for ingroup members, and this effect is not limited to nations with a high frequency of flag-display behavior such as the United States.

Keywords:

• lexical decision task
• national symbols
• subliminal prime
• values

Notes

1. Identical results were observed when only majority group members (NZ Europeans) were included in the analysis.

2. Consistent with Butz et al., (2007), comparable (non-significant) results for patriotism and nationalism were also observed when high-low (median split scores) were entered as an additional between subjects condition in the ANCOVA in both Studies 1 and 2.

3. Identical results were observed when only majority group members (NZ Europeans) were included in the analysis.