Wherever you go, you will be observing human behavior, and it is difficult not to make a judgment about people after observing how they behave. You might consider three people on a crowded bus to be kind if you see them give up their seats so a mother can sit down with her two young children. You might consider a grocery store employee to be rude if you asked him where to find the milk and he rolled his eyes and sighed heavily before directing you to its location. These two judgments would be logical—kind in the first case and rude in the second—because that is the type of people they appeared to be.

However, social psychologists are more concerned with the external social conditions that influence behavior. Maybe only one of the people on the bus acted kindly and the other two gave up their seats because they did not want to be perceived as unkind by others on the bus. Perhaps the grocery store employee is usually kind, but he behaved rudely because he has been told to work an extra shift at the last minute and it means he will likely miss a friend’s birthday party. If you attribute someone’s behavior to her or his personality, your judgment may underestimate the social conditions that influenced the behavior. When explaining the causes of someone’s behavior, underestimating or discounting the social situation results in what social psychologists call an attribution error.

 For your assignment this week, you will look at a scenario and consider how the cause of a person’s behavior may be explained better by situational influences than one’s personality or internal disposition. 

 

• Review the Learning Resources for this week and consider how the causes of a person’s behavior may be explained by situational factors.
• Consider the following scenario for this Assignment:                                                                              

 Imagine that you have been summoned for jury duty in the United States. If you are selected to be on the jury,     you will be hearing a rape case where a 23-year-old female alleges sexual assault. In order to select the jury (a     process known by the Latin term voir dire), both the prosecutor and defense attorney question the jury pool to identify and dismiss for cause people who have strong opinions about the subject matter, who already know about the case, or who may be biased for or against either party to the trial. Attorneys may also dismiss members of the jury pool who they think will not be favorable to their case. These types of dismissals are called peremptory challenges and the attorneys have a limited number of them.                                                                                                                                             

During the process of jury selection, you notice the prosecutors are using their limited peremptory challenges to dismiss most of the young women from the jury pool. You find this peculiar, given that young women would seem to be most favorable to the prosecution’s case.

 

Submit 1–2 pages, not including title page and reference page:

• Informed by social psychology theory, explain why the prosecutor was reluctant to seat young women on the jury. Please provide a detailed explanation for this seemingly odd behavior.

In addition to the Learning Resources, search the Walden Library and/or Internet for peer-reviewed articles to support your Assignment. Use proper APA format and citations, including those in the Learning Resources.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9OF3wHDw0M

Where Does the Buck Stop? Applying
Attribution Theory to Examine Public

Appraisals of the President

CIGDEM V. SIRIN
University of Texas at El Paso

JOSÉ D. VILLALOBOS
University of Texas at El Paso

This study applies attribution theory to examine public appraisals of the president. To
date, most political science research on attribution theory has focused on domestic policy, and no
work has considered both domestic and foreign policy domains in tandem. To fill this gap, we
formulate and experimentally test a series of hypotheses regarding the level of responsibility and
credit/blame that individuals attribute to the president in both policy domains across varying
policy conditions. We also consider how party compatibility affects people’s attribution judg-
ments. Our findings provide a new contribution to the literature on political attributions,
executive accountability, and public perceptions of presidential performance.

Modern presidents have increasingly taken on a public leadership role in the
political arena. Through wars, economic crises, and increased civic demands, presidents
have sought more involvement and influence in overseeing public affairs (Edwards 1983),
a development accompanied by an exponential growth and institutionalization of the
executive branch (Burke 2000; Hart 1995). Amid such developments, the media has
focused on the president as the most salient political actor (Farnsworth and Lichter 2006;
see also Brody 1991), while public polling surveys have consistently connected the
president’s job performance with conditions in the foreign and domestic policy domains

Cigdem V. Sirin is assistant professor of political science at the University of Texas at El Paso. She has recently
published her work in Acta Politica, International Political Science Review, and the International Journal of
Conflict Management.

José D. Villalobos is assistant professor of political science at the University of Texas at El Paso. He has recently
published articles in Political Research Quarterly, Administration & Society, the International Journal of Public
Administration, and Review of Policy Research.

AUTHORS’ NOTE: We wish to thank Nick Valentino and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful insights
and comments on this project.

Presidential Studies Quarterly 41, no. 2 (June) 334
© 2011 Center for the Study of the Presidency

(see Edwards 1990). Subsequently, the public has developed growing expectations for
presidents to be responsive to their needs (Cohen 1995, 1999).

In the course of such systemic and institutional changes, presidents have, particu-
larly during election campaigns, reinforced and embellished the perception that they
have the means to solve the nation’s problems. However, presidents consistently fall short
of keeping their promises to the public, revealing a gap between public expectations of
the president and the president’s capacity for governing (see Cronin 1977). In the midst
of this paradox, scholars have become interested in understanding the dynamics that
influence whether and how the public attributes responsibility to presidents for the state
of national affairs and, in turn, the extent to which presidents are able to claim credit in
times of success and avoid blame in times of deteriorating national conditions.

Studies on attribution theory in political science have traditionally focused on the
domestic policy domain, particularly on how the public attributes responsibility to the
president for the state of the economy. By comparison, attribution research in the area of
foreign policy has been scarce, and no work we know of has considered the domestic and
foreign policy domains in tandem, nor examined how the public attributes responsibility
and credit/blame for foreign policy issues to political figures, particularly the president. To
fill this gap in the literature, this study employs an experimental approach to test the
influence that policy domain, policy condition, and party compatibility have on public
appraisals of the president. Our findings provide a new contribution to the literature on
political attributions, executive accountability, and public perceptions of presidential
performance.

Attribution Theory in the Study of Politics

Heider’s (1958) early work in social psychology on the process of causal attribution
served as a springboard for studying how people draw inferences from their own behavior
and the behavior of others (see Heradstveit 1979; Jervis 1976; Larson 1985). Weiner
(1986) later developed a model associating causal attributions with judgments of per-
sonal controllability, affective reactions, and behavior (see also Weiner 1991, 1995). In
another seminal piece, Jones and Nisbett (1972) posited that actors tend to attribute
their actions to situational requirements, whereas observers tend to attribute the same
actions to personal dispositions, a pervasive tendency in social attribution commonly
referred to as the “actor-observer hypothesis.” Ross (1977) later coined the term “funda-
mental attribution hypothesis” to denote the propensity for people to explain the behav-
ior of others mainly by considering dispositional, personality-based factors. These works
have provided a foundation for political scientists to explore systematically public per-
ceptions of responsibility and accountability for political figures as well as perceptions
about political events, issues, and other related phenomena.

As Gomez and Wilson (2003, 273) note, “Attribution is indisputably fundamental
to individual decision making, and has been shown to influence powerfully attitudes toward
the self and others, as well as emotional arousal” (see also Fiske and Taylor 1991; Hewstone
1989; Petty and Cacioppo 1996). In the political arena, attributions of responsibility, credit,

Sirin and Villalobos / WHERE DOES THE BUCK STOP? | 335

and blame are commonly associated with public appraisals of political leaders (Iyengar
1989). Such appraisals, in turn, influence voting behavior (Feldman 1982; Lau and Sears
1981) and voter turnout (Arceneaux 2003; Brody and Sniderman 1977), which are central
to the democratic process. As such, attribution theory provides a useful framework for
understanding public perceptions of political phenomena and their implications (see
Abramowitz, Lanoue, and Ramesh 1988; Feldman 1982; Lau and Sears 1981; Rosenberg
and Wolfsfeld 1977; Rudolph 2006; Rudolph and Grant 2002).

For our purposes, we apply attribution theory vis-à-vis public appraisals of the
president to examine the dynamics within which the public ascribes responsibility and
credit/blame for a given political event or condition, either internally to the actions of the
president or externally to situational factors. More specifically, internal (dispositional)
attribution occurs when an individual perceives a president’s performance—successful or
not—as a product of that president’s personal abilities and actions. Conversely, external
(situational) attribution occurs when an individual perceives a president’s performance as
a product of environmental or other exogenous conditions that are beyond that presi-
dent’s control. As such, whether the public perceives the president to have causal or
functional (role) responsibility, as well as control over certain political events or condi-
tions, largely determines overall perceptions regarding the president’s level of account-
ability (see Arceneaux 2006; Peffley and Williams 1985).

