Hostility-Related Prejudice Against Turks in Adolescents: Masked Affective Priming Allows for a Differentiation of Automatic Prejudice

Abstract

The masked affective priming task was used as an unobtrusive measure of intergroup prejudices in a sample of German adolescents (aged 13–15). Pictures of Turks and Germans were used as masked primes that preceded positive and negative target adjectives conveying either other-relevant valence (e.g., honest, evil) or possessor-relevant valence (e.g., talented, dull). Affective priming indices (denoting relative negativity of Turkish primes) were positively correlated with the open expression of prejudices towards Turks and foreigners in general in questionnaires as well as with discriminative interaction behavior in a virtual ball-tossing game. As expected, these correlations were found only for priming indices based on other-relevant targets, thereby emphasizing the differentiation of automatic prejudice into (imputed) hostility and depreciation.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The research reported in this article was supported by a grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) to Dirk Wentura (WE 2284/3).

Notes

¹“Awareness of the primes” can be differentiated into “objective” and “subjective” awareness (Merikle, 1984). “Subjective” awareness means that participants cannot report on the identity of the primes. “Objective” awareness means that in a direct test in which participants have to categorise the masked primes, performance is at chance level. In the studies cited above, subjective awareness was always given, although in some studies the direct test indicated performances somewhat above chance level.

²Actually, Peeters (1983) used the terms possessor- and other-profitability.

³With basic priming effects we refer to affective priming effects measured when normatively positive and negative words are included as primes, that are not related to one specific attitude object but rather represent a wide variety of positive and negative stimuli. In the mentioned study these were different trait words (e.g., cruel, lonely) rather than attitude objects.

⁴It seems that masked affective priming effects are more stable when only few primes are massively repeated throughout the task (e.g., Otten & Wentura, 1999). However, to lend some generalisability to the task, we used two equivalent sets constituting a between-participants factor (see also below).

⁵It has been repeatedly shown that emphasis on speeded responses promotes affective priming effects. Typically, this is realised by a response-window procedure (Draine & Greenwald, 1998; see also Frings & Wentura, 2003; Otten & Wentura, 1999; Wentura et al., 2005). However, we suspected that these rather unusual and difficult instructions might be too complex for eight-graders.

∗∗∗p < .001

∗∗p < .01.

^a 1 = female, 2 = male.

⁶A criterion of significance of α = 5 % (two-tailed, unless otherwise noted) is adopted for all analyses throughout the article.

⁷The assignment of participants to one of the prime sets (see Materials) did not affect any of the results and will therefore not be included in the results section.

∗p < .05

⁺ p < .05 (one-tailed).

^a 1 = female, 2 = male.

⁸The regression weight was β = 0.43, p < .05, if the nonsignificant predictor possessor—relevant priming (see below) was removed.

Scales were 1 to 5 (for ingroup–typicality) and 1 to 7 (for attractiveness and emotionality) with higher values indicating more ingroup–typicality, higher attractiveness, and a more positive facial expression, respectively.