Effects of Exposure to Alcohol-Related Cues on Racial Prejudice

Abstract

Abstract. Prior research ( Stepanova, Bartholow, Saults, & Friedman, 2012 ) indicates that exposure to alcohol-related cues increases expressions of racial biases. This study investigated whether such effects can be replicated with other tasks assessing racial bias and whether they stem from stereotyping or prejudice. In two experiments participants (N1 = 118; N2 = 152) were exposed to either alcohol-related or neutral advertisements, and then completed a race-priming lexical decision task (LDT, Wittenbrink, Judd, and Park, 1997) . Experiment 1 provided weak evidence that exposure to alcohol cues decreases positive attitudes toward Blacks, which was not confirmed in a high-powered replication (Experiment 2). Our findings suggest a short-lived nature (if any) of alcohol priming effects on racial bias when measured by the primed LDT.

Effects of exposure to alcohol‐related cues on racial discrimination

“…It is also possible that current analyses failed to produce moderation effects because we failed to measure the most relevant expectancy domain, such as the expectation that alcohol increases race bias or reduces social inhibitions. Unfortunately, no such measures exist in the literature, and our previous attempts to construct them (Stepanova et al, 2012;Stepanova, Bartholow, Saults, Friedman, & Hollis, 2017) failed to show any moderation effects. Further, statistical power to detect moderation effects was low in the current study, regardless of which expectancy domain is considered.…”