Building on the general dynamics of the attribution model, a growing number of
studies posit that ideology plays an important role in influencing responsibility attribu-
tions (Christiansen and Lavine 1997; Guimond, Begin, and Palmer 1989; Kluegel and
Smith 1986; Lane 1962; Shirazi and Biel 2005; Skitka and Tetlock 1992, 1993; Skitka
et al. 2002; Zucker and Weiner 1993). Skitka et al. (2002) find that situational attribu-
tions for social problems more often correspond with a liberal viewpoint and that liberals
tend to adjust their perceptions of social problems toward external explanations to
increase their cognitive consistency. Conservatives, on the other hand, are more motivated
to seek punishment for individuals who violate what they view as traditional social
norms. Regarding the impact of economic ideology on attribution judgments, because
economic conservatives traditionally ascribe a minimum role for the government in
economic affairs, they are likely to attribute relatively less responsibility to governmental
actors than non-governmental ones (see Rudolph 2003a).

Party cues also play an important role in stimulating ideologically motivated
attribution judgments. For example, people who are partisan supporters of a given president
may attribute less responsibility and give more leeway to that president during declining
national conditions rather than engage in a more objective evaluation of the president’s
policy performance (see Lau and Sears 1981). Thus, there exists a favorable ideological bias
that liberal Democrats hold for Democratic presidents and conservative Republicans hold
for Republican presidents. Nevertheless, Malhotra and Kuo’s (2008) study on Hurricane
Katrina finds that although party cues play an important role in stimulating biased partisan
reactions, individuals with access to information about the specific responsibilities of
government officials are likely to make more evenhanded judgments.

As individuals develop their perceptions of political figures, politicians strive to
shape and manage those perceptions in a number of ways. For instance, presidents are

336 | PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY / June 2011

known to use the presence of divided government to “offer a plausible counterproposal”
that Congress is to blame for negative policy conditions (Nicholson, Segura, and Woods
2002, 704; see also Leyden and Borrelli 1995; Norpoth 2001; Rudolph 2003a, 2003b).
Presidents and other political figures may also attempt to frame negative policy condi-
tions and outcomes in a favorable manner or try to shift public attention to other salient
and more positive policy conditions and outcomes (McGraw 1991; Weaver 1986; see also
Jacobs and Shapiro 2000). In addition, news media coverage and the way reporters frame
events can influence individual perceptions for attributing responsibility to the president
or other political actors (Shah et al. 2004; see also Farnsworth and Lichter 2006).

Last, a number of scholars suggest that an individual’s attribution judgments
regarding political figures also depend on that individual’s level of education and political
sophistication1 (e.g., Duch, Palmer, and Anderson 2000; Gomez and Wilson 2001, 2003).
It makes intuitive sense to expect that highly educated and sophisticated individuals have
a better understanding of the political process and are generally more aware of national
conditions as they relate to governmental performance, which helps such individuals
develop more accurate (or at least more consistent) political and economic evaluations
(Duch, Palmer, and Anderson 2000, 639). However, some studies have found that
individuals who possess high amounts of political knowledge may instead choose to engage
in biased information processing due to affectively charged “hot cognitions” shaped by
partisan motivations (see Taber and Lodge 2006; Duch, Palmer, and Anderson 2000).

Attribution Theory and the Economy

Most studies on attribution theory consider how public judgments of responsibility
concerning the state of the economy affect the perceived accountability and election
prospects of political leaders (see Lewis-Beck and Paldam 2000). In exploring how
individuals respond politically to economic conditions, a number of scholars have argued
that the answer relies partly on the extent to which individuals attribute responsibility
and credit/blame to certain political actors (see Abramowitz, Lanoue, and Ramesh 1988;
Feldman 1982; Lau and Sears 1981; Rudolph 2003a, 2003b, 2006; Rudolph and Grant
2002). For instance, according to the reward-punishment theory, people generally credit
political incumbents for improvements in the economy and blame them otherwise (see
Fiorina 1978; Key 1966; Page 1978). Therein, a number of studies argue that citizens are
more inclined to punish rather than reward the president and other incumbents (e.g.,
Campbell et al. 1960; Key 1966; Mueller 1973). Indeed, Mueller (1970, 23) finds that
a deteriorating economy often harms a president’s popularity, whereas an improving
economy does not necessarily lead to high approval ratings, concluding that “There is
punishment but never reward.”

The reward versus punishment asymmetry is closely related to the concept of
“negativity bias,” which refers to the “greater weight given to negative information,

1. Generally speaking, one’s level of political sophistication denotes one’s range of factual knowledge
and acquired information about politics (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996, 10; Goren 2001, 161). In addition
to using the term “political sophistication,” scholars also employ alternative terms such as “political
information,” “political expertise,” “political knowledge,” or “political awareness.”

Sirin and Villalobos / WHERE DOES THE BUCK STOP? | 337

relative to equally extreme and equally likely positive information in a variety of
information-processing tasks” (Lau 1985, 119). Scholars have extensively explored the
issue of negativity bias in cognitive and social psychology (e.g., Fiske 1980; Ito et al.
1998; Kanouse and Hanson 1972) and in political behavior research, particularly as it
relates to economic voting (e.g., Bloom and Price 1975; Kernell 1977; Lau 1985). For
instance, examining the impact of short-run economic changes on congressional voting,
Bloom and Price (1975) find that although the deterioration of economic conditions
hurts the president’s party, better conditions do not necessarily aid it (see also Kernell
1977). A number of studies also suggest that negativity bias influences public judgments
of presidential character and performance as well as evaluations of presidential candidates
(e.g., Brody 1991; Goren 2002). However, some studies have found no empirical support
for negativity bias, suggesting that its impact may instead be conditional upon other
factors (see, for example, Fiorina and Shepsle 1989; Gant and Davis 1984; Kiewiet 1983;
Lewis-Beck 1988; Radcliff 1988).

With regards to longitudinal dynamics, Peffley (1989) suggests that people develop
their perceptions of presidential competence early on in a president’s term and subse-
quently refer to those perceptions when deciding whether to attribute credit or blame
for economic policy conditions (see also Kinder, Abelson, and Fiske 1979; Miller,
Wattenberg, and Malanchuk 1986; Page 1978; Peffley 1984). He further argues that
such perceptions are open to revision if the president’s continuing performance on the
economy takes a noticeable and lasting turn, for better or worse (see also Fiorina 1981).
Other scholars point out that people may at times use such perceptions to determine
whether a president could handle certain policy problems in the future, particularly when
considering whether to reelect the president for a second term (see Fiorina 1981; Page
1978; Popkin et al. 1976). Thus, individuals are likely to consider past performance as a
“prima facie indicator of the government’s competence (or lack thereof)” (Fiorina 1981,
12). That said, Peffley and Williams (1985, 414) find that rather than blaming the
current president for poor economic conditions, individuals may instead blame the
previous president, especially “during the first half of a new administration.”

As mentioned earlier, a number of studies suggest that the formation and structure
of an individual’s attribution judgments in general and economic voting behavior in
particular may also depend in part on that individual’s level of political sophistication
(e.g., Gomez and Wilson 2001, 2003; Goren 1997; Sniderman, Brody, and Tetlock 1991;
see also Godbout and Bélanger 2007). According to Gomez and Wilson (2007, 555), “less
sophisticated individuals tend to make conceptually proximal attributions, focusing credit
or blame on the single most obvious actor in the relevant sphere, while more sophisticated
individuals tend toward diffuse attributions, dividing credit or blame between proximal and
distal agents.” Applying their proximal/distal attribution argument (which they refer to as
the “theory of heterogeneous attribution”) to the context of presidential economic voting,
Gomez and Wilson (2001, 2003, 2007) argue that because less sophisticated citizens
primarily tend to credit/blame themselves for their own economic circumstances and
attribute responsibility for the national circumstances exclusively to the president, they
are more likely to vote sociotropically (i.e., based on national economic conditions). By
comparison, sophisticated individuals are more likely to engage in pocketbook voting (i.e.,

338 | PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY / June 2011

based on personal economic conditions) since they better understand the impact that
macroeconomic policies have on their personal economic well-being while recognizing that
the economy is also affected by numerous other actors and economic forces that lie beyond
the president’s control (see also Abramowitz, Lanoue, and Ramesh 1988, 856-57).2

Attribution Theory and Foreign Policy

Compared to scholarship on attribution theory regarding the domestic policy
domain, scholars have done considerably less work in the realm of foreign policy. Among
the small number of attribution studies on foreign policy, scholars have focused on the
general perceptions of decision makers and the public concerning international events
and conflicts. To our knowledge, almost no work has systematically examined how the
public attributes responsibility and credit/blame to political figures, particularly the
president, with regards to foreign policy issues.

