The Galvanic Skin Response as a Measure of Emotion in Prejudice

The Identification of Prejudicial Attitudes by the Galvanic Skin Response

“…T h e first two studies (2,3 ) provided evidence in support of this view. These studies showed a consistent relationship between prejudicial-attitude strength and affectivity level.…”

“…This study was designed as an extension of two previous studies (2,3 ) which provided physiological evidence in support of the view that prejudicialattitudes are affectively fortified.…”

Studies in the Physiological Component of Aggression-Related Social Attitudes

“…Some early studies indicated that racially prejudiced white subjects respond with greater arousal (as measured with skin conductance) to being touched by a black "experimenter" (Rankin and Campbell, 1955), or by visual presentations of blacks (Cooper and Pollock, 1959;Cooper and Siegel, 1956;Vidulich and Krevanick, 1966;Westie and DeFleur, 1959). Such studies showed that attitudes measured by verbal response scaling have an emotional component measurable as autonomic responsivity (see also Staats, et al, 1962 Dickson andMcGinnes, 1966).…”

Emotion in Prejudice

“…The basic prediction was: an excessive galvanic skin response to a complimentary statement concerning a group identifies that group as the object of a negative prejudicial attitude. In this study, subjects were not first screened and selected upon the basis of attitude scale results.~ Nothing was known of a 7 subject's attitudes prior to his coming to the laboratory. Seventy-two college student subjects were individually measured for galvanic skin response.…”