Priming Crime and Activating Blackness: Understanding the Psychological Impact of the Overrepresentation of Blacks as Lawbreakers on Television News

Abstract

Two experiments examined the extent to which U.S. viewers' perceptions that Blacks face structural limitations to success, support for the death penalty, and culpability judgments could be influenced by exposure to racialized crime news. Participants were exposed to a majority of Black suspects, a majority of White suspects, unidentified suspects, and noncrime news stories. In addition, participants' prior news viewing was assessed. In Study 1, heavy news viewers exposed to unidentified perpetrators were less likely than heavy news viewers exposed to noncrime stories to perceive that Blacks face structural limitations to success. In addition, heavy news viewers exposed to unidentified perpetrators were more likely than heavy news viewers exposed to noncrime stories to support the death penalty. In Study 2, participants exposed to a majority of Black suspects were more likely than participants exposed to noncrime stories to find a subsequent race-unidentified criminal culpable for his offense. In addition, heavy news viewers were more likely to exhibit the above effect than light news viewers. The methodological and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed in light of chronic activation and the priming paradigm.

The Influence of News Media on Stereotypic Attitudes Toward Immigrants in a Political Campaign

“…This effect is in the range found by prior surveys (Dixon, 2008b) and experiments (Dixon & Azocar, 2007). This small effect size may be mainly due to the design of the present study.…”

“…Experiments have shown that negative depictions of minorities can activate stereotypic attitudes in the audience (Dixon & Azocar, 2007;Domke, 2001;Gilliam & Iyengar, 2000;Power, Murphy, & Coover, 1996). Survey studies also indicate that news exposure is related to biased perceptions (Armstrong, Neuendorf, & Brentar, 1992) and attitudes toward ethnic minorities (Dixon, 2008a(Dixon, , 2008bVergeer, Lubbers, & Scheepers, 2000).…”

Media Effects on Racial Attitudes: Evidence from a Three-Wave Panel Survey in a Political Campaign

“…Notably, even the presentation of single exemplars is likely to activate negative stereotypes that can color the perceptions of a whole social group (Bodenhausen, Schwarz, Bless, & Wänke, 1995;Dixon & Azocar, 2007). Other experiments also reveal that racial cues produce negative perceptions of minorities, such as dispositional attributions (Power, Murphy, & Coover., 1996), social judgments (Ford, 1997), or policy opinions (David, 2009;Domke, 2001).…”

Experimental Studies of Media Stereotyping Effects

“…Constant exposure to media stereotypes makes them chronically accessible, especially for heavy media consumers. Even subtle, implicit cues such as varying the racial composition (African-American or White American) of criminal suspects in the news (Dixon & Azocar, 2007), facial features and skin tone of alleged offenders (Oliver, Jackson, Moses, & Dangerfield, 2004), and racial/ethnic identity of subjects in the photograph of online news stories (Abraham & Appiah, 2006) are sufficient to influence subsequent social reality judgments.…”

“…Typically, the conditions include majority group members only, minority group members only, or a mix of both. For instance, Dixon and Azocar (2007) varied the racial composition of suspects in news stories to be majority Black or majority White. Very rarely, studies include media portrayals of more than one minority group, which allows for studying comparative stereotyping effects among minority groups (Ramasubramanian & Oliver, 2007).…”