Jervis’s (1976) study on foreign policy decision making marked the first application
of attribution theory in the field of international relations. Specifically, Jervis addresses how
leaders’ perceptual/attributional errors concerning a given set of issues and political actors
may impair their ability to collect and process information for decision making. On a parallel
basis, Rosenberg and Wolfsfeld (1977) explore how decision makers interpret the reasons
behind the actions of their adversaries during a conflict and the effects of such causal
perceptions on the types of policies they propose. Larson (1985) also applies attribution
theory to explain the containment policies employed by U.S. political leaders during the
Cold War. In another study, Heradstveit and Bonham (1986) examine the attributions of
American and Norwegian officials regarding Soviet activities in Norway. Later on,
Heradstveit and Bonham (1996) conduct in-depth interviews with Arab elites to investigate
attributions regarding the Gulf War and the actions of the Iraqi government.

Regarding the dynamics of foreign policy attributions among the public, most
studies refer to the in-group versus out-group bias, which suggests that people tend to
attribute foreign policy successes and positive acts on the part of their in-group to
internal causes while attributing the causes of their own failures and negative acts to the
out-group and other external factors (see Tajfel and Turner 1979). In a similar vein,
people resort to external attributions in response to the success and/or positive behavior
of an out-group, whereas they make attributions to internal characteristics when the
out-group displays signs of failure and/or negative actions (see, for example, Bizman and
Hoffman 1993; Dresler-Hawke 2005; Heradstveit and Bonham 1996; Hewstone 1990;
Hulsizer et al. 2004; Islam and Hewstone 1993; Pettigrew 1979; Rosenberg and Wolf-
sfeld 1977). Studies have found evidence of such in-group/out-group bias by comparing
the attribution judgments of various groups in conflict, including those of Israelis versus

2. One should note that a number of scholars offer alternative theorizing and empirical evidence
contradicting Gomez and Wilson’s findings regarding the link between political sophistication and economic
voting behavior (e.g., Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996; Goren 1997; van der Brug, van der Eijk, and Franklin
2007). Such scholars argue that because gathering and processing information about the state of the national
economy is a far more difficult task than evaluating one’s own financial situation, sociotropic voting may be
more common among sophisticated voters, whereas less sophisticated voters may more often engage in
pocketbook voting (Godbout and Bélanger 2007, 543; Fiorina 1981; Krause 1997; Lupia 1994).

Sirin and Villalobos / WHERE DOES THE BUCK STOP? | 339

Arabs regarding the Middle East conflict (see Bizman and Hoffman 1993; Heradstveit
1979; see also Rosenberg and Wolfsfeld 1977), Protestants versus Catholics in Northern
Ireland (Hunter and Stringer 1999), Hindus versus Muslims in southern India (Taylor
and Jaggi 1974), and Muslim versus Christian habitants of the island of Mindanao in the
Philippines (Montiel and Macapagal 2006). In addition, recent studies find that political
leaders can take advantage of such biased perceptions to legitimize the use of force against
a historical adversary (Bandura 2004; Sabucedo, Blanco, and De la Corte 2003).

Exploring Public Attributions of Responsibility to the President

As previously noted, most research on attribution theory has focused on the domestic
policy domain, particularly the economy. However, scholars have done relatively little work
on responsibility attributions in the foreign policy domain and, no work has considered both
policy domains in tandem or examined how the interaction of policy domain, policy
condition, and party compatibility influence public appraisals of the president. To fill this
gap in the literature, we formulate and test a series of hypotheses regarding the overall level
of responsibility and credit/blame that individuals attribute to presidents in both domestic
and foreign policy domains across varying policy conditions. In doing so, we also consider
the role that party compatibility plays in mediating people’s attribution judgments.

Scholars note that the public confers a much higher degree of deference to the president
on foreign policy issues compared to domestic ones (Cohen 1995; Hill 1998; Hurwitz
1989; see also Peterson 1994; Schlesinger 1973). Given the fact that Congress has long
relinquished much of its foreign policy decision-making power to the president by essen-
tially surrendering its constitutional authority to declare war (see Fisher 2000), modern
presidents are now more than ever equipped with greater military and diplomatic powers
over foreign affairs (Peake 2001). Consequently, the public has become increasingly
dependent on presidential leadership when it comes to issues concerning foreign policy,
particularly national defense, wherein presidents operate not just as chief executives, but also
under the moniker of “commander in chief” (see Holsti 2004; Hurwitz 1989).

In the domestic policy domain, although dire economic conditions such as rising
inflation and unemployment may cause great concern among the public and a heightened
focus on the president in dealing with them, scholars point out that the president and
Congress generally share constitutional and statutory power for shaping macroeconomic
policy (Arnold 1990; Keech 1995; West 1987). Particularly with respect to the economy,
there are numerous additional external factors that shape economic conditions over which
the president and Congress have a limited amount of political control and influence (see
Tufte 1978). Therein, we expect that the public is likely to hold the president relatively
less responsible for domestic policy conditions than for foreign policy conditions. Accord-
ingly, due to the president’s more centralized control over the foreign policy domain amid
congressional and public deference to the president, we hypothesize the following:

H1: People are likely to attribute a relatively higher amount of credit/blame and responsi-
bility to the president for issues concerning the foreign policy domain than for those
concerning the domestic policy domain.

340 | PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY / June 2011

In social psychology research, an established finding is that people tend to engage in
“group-serving attribution bias” when making causal attributions; that is, they tend to
attribute successes to in-group members and attribute failures to out-group members (Fiske
and Taylor 1991; Hewstone 1990). Applying this notion of in-group/out-group bias to party
compatibility, political scientists have developed the “partisan rationalization hypothesis”
(see Rudolph 2003a, 2003b). The empirical findings indicate that partisans are more likely
to believe that their own party can best solve economic problems (Peffley, Feldman, and
Sigelman 1987; Sigelman and Knight 1985) and that presidents from the opposite party
are to blame for economic downturns (Peffley and Williams 1985; Tyler 1982). Accordingly,
partisans tend to attribute more responsibility for favorable economic conditions to
presidents or governors of their own party than those from the opposing party (Gomez and
Wilson 2001; Rudolph 2003a, 2003b). So far, scholars have generally focused on examining
group-serving attribution bias based on partisan rationalizations only with respect to the
state of the economy (but see Malhotra and Kuo 2008). We retest the partisan rationalization
hypothesis in a more general setting to include both domestic and foreign policy domains.
In accordance with previous findings, we hypothesize the following for both policy domains:

H2: If people are of the same party as the president, they are likely to attribute less blame and
responsibility to the president for deteriorating policy conditions, and attribute more
credit and responsibility to the president for improving policy conditions than people of
the opposing party.

Given our expectations that the public should perceive presidents as having greater
control and jurisdiction over issues of foreign policy than domestic policy (H1), we also
anticipate that the tendency for individuals to engage in group-serving attribution bias
based on partisan rationalizations (H2) is more pronounced in the realm of foreign policy.
In other words, compared to the level of biased partisan attributions in the domestic policy
domain, we anticipate that people will display even more biased attributions for foreign
policy issues given a president of their own party versus a president of the opposing party.
We thereby propose that people will attribute more responsibility and credit for foreign
policy successes to a president of their own party and attribute more responsibility and blame
for foreign policy failures to a president from the opposition party, than they would for
domestic policy successes and failures. Accordingly, we hypothesize the following:

H3: The interactive effects of party compatibility and policy conditions suggested in H2 will
be stronger in the foreign policy domain.

