Psychological Reactions to Crime News Portrayals of Black Criminals: Understanding the Moderating Roles of Prior News Viewing and Stereotype Endorsement

Abstract

An experiment examined the extent to which viewers’ death penalty application, perceptions of crime danger, and culpability assessments could be influenced by exposure to a majority of Black suspects in the news or having the race of suspects go unidentified in a newscast. The current study also investigated the extent to which prior news viewing and African American stereotype endorsement might moderate the effects of this racialized crime news exposure. After exposure to a majority of Black suspects or unidentified suspects in a newscast, African American stereotype endorsers were more likely than stereotype rejecters to support the death penalty. Furthermore, heavy television news viewers exposed to a majority of Black suspects were more likely than light news viewers to perceive the world as dangerous and view a race-unidentified suspect as culpable for his offense. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed in light of social cognition theories of priming, cognitive accessibility, stereotype activation and application.

Keywords:

• Social Cognition
• Stereotyping
• Media Effects
• News
• Crime News
• African Americans
• Priming

This study was partially funded by a grant from the Howard R. Marsh Center for Journalistic Performance at the University of Michigan. The University of Michigan Institutional Review Board approved the conductance of this research. An earlier version of this work was presented at the National Communication Association, Boston, November 2005.

Notes

1. T-tests and p-values confirmed that there were no significant differences between the Black and White photos utilized in the study. Pair 1: criminal, t(23) = 0.59, p < .56, dangerous, t(23) = 0.48, p < .63; Pair 2: criminal, t(23) = 0.00, p<1.00, dangerous, t(23) = 0.00, p < 1.00, Pair 3: criminal, t(23) = 0.55, p < .59, dangerous, t(23) = 1.30, p < .21; Pair 4: criminal, t(23) = 0.91, p < .37, dangerous, t(23) = − 0.18, p < .86; Pair 5: criminal, t(23) = 0.67, p < .51, dangerous, t(23) = 1.20, p < .24; Pair 6: criminal, t(23) = 0.79, p < .52, dangerous, t(23) = − 0.65, p < .52; Pair 7, criminal, t(23) = 1.10, p < .28, dangerous, t(23) = 0.24, p < .81.

2. Stereotype endorsement and news viewing habits are largely considered stable traits not susceptible to priming effects (Devine, 1989; Fiske & Taylor, 1991; Gilliam & Iyengar, 2000). For example, scholars have conceptualized racial attitudes as relatively stable belief systems that are in fact largely resistant to change (Hewstone, Hopkins, & Routh, 1992; Hewstone, Macrae, Griffiths, Milne, & Brown, 1994; Johnston & Hewstone, 1990; Park, Wolsko, & Judd, 2000; Richards & Hewstone, 2001; Wicks, 1992). Similarly, much of the work undertaken on news viewing suggests that news consumption is largely integrated into daily habits (Tewksbury, 2003). However, in order to verify that stereotype endorsement and news viewing were not affected by the manipulation, two one-way ANOVAs were run with the crime news conditions as the independent variable, and African American stereotype endorsement and prior news viewing as the dependent variables. Neither the stereotype endorsement ANOVA, F(3, 274) = 1.37, p < .32, nor the prior news viewing ANOVA, F(3, 274)=.44, p < .72, were statistically significant. This finding provides some evidence that self-reported stereotype endorsement and prior news viewing were not influenced by the manipulation.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Travis L. Dixon

Travis L. Dixon (PhD, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1998) is Assistant Professor of Speech Communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is primarily interested in the portrayal of people of color in the mass media and the effects of these images on audiences