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Abstract
Previous research demonstrates that social consensus information (information about other people's beliefs) has a powerful influence on intergroup attitudes. The present study examined the influence of consensus information on helping behavior. White participants were provided with favorable or no consensus information about African Americans, and then we assessed their racial attitudes and their willingness to help an African American versus a White person. Replicating previous findings, we found that individuals who received favorable, as compared to no, consensus information had more favorable attitudes toward African Americans. More importantly, our results demonstrated that participants who received favorable consensus information were more likely to help an African American individual than those who did not receive consensus information. Consensus information did not influence behavior toward a White person. In understanding when and why consensus information influences stereotypes and prejudice, we hope to create a useful method to reduce negative intergroup attitudes and behaviors.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We thank our undergraduate research assistants, especially Gail Brock and Annette Burden, for the many hours they spent working on this project.
Notes
1Two African American women and two White women were responsible for the roles of the female targets in this study. There were no significant effects due to individual differences of the targets, and thus experimenter was not included as a factor. In addition, this finding provides support that our results were due to the race of the target and not due to some other idiosyncratic difference.
2The experimenter who conducted the survey also recorded if the participant helped the target pick up the papers, how many pieces of paper the participant picked up, and how much the individual helped. However, because the experimenter was aware of the participant's assigned condition, the target's ratings were used in the analyses. Regarding the coding of whether or not the participant help, the two raters' codings of these measures were identical, K = 1.0. Regarding how many pieces of paper the participant picked up and how much the individual helped, the two raters' codings were positively correlated, r(88) = .98, p < .001 and r(88) = .92, p < .001, respectively.