Method

To test our hypotheses, we conduct an experiment that provides a direct examina-
tion of attribution judgments under a controlled setting.3 One-hundred and forty-nine
upper-level undergraduate students (71 female and 78 male) took part in this experi-

3. The full experimental questionnaire is available upon request.

Sirin and Villalobos / WHERE DOES THE BUCK STOP? | 341

ment.4 We randomly assigned the participants to eight experimental conditions, in a
2x2x2 between-groups factorial design composed of three manipulated factors: (1) policy
domain [domestic (economy) versus foreign (war)], (2) policy condition (deteriorating
versus improving), and (3) party compatibility (same party as the president versus
opposing party).5 The experimental conditions were presented as hypothetical news
updates. In addition to the experimental manipulations, we also included “political
sophistication” in the experiment as a covariate, which we measured using a conventional
knowledge scale with 18 factual test items. Given the presence of this covariate factor, the
method we employ is analysis of covariance (ANCOVA).

Operationalization of the Dependent Variables

The dependent variables we analyze are (1) attribution of responsibility to the
president and (2) attribution of credit/blame to the president. To measure these variables,
we asked the participants to complete a questionnaire following their exposure to the
experimental scenarios. First, they were asked how responsible they thought the presi-
dent was for the state of the policy issue they read about on a scale of 0 to 10. Then,
regarding the distribution of credit/blame (depending on the policy condition), they were

4. A few comments are warranted regarding our use of the experimental method. Whereas political
scientists in general acknowledge the high internal validity of experimentation as means of testing hypoth-
eses, debate continues over the external validity of this method. Therein, most criticism is directed at the use
of college students (Sears 1986) and the artificiality of laboratory settings (Huckfeldt and Sprague 1995;
Luskin 1990) with respect to the representativeness of experimental samples, as well as the generalizability
of experimental results.

In response to such criticism, we echo the sentiments expressed by Mook (1983, 386) that, “what makes
research findings of interest is that they help us understand everyday life. That understanding, however, comes
from theory or the analysis of mechanism; it is not a matter of ‘generalizing’ the findings themselves.” In other
words, our research objective and the conclusions we draw from our experiment relate solely to the logic of our
theory and hypotheses. As such, we neither intend to estimate the characteristics of a given population from
sample characteristics nor to draw inductive conclusions about that population. We also emphasize that our
experiment is designed to study the policy preferences and decision making processes of the general public rather
than that of elite decision makers. Otherwise, using students in an experiment to study elite behavior would
be problematic. With regards to this study, our use of experimentation is an appropriate method since the
real-world equivalent of our student sample is the public, not the political elite (see Mintz, Redd, and Vedlitz
2006).

5. In comparing manipulated factors across experimental conditions, Morton and Williams (2008, 342;
see also Morton and Williams 2010) aptly address one of the most prominent misconceptions regarding
experimentation—the notion that for each experimental group that receives a treatment, there must always be
a baseline control group receiving no treatment at all:

In the out of date view of political experimentation, control refers to a baseline treatment that
allows a researcher to gather data where he or she has not intervened. But many experiments do
not have a clear baseline, and in some cases it is not necessary. For example, suppose a researcher
is interested in evaluating how voters choose in a three-party election conducted by plurality rule
as compared to how they would choose in an identical three-party election conducted via
proportional representation. The researcher might conduct two laboratory elections where
subjects’ payments depend on the outcome of the election, but some subjects vote in a proportional
representation election and others vote in a plurality rule election. The researcher can then compare
voter behavior in the two treatments.

With respect to our experiment, the proper baselines, in accordance with our hypotheses, are each
experimental condition in comparison to one another. Moreover, adding an extra control group with no treatment
(e.g., having a separate group read a technical report from NASA) to our experimental design that already
encompasses three experimental factors would in fact complicate the analyses to the point of obtaining
unintelligible results.

342 | PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY / June 2011

asked to rank the president and four alternative potential sources from 1 to 5, where “1”
signified the highest level of credit/blame and “5” signified the lowest ranking. For the
domestic policy condition, the sources included the president, the previous administra-
tion, business circles, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC),
and the state of the global economy. For the foreign policy condition, the sources included
the president, the previous administration, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO), the United Nations, and the newly elected government of the fictitious country
the United States was depicted to be at war with.

Experimental Scenarios and Manipulations

We designed the experiment around eight hypothetical scenarios in the form of
news updates, each one set in the near future with a fictitious president.6 The structure
and content of each experimental scenario were held constant except for the manipulated
factors. Four of the scenarios were set around the state of the economy, and the other four
concerned the state of a fictitious war. This served as our manipulation of policy domain.
Among the scenarios addressing the economy, half of the scenarios described the state of
the economy as deteriorating and the other half as improving. The same logic applied to
the foreign policy scenarios with one-half of the scenarios depicting the policy condition
as deteriorating and the remaining scenarios depicting the policy condition as improving.
This served as our manipulation of policy condition.

For the manipulation of party compatibility, we followed a quasi-experimental pro-
cedure. At the beginning of the experiment, participants completed a short questionnaire
in which they were asked to indicate their party identification. Thereafter, they were
exposed to one of the eight hypothetical scenarios where for each policy domain and
policy condition scenario, the fictitious president in office was from either the Democratic
Party or the Republican Party. After the experiment, we coded the cases where a
participant shared the same party as the president in a given scenario as “same party” or
otherwise as “opposing party.” Since this study focuses on party compatibility between an
individual and the president with regards to whether one is of the same or opposing party
as the president, 17 of the 149 participants who identified themselves as independents at
the start of the questionnaire were subsequently excluded from the analyses, resulting in
a sample size of 132 participants.

6. As Gartner (2008) suggests, experimental designs that use hypothetical scenarios provide the
researcher a way to get a handle on the broader range of processes concerning public opinion by enabling one
to manipulate and vary the factors of interest in accordance with one’s research objectives. Employing
hypothetical scenarios also helps prevent any bias or confusion that might arise by referring to present or past
time real-world actors and events, which would contaminate the validity and reliability of the findings.
Nevertheless, experimenters should avoid developing hypothetical scenarios that are unrealistic or artificial.
With these considerations in mind, we created our experimental scenarios in the form of fictional news updates
designed in close concert to the type of content found in real news stories by using the Vanderbilt Television
News Archive database (see http://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu). In addition, we set the experimental scenarios in the
year 2018 so that the participants would not inadvertently confuse the fictional setting with that of the current
political atmosphere. Indeed, because Barack Obama’s presidency may stretch until the year 2016 and because
participants could interpret the year 2016 differently as a presidential election year, we employ the year 2018
to depict the midpoint of a future president’s first or second term. In doing so, we are confident that 2018 serves
as a point in time far enough into the future to avoid participant confusion with current and near-future events,
but not too far into the future that participants cannot fathom what societal conditions might look like.

Sirin and Villalobos / WHERE DOES THE BUCK STOP? | 343

The experiment also included manipulation checks. At the end of the experimental
questionnaire, we asked the participants (in accordance with the experimental scenario
they were exposed to) to recall the following: (1) which political party the president was
from (Democratic or Republican) and (2) what the policy condition was (deteriorating or
improving) as described in the news update they read. Out of the 132 participants,
91.67% of the respondents recalled the experimental conditions accurately. As such, the
manipulation checks served to ensure that the manipulations worked as intended by our
experimental design, thus confirming the internal validity of our experiment.7

Political Sophistication as a Covariate

As mentioned earlier, several scholars suggest that political sophistication may have
a significant impact on an individual’s attribution judgments (Gomez and Wilson 2001,
2003). To control for such effect, we included a conventional measure of political
sophistication—one’s general knowledge of domestic and international politics—as a
covariate in our models. Specifically, we administered a questionnaire on general political
knowledge with a total of 18 factual test items at the end of the experiment. We modeled
the questionnaire based on items from the National Election Surveys (NES), Gomez and
Wilson’s (2001) study, Prior’s (2002) study, and Taber and Lodge’s (2006) study. The
questionnaire consisted of three segments: (1) domestic political knowledge, (2) recog-
nition of important national and foreign political figures, and (3) foreign policy knowl-
edge. We then aggregated the separate scores of the three sections to obtain a total score
of each participant’s level of general political knowledge.

