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Do Narratives Change Implicit Race Biases?
Alaa Alshaibani, Alexandra Spangler, & Shailee Woodard
Pacific Lutheran University – Psychology 242
Introduction
Hypothesis
References
Methods
Materials
● Four Possible Vignettes:
A: A positive emotional story about a
black man who pulled himself out of poverty
with the help of a gracious store owner and
was able to support his family and become
successful.
B: A negative emotional story about a
black man who stole money from a store
owner for his drug addiction and was put in
prison.
C: A positive factual story in which a
struggling black man bettered his life
circumstances, but left out background
information about his life and his family and
focused instead on the details of the events.
D: A negative factual story about a black
man who stole and went to prison, with no
added emotional details.
● Reading survey (manipulation test; to
measure their emotional responses to the
story and how much attention and focus
they paid to it. )
● Racial Implicit Association Test (Race IAT)
● Debriefing survey with demographic
(race/ethnicity) question
Baron, A. S., Banaji, M. R. (2006).The development of implicit
attitudes. Association for Psychological Science, 17(1).
Blanton, H., Jaccard, J., Klick, J., Mellers, B., Mitchell, G.,
Tetlock, P.E. (2009). Strong claims and weak evidence:
Reassessing the predictive validity of the IAT. Journal of Applied
Psychology, 94(3) 567-582. doi: 10.1037/a0014665
Graham, S., & Lowery, B. S. (2004). Priming unconscious racial
stereotypes about adolescent offenders. Law And Human
Behavior, 28(5), 483-504.
doi:10.1023/B:LAHU.0000046430.65485.1f
Nosek, B. A., Banaji, M. R., & Greenwald, A. G. (2002).
eResearch: Ethics, security, design, and control in psychological
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176.
Wallaert, M., Ward, A., Mann, T. (2010) Explicit control of implicit
responses: Simple directives can alter IAT performance. Social
Psychology, 41(3) 152-157. doi: 10.1027/1864-9335/a000022
● The purpose of our study was to examine whether
priming with vignettes that were positive or
negative and emotional or factual affected implicit
bias on race, measured with the established Race
IAT.
● The Race Implicit Association Test is an online test
meant to measure subconscious biases between
European Americans and African Americans
(Nosek, Banaji, & Greenwald, 2002).
● Implicit biases showing preference towards
European Americans over African Americans are
present in children as young as six (Baron, A. S. &
Banaji, M. R., 2006).
● IAT results were not predictive of racist behaviors
as examined in a previous study (Blanton et al.,
2009).
● Simply telling a participant to be careful not to
stereotype has been shown to alter their racial IAT
score (Wallaert, M., Ward, A., & Mann, T., 2010).
● Through vignette priming of racial stereotypes in a
juvenile justice system, explicit biases could be
altered (Graham, S., & Lowery, B. S., 2004).
● In the present study, we used emotional and
factual stories as well, which differed from previous
research that used only positive or negative.
H1: Overall, those who read the positive story
about a Black individual will display less of a bias
towards African Americans than those who read
the negative story.
H2: Emotional stories will elicit a stronger
response in bias than stories more focused on
the facts.
H3: Therefore, those who read a story with a
positive emotional (A) valence will have less of a
negative bias toward African American
individuals. Those who read the positive factual
(C) story would have second lowest negative
bias, followed by the negative factual (D) story,
and followed lastly by those who read the
negative emotional (B) story.
Participants
• Sample of 63 college psychology
students.
• Participants included 37 Whites, 4
Blacks, and 22 multiple/other races.
Results
Main Analysis
A 2 (Story Type: Emotional or Factual) X 2
(Emotional Valence: Positive or Negative)
independent measures analysis of variance
(ANOVA) was conducted on Race IAT scores,
which could range from strong preference for
European American compared to African
American (1) to Strong preference for African
American compared to European American (7).
The results were not statistically significant. See
Table 1 for means and standard deviations.
Further Analysis
● Analysis was ran testing for any effects of the
race/ethnicity of the participant (White, Other
Race) on the Racial IAT results.
● Results showed that race/ethnicity did not
significantly affect racial IAT results.
Manipulation Checks (Survey Questions)
● Analysis was also run testing for any effects of
participant’s reading survey responses (e.g.,
how much they recalled and liked the
characters).
● For survey question one:
○ Those who read the positive stories liked
the character significantly more.
● For survey question two:
○ Those who read the positive stories were
significantly happier for the character.
● For survey question three:
○ Those who read the positive stories
reported that they understood the story
significantly more.
● For survey question four (how much
participants remembered of the story):
○ No significant differences.
● For survey question five :
○ Those who read the negative stories did not
care for the character significantly more.
○ Those who read the factual versions also
did not care significantly more.
● For survey question six:
○ Those who read the negative stories
reported feeling significantly more sad for
the character.
○ Those who read the emotional versions also
reported feeling significantly more sad for
the character.
Discussion
● The emotional valence (positive or negative)
of the story and story type (emotional or
factual) as well as the interaction between the
two were all non significant and not predictive
of the racial IAT results, meaning that our
vignettes did not seem to alter implicit biases.
● Because those who read negative stories
reported significantly less understanding,
there may be discrepancies in our narratives
that affected IAT results.
Limitations
Because we measured participants’ racial IAT
results against each others and did not
measure participants’ initial racial IAT scores, it
could be true that the vignettes did alter
individuals’ implicit biases without us knowing it
did.
Table 1: Descriptives by Emotional/Factual &
Positive/Negative Valence
Procedure
● Participants signed up via Sona Systems
● Participants were administered one of the
four vignettes. They read the vignette, then
filled out the reading survey.
● Participants then took the Race IAT.
● Participants were debriefed, then filled out a
debriefing survey to make sure that we
adequately explained the study and to
check for any possible confounding factors.
Tables
Figure 1: Sample Question in the Racial IAT Test
Emotional Factual
Story Type
+/-
n M(SD) n M(SD)
Positive + 15 2.26 (1.03) 17 2.47 (1.46)
Negative - 15 2.67 (1.45) 16 2.62 (1.09)
Overall 30 2.46 (1.25) 33 2.54 (1.27)