Effect of Alcohol on Race-Biased Responding: The Moderating Role of Internal and External Motivations to Respond Without Prejudice

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

et al. 2015

125

166

Although performance on laboratory-based implicit bias tasks often is interpreted strictly in terms of the strength of automatic associations, recent evidence suggests that such tasks are influenced by higher-order cognitive control processes, so-called executive functions (EFs). However, extant work in this area has been limited by failure to account for the unity and diversity of EFs, focus on only a single measure of bias and/or EF, and relatively small sample sizes. The current study sought to comprehensively model the relation between individual differences in EFs and the expression of racial bias in three commonly used laboratory measures. Participants (N=485) completed a battery of EF tasks (session 1) and three racial bias tasks (session 2), along with numerous individual difference questionnaires. The main findings were as follows: (1) measures of implicit bias were only weakly intercorrelated; (2) EF and estimates of automatic processes both predicted implicit bias and also interacted, such that the relation between automatic processes and bias expression was reduced at higher levels of EF; (3) specific facets of EF were differentially associated with overall task performance and controlled processing estimates across different bias tasks; (4) EF did not moderate associations between implicit and explicit measures of bias; and (5) external, but not internal, motivation to control prejudice depended on EF to reduce bias expression. Findings are discussed in terms of the importance of global and specific EF abilities in determining expression of implicit racial bias.

Section: The Role Of Control In the Expression Of Implicit Racial Biassupporting

confidence: 54%

Toward a comprehensive understanding of executive cognitive function in implicit racial bias.

Ito¹,

Friedman

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

et al. 2015

125

166

“…The first possibility is that alcohol, as suggested by our examples above, will simply increase the general negativity of peoples' evaluations (as it increases the use of negative stereotypes; see Bartholow et al, 2006, 2012; Reeves & Nagoshi, 1993; Schlauch et al, 2009). If this occurs, our two measures will allow us to examine whether the effect is limited to the racial attitudes participants explicitly endorse, or whether it also influences the currently accessible race-based evaluative associations assessed by our implicit measure.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In recent years, a number of studies have shown that alcohol consumption – a practice serving important group bonding functions (Sayette et al, 2012) that has a deep history in virtually all cultures (World Health Organization, 2011) – can significantly increase the impact of race on subsequent responding (see Bartholow, Dickter, & Sestir, 2006; Bartholow, Henry, Lust, Saults, & Wood, 2012; Reeves & Nagoshi, 1993; Schlauch, Lang, Plant, Christensen, & Donohue, 2009). This can lead to a variety of negative outcomes, such as perceiving more hostility in an African American's behavior (Reeves & Nagoshi, 1993) and more frequently misperceiving harmless objects as guns after seeing a Black male face (Schlauch et al, 2009).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This can lead to a variety of negative outcomes, such as perceiving more hostility in an African American's behavior (Reeves & Nagoshi, 1993) and more frequently misperceiving harmless objects as guns after seeing a Black male face (Schlauch et al, 2009). Unfortunately, such effects do not seem limited to the laboratory, as there are numerous real-world anecdotes in line with these findings.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As highlighted by alcohol myopia theory (Steele & Josephs, 1990), one of alcohol's primary effects is to alter the judgment and decision making process, causing people to become more reliant on whatever information is currently accessible in mind (e.g., Abroms, Fillmore, & Marczinski, 2003; Curtin & Fairchild, 2003; Giancola, Josephs, Parrott, & Duke, 2010; MacDonald, Fong, Zanna, & Martineau, 2000). Because of this, the drug can push judgment and behavior in either positive (e.g., Fairbairn, Sayette, Levine, Cohn, & Creswell, 2013) or negative directions (e.g., Bartholow et al, 2012; Reeves & Nagoshi, 1993; Schlauch et al, 2009), depending on the particular mental content that is most salient at the time (Steele, Critchlow, & Liu, 1985; Steele & Josephs, 1988). These results, coupled with other work indicating that alcohol does not uniformly increase the accessibility of negative outgroup stereotypes (Bartholow et al, 2006, Experiment 1), are in-line with the alcohol myopia-derived prediction that alcohol's effects on racial attitude expression will depend upon whatever evaluative content is currently in mind.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Intoxicated prejudice: The impact of alcohol consumption on implicitly and explicitly measured racial attitudes

Loersch

Group Processes & Intergroup Relations

Manning

et al. 2014

Recent research has shown that alcohol consumption can exacerbate expressions of racial bias by increasing reliance on stereotypes. However, little work has investigated how alcohol affects intergroup evaluations. The current work sought to address the issue in the context of the correspondence between implicit and explicit measures of anti-black attitudes. Participants were randomly assigned to consume an alcoholic (target BAC of 0.08%), placebo, or control beverage prior to completing implicit and explicit measures of racial attitudes. Although beverage condition did not affect prejudice levels on either measure, it did change the correlation between them. Implicitly measured attitudes significantly predicted explicit reports of prejudice and discrimination only for participants who consumed alcohol. We discuss the implications of our findings for debates regarding dissociations between implicit and explicit measures and the cultural phenomenon of intoxicated individuals attributing prejudiced statements to alcohol consumption rather than personal attitudes.

Effects of exposure to alcohol‐related cues on racial discrimination

Степанова

Saults

et al. 2017

Euro J Social Psych

Prior research has shown that exposure to alcohol‐related images exacerbates expression of implicit racial biases, and that brief exposure to alcohol‐related words increases aggressive responses. However, the potential for alcohol cue exposure to elicit differential aggression against a Black (outgroup) relative to a White (ingroup) target—that is, racial discrimination—has never been investigated. Here, we found that White participants (N = 92) exposed to alcohol‐related words made harsher judgments of a Black experimenter who had frustrated them than participants who were exposed to nonalcohol words. These findings suggest that exposure to alcohol cues increases discriminatory behaviors toward Blacks.