We estimated a commonly used reliability statistic, Cronbach’s alpha, in order to
check whether each constitutive section of the questionnaire measured the same under-
lying construct (here, political sophistication) and could thus be combined together to
generate an additive scale. Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient for this scale is 0.74,
which is sufficiently high as per the widely accepted criterion of 0.70 or higher used to
determine the internal consistency of summated scales (see Nunnally 1978). Therefore,
the results justify the formation of an index variable.

Results

Overall, the experimental results corroborate our expectations concerning the
effects that policy domain, policy condition, and party compatibility have on the amount
of responsibility and credit/blame attributed to the president. Specifically, the results

7. In our analyses, we do not exclude the data from the participants who failed to accurately recall
the experimental conditions they were in, since such failure closely reflects real-world circumstances wherein
some members of the public often fail to correctly identify the political party of the president or accurately
describe certain policy conditions. Previously, we had overlooked this consideration and had instead con-
ducted our analyses by excluding the data from the participants who failed the manipulation checks. The
results of these previous analyses (which are available upon request) do not differ substantively from our final
analyses. We thank the anonymous reviewer who brought this issue to our attention and recommended the
more conservative tests of our hypotheses, which helped increase confidence in our inferences.

344 | PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY / June 2011

demonstrate that policy domain has a significant main effect on attribution judgments,
indicating that people place a greater amount of credit/blame and responsibility on the
president in the foreign policy domain with respect to the issue of war as compared to the
domestic policy domain with respect to the economy. In addition, the interaction
between policy condition and party compatibility displays statistical significance, sug-
gesting that people attribute more blame and responsibility for deteriorating conditions
and less credit and responsibility for improving conditions to an opposition party
president compared to a president of their own party, particularly regarding war in the
foreign policy domain.

Attribution of Responsibility

Table 1 shows the results of our analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) concerning the
effects of policy domain, policy condition, and party compatibility on attribution of
responsibility to the president. Following their exposure to one of the eight experimental
scenarios, participants were asked to indicate the level of responsibility (on a scale of 0 to
10) they thought the president should hold concerning a given policy issue depicted in
that scenario. Our findings indicate that the attribution of responsibility to the president
is significantly higher in the foreign policy domain (M = 6.55) than in the domestic
policy domain (M = 5.89), which corroborates our first hypothesis (H1), F (1,
123) = 3.68, p < .05.

The results for our second hypothesis (H2) concerning the interaction between
policy condition and party compatibility are also statistically significant and in the
expected direction, F (1, 123) = 16.09, p < .001. As Figure 1 shows, in the case of deteriorating policy conditions, participants attributed more responsibility to a president of the opposing party (M = 6.71) than to a president of the same party (M = 5.36). On the other hand, in the case of improving policy conditions, the level of responsibility that participants attributed to a president of their own party was significantly higher (M = 7.13) than the amount they attributed to a president of the opposing party (M = 5.70).

TABLE 1
Attribution of Responsibility to the President—Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA)

Independent Variables SS Df MS F-value p-value

Policy domain (domestic/foreign) 13.436 1 13.436 3.680 <.05 Policy condition (deteriorating/improving) 4.478 1 4.478 1.226 >.05
Party compatibility (same/opposing) .051 1 .051 .014 >.05
Policy domain * Policy condition 15.133 1 15.133 4.145 <.05 Policy domain * Party compatibility 1.331 1 1.331 .365 >.05
Policy condition * Party compatibility 58.755 1 58.755 16.092 <.001 Domain * Condition * Compatibility 6.151 1 6.151 1.685 <.10 Political sophistication 4.600 1 4.600 1.260 >.10
Residual 449.100 123 3.651
N = 132

Sirin and Villalobos / WHERE DOES THE BUCK STOP? | 345

The three-way interactive effect of policy domain, policy condition, and party
compatibility is moderately significant, F (1, 123) = 1.68, p < .10. In line with our third hypothesis (H3), the proposed effects of policy condition and party compatibility on the level of responsibility attributed to the president are stronger for the foreign policy domain (see Figure 2). More specifically, regarding deteriorating policy conditions, the difference between the mean scores of responsibility attributed to a president by partici- pants of the opposing party and those belonging to the same party in the foreign policy domain is larger [(Mopposing = 7.71) - (Msame = 5.71) = 2.00] than the difference in the domestic policy domain [(Mopposing = 5.70) - (Msame = 5.00) = 0.70]. By the same token,

FIGURE 1. Interactive Effect of Policy Condition and Party Compatibility on Attribution of
Responsibility to the President.

FIGURE 2. Three-Way Interactive Effect of Policy Domain, Policy Condition, and Party
Compatibility on Attribution of Responsibility to the President.

346 | PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY / June 2011

regarding improving policy conditions, the difference between the mean scores of respon-
sibility attributed to a president by participants of the same party and those of the
opposing party in the foreign policy domain is larger [(Msame = 7.23) – (Mopposing = 5.56) =
1.67] than the difference in the domestic policy domain [(Msame = 7.03) –
(Mopposing = 5.84) = 1.19].

Apart from the experimental results directly concerning our hypotheses, there are
a number of other interesting findings that also warrant discussion. Primarily, the results
show that the interaction between policy domain and policy condition is significant, F (1,
123) = 4.14, p < .05. Specifically, the participants attributed a markedly higher amount of responsibility to the president for deteriorating conditions in the foreign policy domain (M = 6.71) than in the domestic policy domain (M = 5.35). By comparison, the difference in the means regarding responsibility attributions to the president for improv- ing conditions is considerably small between foreign and domestic policy domains (M = 6.39 and M = 6.43, respectively). Although the main effect of policy condition is not significant (p > .5), the results concerning the interaction of policy condition with
policy domain suggest the presence of a negativity bias in the foreign policy domain,
wherein participants attribute higher responsibility to the president for deteriorating
conditions than improving ones. Furthermore, the weight of the negativity bias is
amplified in the foreign policy domain where responsibility attributions for deteriorating
conditions are much greater as compared to the domestic policy domain. Last, political
sophistication as a covariate in the model does not demonstrate a statistically significant
effect on participants’ responsibility attributions to the president.

Attribution of Credit/Blame

Table 2 shows the results of our analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) concerning the
effects of policy domain, policy condition, and party compatibility on attribution of
credit/blame to the president. Each participant, once exposed to a particular experimental
scenario, was asked to distribute credit or blame (depending on the policy condition) for
a given policy issue by ranking the president along with four other potential sources,

TABLE 2
Attribution of Credit/Blame to the President (Ranking 1-5)—Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA)

Independent Variables SS Df MS F-value p-value

Policy domain (domestic/foreign) 6.556 1 6.556 4.162 <.05 Policy condition (deteriorating/improving) 5.662 1 5.662 3.594 >.05
Party compatibility (same/opposing) 1.177 1 1.177 .747 >.05
Policy domain*Policy condition .823 1 .823 .523 >.05
Policy domain*Party compatibility 1.153 1 1.153 .732 >.05
Policy condition* Party compatibility 19.384 1 19.384 12.304 <.001 Domain*Condition*Compatibility 4.162 1 4.162 2.642 <.10 Political sophistication 2.611 1 2.611 1.658 <.10 Residual 193.779 123 1.575 N = 132

Sirin and Villalobos / WHERE DOES THE BUCK STOP? | 347

where “1” denoted the highest ranking of credit/blame and “5” denoted the lowest
ranking. Similar to the findings regarding the attribution of responsibility, our results
concerning the attribution of credit/blame with respect to policy domain indicate that
participants ranked the president significantly higher in the foreign policy domain
(M = 2.53) than in the domestic policy domain (M = 2.99), which corroborates our first
hypothesis (H1), F (1, 123) = 4.16, p < .05.

The results also demonstrate a statistically significant interactive effect between
policy condition and party compatibility, F (1, 123) = 12.30, p < .001. As Figure 3 shows, in the case of deteriorating policy conditions, participants ranked a president of the opposing party higher for blame (M = 2.48) than a president of the same party (M = 3.47). By comparison, in the case of improving policy conditions, participants ranked a president of the same party higher for credit (M = 2.25) than a president of the opposing party (M = 2.85). These results corroborate our second hypothesis (H2).

