Race of source effects in the Elaboration Likelihood Model.

Abstract

In a series of experiments, we investigated the effect of race of source on persuasive communications in the Elaboration Likelihood Model (R.E. Petty & J.T. Cacioppo, 1981, 1986). In Experiment 1, we found no evidence that White participants responded to a Black source as a simple negative cue. Experiment 2 suggested the possibility that exposure to a Black source led to low-involvement message processing. In Experiments 3 and 4, a distraction paradigm was used to test this possibility, and it was found that participants under low involvement were highly motivated to process a message presented by a Black source. In Experiment 5, we found that attitudes toward the source's ethnic group, rather than violations of expectancies, accounted for this processing effect. Taken together, the results of these experiments are consistent with S.L. Gaertner and J.F. Dovidio's (1986) theory of aversive racism, which suggests that Whites, because of a combination of egalitarian values and underlying negative racial attitudes, are very concerned about not appearing unfavorable toward Blacks, leading them to be highly motivated to process messages presented by a source from this group.

The effects of defendant race, victim race, and juror gender on evidence processing in a murder trial

“…It has usually been understood from the archival data that White victims are worth more than minority victims in the coldblooded calculus of capital crimes. White and Harkins (1994) have argued that Whites are strongly motivated to process information from an African-American source so as not to appear prejudiced. The present data support this contention when the mean number of evidentiary facts recalled by the males (see Table 4) is scrutinized.…”

Majority versus minority influence: the role of message processing in determining resistance to counter‐persuasion

“…Stigmatized sources are ones that contain 'members of social categories for which significant segments of society hold negative attitudes and beliefs' (Petty et al, 1999, p. 19) and as such they share many characteristics with minorities. Research shows that a stigmatized source leads to increased systematic processing of its message compared to a non-stigmatized source (see also White & Harkins, 1994). We focus on an intermediate processing situation in our research for two reasons; first, because the interaction between source status and processing strategy found here offers the best situation in which to test a range of social influence theories, and second because it is the situation in which most persuasion attempts occur (cf.…”

Cognitive effects of racial diversity: White individuals’ information processing in heterogeneous groups

“…Another motivation that could lead to more thorough information processing in diverse groups (see Petty & Cacioppo, 1986) is the desire of many Whites to avoid appearing racially biased. Indeed, previous studies have found that Whites often guard against prejudice by processing more systematically information conveyed by a Black source (e.g., Petty, Fleming, & White, 1999;White & Harkins, 1994) or about a Black target (e.g., Sargent & Bradfield, 2004). A racially heterogeneous group composition could exert similar effects.…”