Last, the three-way interaction between policy domain, policy condition, and party
compatibility concerning the attribution of credit/blame displays a moderately signifi-
cant effect, F (1, 123) = 2.64, p < .10. In line with our third hypothesis (H3), the proposed effects of policy condition and party compatibility on attributions of credit/ blame are stronger in the foreign policy domain than in the domestic policy domain (see Figure 4). Specifically, for the attribution of blame concerning deteriorating policy conditions, the difference between the mean ranking of the president by participants of the same party and those of the opposing party is larger in the foreign policy domain [(Msame = 3.25) - (Mopposing = 2.08) = 1.17] than in the domestic policy domain [(Msame = 3.70) - (Mopposing = 2.88) = 0.82]. Likewise, for the attribution of credit concern- ing improving policy conditions, the difference between the mean ranking of the presi- dent by participants of the opposing party and those of the same party is larger in the foreign policy domain [(Mopposing = 2.98) - (Msame = 1.82) = 1.16] than in the domestic policy domain [(Mopposing = 2.72) - (Msame = 2.67) = 0.05].

FIGURE 3. Interactive Effect of Policy Condition and Party Compatibility on Attribution of
Credit/Blame to the President (Ranking 1-5, where 1 = Highest Ranking).

348 | PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY / June 2011

Last, in contrast to the results concerning attribution of responsibility to the
president, we find that the interaction between policy domain and policy condition is
not significant for the attribution of credit/blame (p > .5). In addition, the main effect
of policy condition is also not significant (p > .5). On the other hand, political sophis-
tication as a covariate in this model demonstrates a moderately significant effect on
participant attributions of credit/blame to the president, F (1, 123) = 1.65, p < .10. Upon closer examination of the parameter estimates for this variable, we find that participants with higher levels of political knowledge tend to give lower rankings to the president regarding the attribution of credit/blame (b = .038, t = 1.29). This finding is in line with previous studies suggesting that less sophisticated individuals tend to attribute credit or blame to the single most obvious political actor (here, the president), while more sophisticated individuals tend to engage in more diffuse attri- butions, dividing credit or blame between proximal and distal agents (see Gomez and Wilson 2001, 2003, 2007).8

8. We also analyzed the covariate effect of sophistication specific to each policy domain by splitting
the data into the subsets of foreign and domestic policy domains. The results show that the effect of
sophistication regarding credit/blame attribution is mainly driven by the domestic policy domain (p < .05), whereas the difference in credit/blame attribution between sophisticated and less sophisticated participants is largely washed out in the foreign policy domain (p > .10). As such, the results corroborate Gomez and
Wilson’s (2001, 2003) theory of heterogeneous attribution suggesting that sophisticated and less sophisti-
cated individuals differ in their attribution judgments with respect to the economy. At the same time, the
results also indicate that such attributional divergence based on political sophistication does not seem to hold
in the foreign policy domain with respect to war. This may be because sophisticated and less sophisticated
individuals both associate war more directly with the president as commander in chief. The results of these
additional split data analyses are available upon request.

FIGURE 4. Three-Way Interactive Effect of Policy Domain, Policy Condition, and Party
Compatibility on Attribution of Credit/Blame to the President (Ranking 1-5, where 1 = Highest
Ranking).

Sirin and Villalobos / WHERE DOES THE BUCK STOP? | 349

Discussion and Conclusion

Given the expectations gap between public perceptions of power and actual presi-
dential capacity, scholars have increasingly investigated the dynamics that shape public
appraisals of the president. Building on and extending previous research, we applied an
experimental approach to test how policy domain, policy condition, and party compat-
ibility influence public attributions of responsibility and credit/blame to presidents. Our
findings demonstrate that the public directs a greater amount of credit/blame and
responsibility to the president in the foreign policy domain with respect to war than in
the domestic policy domain with respect to the economy. Our findings also show that
people attribute more blame and responsibility for deteriorating conditions and less
credit and responsibility for improving conditions to a president of the opposing party
compared to a president of their own party, particularly regarding war in the foreign
policy domain.

Our study offers several implications pertaining to the presidency. Regarding
policy domain, our findings that presidents receive more credit for success (and more
blame for failure) on the issue of war as compared to the economy may relate to the
dynamics of presidential approval ratings, especially in connection with rally effects
(Mueller 1973). Typically, international rally effects on presidential approval are often
larger than domestic rally effects, including the effects of economic changes. Such
disparity in part reflects the fact that foreign policy events and crises that lead to rallies
tend to be sudden and dramatic while economic conditions tend to change more slowly,
thereby dispersing public reactions across time. Nevertheless, such differences in the
magnitude and duration between international and domestic rally effects may also be
partly related to different patterns of attribution observed between foreign and domestic
policy domains. Our findings further suggest that presidents who choose (or are forced)
to focus on foreign policy may find their standing in the polls to be more volatile than
presidents who prioritize domestic policy issues given the magnification of successes and
failures abroad due to the public’s proclivity to place more responsibility and more
credit/blame on the president in the foreign policy domain.9

The implications of our findings concerning party compatibility are also notewor-
thy and provide additional incentives for further research. Specifically, the finding that
partisan attachments lead to biased attributions of credit/blame and responsibility to the
president gives credence to the idea that presidents may benefit from emphasizing their
accomplishments and downplaying their failures or shortcomings as a means to rally
support among their party base, particularly in the foreign policy domain. However,
partisan opponents can likewise exaggerate failures and trivialize presidential successes in
an effort to undermine a president’s public standing. Given the presence of such partisan
bias in attributions of credit/blame and responsibility, one interesting question for
scholars to explore is how moderates and independents form their attribution judgments
of the president. In an increasingly polarized and partisan environment where political

9. We thank the anonymous reviewer who suggested these valuable points.

350 | PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY / June 2011

parties are constantly seeking to take credit for successes and avoid (or redirect) blame for
failures, do moderates and independents develop less biased evaluations of presidential
performance or do they simply become agitated or apathetic? Given the importance of the
“median voter” for politics (see Downs 1957), especially with regards to policy-making
and electoral outcomes, further scholarly investigations that address these questions are
warranted.

Further extending the scope of this line of research, one may examine how the
involvement of Congress and its level of discretionary power in the policy process mediate
public attributions of responsibility and credit/blame to the president. For instance, in
the foreign policy realm, although modern presidents have dominated over the legislative
branch when it comes to war, Congress holds a significant amount of shared discretion
with the president concerning other issues, such as foreign trade (see Peake 2001). In
cases where presidents and members of Congress share (and compete for) discretion over
policy direction, expectations about public appraisals for either institution are less clear.
To date, although there exist some studies that have examined issues such as how divided
government influences presidential approval ratings (see Nicholson, Segura, and Woods
2002) or how the perceived functioning of different levels of government affects voting
decisions (Arceneaux 2006), our understanding of the relationship between the “insti-
tutional context and the assignment of political responsibility” remains incomplete
(Rudolph 2003b, 190). Accordingly, future studies should consider how the level of
policy discretion may influence the manner in which the public apportions responsibility
and credit/blame to the president and Congress over a given policy issue.

Another alternative avenue for future research would be to experimentally manipu-
late political sophistication. Although we included a common measure of political
sophistication—one’s general political knowledge—as a covariate in our analytical
models, applying an experimental manipulation of political information along with the
random assignment of participants to experimental conditions would allow researchers to
better control for extraneous factors such as intelligence, motivation, and personal inter-
est. One way to experimentally manipulate political sophistication would be to provide
varying levels of information about certain issues to participants and then observe how
such manipulations may alter participants’ attribution judgments regarding presidential
performance.

Last, although our study provides new insights regarding the dynamics within
which the public ascribes responsibility and credit/blame to the president, our focus on
the issues of war and the economy are not fully representative of each domain, and
therefore our findings should not be overly generalized. Indeed, Ripley and Franklin
(1991) point out that the range of foreign policy issues is wide and diverse, and the same
may be said about the domestic policy realm. As such, future studies should look beyond
the issues of war and the economy to examine how the public attributes responsibility to
presidents across other foreign and domestic policy issues. Regarding foreign policy, one
might consider public attributions with respect to global trade pacts, international
treaties on environmental issues, or diplomacy issues and sanctioning policies related to
the prephases of war. On the domestic front, one might explore public attributions of
responsibility concerning issues such as health care, civil rights, education, or welfare.

Sirin and Villalobos / WHERE DOES THE BUCK STOP? | 351

To conclude, despite the limited influence and capacity presidents have for solving
the nation’s most pressing problems, their position atop the governmental hierarchy
obliges them to be responsive to the public’s demands for effective policy leadership. In
an era of growing polarization, partisanship, and intense media scrutiny, modern presi-
dents face a significant uphill battle when it comes to earning and maintaining positive
public appraisals for their performance in the White House as they take on numerous
challenges during the course of their term. As was the case recently, although President
Barack Obama was swept into office in 2008 amid much fanfare and high public
expectations, he soon suffered a steady drop in public approval as he attempted to deal
with the economic recession, two wars, health care reform, and a host of other issues.
Thereafter, Obama witnessed—and was partly blamed for—a record loss of Democratic
congressional seats during the 2010 midterm elections (Fifield 2010). In the midst of
these shifts in public sentiment and voting behavior, presidential scholars, advisors,
pundits, and other prognosticators continue to struggle in their efforts to better com-
prehend the forces that influence public perceptions of presidential policy performance.
Accordingly, further scholarly investigations in this line of research are necessary for
developing a greater understanding of the dynamics that shape executive accountability
and public appraisals of the president.

References

Abramowitz, Alan I., David J. Lanoue, and Subha Ramesh. 1988. “Economic Conditions, Causal
Attributions, and Political Evaluations in the 1984 Presidential Election.” Journal of Politics 5
(November): 848-63.

Arceneaux, Kevin. 2003. “The Conditional Impact of Blame Attribution on the Relationship between
Economic Adversity and Turnout.” Political Research Quarterly 56 (March): 67-75.

———. 2006. “The Federal Face of Voting: Are Elected Officials Held Accountable for the Functions
Relevant to Their Office?” Political Psychology 27 (October): 731-54.

Arnold, R. Douglas. 1990. The Logic of Congressional Action. New Haven, CT: Yale University

Press.

Bandura, Albert. 2004. “The Role of Selective Moral Disengagement in Terrorism and Counterterror-

ism.” In Understanding Terrorism: Psychosocial Roots, Consequences, and Interventions, eds. Fathali M.
Moghaddam and Anthony J. Marsella. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association,
121-50.

Bizman, Aharon, and Michael Hoffman. 1993. “Expectations, Emotions, and Preferred Responses
Regarding the Arab-Israeli Conflict.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 37 (March): 139-59.

Bloom, Howard, and H. Douglas Price. 1975. “Voter Response to Short-Run Economic Conditions:
The Asymmetric Effect of Prosperity and Recession.” American Political Science Review 69 (Decem-
ber): 1240-54.

Brody, Richard. 1991. Assessing the President: The Media, Elite Opinion, and Public Support. Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press.

Brody, Richard, and Paul M. Sniderman. 1977. “From Life Space to Polling Place: The Relevance of
Personal Concerns for Voting Behavior.” British Journal of Political Science 7 (July): 337-60.

Burke, John P. 2000. The Institutional Presidency: Organizing and Managing the White House from FDR to
Clinton. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Campbell, Angus, Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller, and Donald E. Stokes. 1960. The American
Voter. New York: Wiley.

Christiansen, Neil D., and Howard Lavine. 1997. “Need-Efficiency Trade-offs in the Allocation of
Resources: Ideological and Attributional Differences in Public Aid Decision Making.” Social Justice
Research 10 (September): 289-310.

352 | PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY / June 2011

Cohen, Jeffrey E. 1995. “Presidential Rhetoric and the Public Agenda.” American Journal of Political
Science 39 (February): 87-107.

———. 1999. Presidential Responsiveness and Public Policy-Making: The Public and the Policies that
Presidents Choose. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Cronin, Thomas E. 1977. “The Presidency and its Paradoxes.” In The Presidency Reappraised, 2nd ed.,
eds. Tomas E. Cronin and Rexford G. Tugwell. New York: Praeger, 69-85.

Delli Carpini, Michael X., and Scott Keeter. 1996. What Americans Know about Politics and Why it
Matters. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Downs, Anthony. 1957. An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper Collins.
Dresler-Hawke, Emma. 2005. “Reconstructing the Past and Attributing Responsibility for the Holo-

caust.” Social Behavior and Personality 33 (January): 133-48.
Duch, Raymond M., Harvey D. Palmer, and Christopher J. Anderson. 2000. “Heterogeneity in

Perceptions of National Economic Conditions.” American Journal of Political Science 44 (October):
635-52.

Edwards, George C., III. 1983. The Public Presidency. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Edwards, George C., III (with Alec M. Gallup). 1990. Presidential Approval: A Sourcebook. Baltimore:

Johns Hopkins University Press.
Farnsworth, Stephen J., and S. Robert Lichter. 2006. The Mediated Presidency: Television News and

Presidential Governance. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.
Feldman, Stanley. 1982. “Economic Self-Interest and Political Behavior.” American Journal of Political

Science 26 (August): 446-66.
Fifield, Anna. 2010. “Obama Agenda Hits the Buffers.” Financial Times, November 3. http://

www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b2b26fde-e76a-11df-b5b4-00144feab49a.html.
Fiorina, Morris P. 1978. “Economic Retrospective Voting in American National Elections: A Micro-

Analysis.” American Journal of Political Science 22 (May): 426-43.
———. 1981. Retrospective Voting in American National Elections. New Haven, CT: Yale University

Press.
Fiorina, Morris P., and Kenneth A. Shepsle. 1989. “Is Negative Voting an Artifact?” American Journal

of Political Science 3 (May): 423-39.
Fisher, Louis. 2000. Congressional Abdication on War and Spending. College Station, TX: Texas A&M

University Press.
Fiske, Susan T. 1980. “Attention and Weight in Person Perception: The Impact of Negative and

Extreme Behavior.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 38 (June): 889-906.
Fiske, Susan T., and Shelley E. Taylor. 1991. Social Cognition, 2nd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Gant, Michael M., and Dwight F. Davis. 1984. “Negative Voter Support in Presidential Elections.”

Political Research Quarterly 37 (June): 272-90.
Gartner, Scott S. 2008. “The Multiple Effects of Casualties on Public Support for War: An Experi-

mental Approach.” American Political Science Review 102 (February): 95-106.
Godbout, Jean-François, and Éric Bélanger. 2007. “Economic Voting and Political Sophistica-

tion in the United States: A Reassessment.” Political Research Quarterly 60 (September):
541-54.

Gomez, Brad T., and Matthew J. Wilson. 2001. “Political Sophistication and Economic Voting in the
American Electorate: A Theory of Heterogeneous Attribution.” American Journal of Political Science
45 (October): 899-914.

———. 2003. “Causal Attribution and Economic Voting in American Congressional Elections.”
Political Research Quarterly 56 (September): 271-82.

———. 2007. “Economic Voting and Political Sophistication: Defending Heterogeneous Attribu-
tion.” Political Research Quarterly 60 (September): 555-58.

Goren, Paul. 1997. “Political Expertise and Issue Voting in Presidential Elections.” Political Research
Quarterly 50 (June): 387-412.

———. 2001. “Core Principles and Policy Reasoning in Mass Publics: A Test of Two Theories.” British
Journal of Political Science 31 (January): 159-77.

———. 2002. “Character Weakness, Partisan Bias, and Presidential Evaluation.” American Journal of
Political Science 46 (July): 627-41.

Sirin and Villalobos / WHERE DOES THE BUCK STOP? | 353

Guimond, Serge, Guy Begin, and Douglas L. Palmer. 1989. “Education and Causal Attributions: The
Development of ‘Person-Blame’ and ‘System-Blame’ Ideology.” Social Psychology Quarterly 52
(June): 126-40.

Hart, John. 1995. The Presidential Branch: From Washington to Clinton. Chatham, NJ: Chatham House.
Heider, Fritz. 1958. The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations. New York: Wiley.
Heradstveit, Daniel. 1979. The Arab-Israeli Conflict: Psychological Obstacles to Peace. Oslo: Norwegian

University Press.
Heradstveit, David, and G. Matthew Bonham. 1986. “Decision-Making in the Face of Uncertainty:

Attribution of Norwegian and American Officials.” Journal of Peace Research 23 (December):
339-56.

———. 1996. “Attribution Theory and Arab Images of the Gulf War.” Political Psychology 17 (June):
271-92.

Hewstone, Miles. 1989. Causal Attribution: From Cognitive Processes to Collective Beliefs. Oxford, UK:
Blackwell.

———. 1990. “The ‘Ultimate Attribution Error’? A Review of the Literature on Intergroup Causal
Attribution.” European Journal of Social Psychology 20 (July/August): 311-35.

Hill, Kim Quaile. 1998. “The Policy Agendas of the President and the Mass Public: A Research
Validation and Extension.” American Journal of Political Science 42 (October): 1328-34.

Holsti, Ole R. 2004. Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press.

Huckfeldt, Robert, and John Sprague. 1995. Citizens, Politics, and Social Communication: Information and
Influence in an Election Campaign. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Hulsizer, Michael R., Geoffrey D. Munro, Angela Fagerlin, and Stuart P. Taylor. 2004. “Molding the
Past: Biased Assimilation of Historical Information.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 34 (May):
1048-74.

Hunter, John A., and Maurice Stringer. 1999. “Attributional Bias and Identity in a Conflict Region:
The Moderating Effects of Status.” Current Research in Social Psychology 4 (November): 1-11.

Hurwitz, Jon. 1989. “Presidential Leadership and Public Followership.” In Manipulating Public Opinion:
Essays on Public Opinion as a Dependent Variable, eds. Michael Margolis and Gary Mauser. Pacific
Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company, 222-50.

Islam, Mir R., and Miles Hewstone. 1993. “Intergroup Attributions and Affective Consequences in
Majority and Minority Groups.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 64 (June): 936-50.

Ito, Tiffany A., Jeff T. Larsen, N. Kyle Smith, and John T. Cacioppo. 1998. “Negative Information
Weighs More Heavily on the Brain: The Negativity Bias in Evaluative Categorizations.” Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology 75 (December): 887-900.

Iyengar, Shanto. 1989. “How Citizens Think about National Issues: A Matter of Responsibility.”
American Journal of Political Science 33 (November): 878-900.

Jacobs, Lawrence R., and Robert Y. Shapiro. 2000. Politicians Don’t Pander: Political Manipulation and
the Loss of Democratic Responsiveness.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Jervis, Robert. 1976. Perception and Misperception in International Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.

Jones, Edward, and Richard Nisbett. 1972. “The Actor and the Observer: Divergent Perceptions of the
Causes of Behavior.” In Attribution: Perceiving the Causes of Behavior, eds. Edward Jones, David
Kanouse, Harold Kelley, Richard Nisbett, Stuart Valins, and Bernard Weiner. Morristown, NJ:
General Learning Press, 79-94.

Kanouse, David, and L. Reid Hanson. 1972. Negativity in Evaluations. Morristown, NJ: General
Learning Press.

Keech, William R. 1995. Economic Politics: The Costs of Democracy. New York: Cambridge University
Press.

Kernell, Samuel. 1977. “Presidential Popularity and Negative Voting.” American Political Science Review
71 (March): 44-46.

Key, Valdimer O. 1966. The Responsible Electorate. New York: Vintage.
Kiewiet, D. Roderick. 1983. Macroeconomics and Micropolitics: The Electoral Effects of Economic Issues.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

354 | PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY / June 2011

Kinder, Donald R., Robert Abelson, and Susan T. Fiske. 1979. Developmental Research on Candidate
Instrumentation: Results and Recommendations. Report prepared for the National Election Studies
Board of Overseers. Ann Arbor: Center for Political Studies, University of Michigan.

Kluegel, James R., and Eliot R. Smith. 1986. Beliefs about Inequality: Americans’ Views of What Is and
What Ought to Be. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.

Krause, George A. 1997. “Voters, Information Heterogeneity, and the Dynamics of Aggregate Eco-
nomic Expectations.” American Journal of Political Science 41 (October): 1170-1200.

Lane, Robert. 1962. Political Ideology: Why the American Common Man Believes What He Does. New York:
MacMillan.

Larson, Deborah. 1985. Origins of Containment: A Psychological Explanation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.

Lau, Richard R. 1985. “Two Explanations for Negativity Effects in Political Behavior.” American
Journal of Political Science 29 (February): 119-38.

Lau, Richard R., and David O. Sears. 1981. “Cognitive Links between Grievances and Political
Responses.” Political Behavior 3 (December): 279-302.

Lewis-Beck, Michael S. 1988. Economics and Elections: The Major Western Democracies. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press.

Lewis-Beck, Michael S., and Martin Paldam. 2000. “Economic Voting: An Introduction.” Electoral
Studies 19 (June): 113-21.

Leyden, Kevin M., and Stephen A. Borrelli. 1995. “The Effect of State Economic Conditions on
Gubernatorial Elections: Does Unified Government Make a Difference?” Political Research Quarterly
48 (June): 275-90.

Lupia, Arthur. 1994. “Shortcuts versus Encyclopedias: Information and Voting Behavior in California
Insurance Reform Elections.” American Political Science Review 88 (March): 63-76.

Luskin, Robert C. 1990. “Explaining Political Sophistication.” Political Behavior 12 (December):
331-61.

Malhotra, Neil, and Alexander Kuo. 2008. “Attributing Blame: The Public’s Response to Hurricane
Katrina.” Journal of Politics 70 (April): 120-35.

McGraw, Kathleen M. 1991. “Managing Blame: An Experimental Test of the Effects of Political
Accounts.” American Political Science Review 85 (December): 1133-57.

Miller, Arthur H., Martin P. Wattenberg, and Oksana Malanchuk. 1986. “Schematic Assessments of
Presidential Candidates.” American Political Science Review 80 (June): 521-40.

Mintz, Alex, Steven B. Redd, and Arnold Vedlitz. 2006. “Can We Generalize from Student Experi-
ments to the Real World in Political Science, Military Affairs, and International Relations?”
Journal of Conflict Resolution 50 (October): 757-76.

Montiel, Cristina J., and Maria Elizabeth J. Macapagal. 2006. “Effects of Social Position on Societal
Attributions of an Asymmetric Conflict.” Journal of Peace Research 43 (March): 219-27.

Mook, Douglas G. 1983. “In Defense of External Invalidity.” American Psychologist 38 (April):
379-87.

Morton, Rebecca B., and Kenneth C. Williams. 2008. “Experimentation in Political Science.” In The
Oxford Handbook of Political Methodology, eds. Janet M. Box-Steffensmeier, Henry E. Brady, and
David Collier. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 339-56.

———. 2010. Experimental Political Science and the Study of Causality: From Nature to the Lab. New York:
Cambridge University Press.

Mueller, John E. 1970. “Presidential Popularity from Truman to Johnson.” American Political Science
Review 64 (March): 18-34.

———. 1973. War, Presidents, and Public Opinion. New York: Wiley.
Nicholson, Stephen P., Gary M. Segura, and Nathan D. Woods. 2002. “Presidential Approval and the

Mixed Blessing of Divided Government.” Journal of Politics 64 (August): 701-20.
Norpoth, Helmut. 2001. “Divided Government and Economic Voting.” Journal of Politics 63 (May):

414-35.
Nunnally, Jum C. 1978. Psychometric Theory. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Page, Benjamin I. 1978. Choices and Echoes in Presidential Elections. Chicago: University of Chicago

Press.

Sirin and Villalobos / WHERE DOES THE BUCK STOP? | 355

Peake, Jeffrey S. 2001. “Presidential Agenda Setting in Foreign Policy.” Political Research Quarterly
(March): 69-86.

Peffley, Mark. 1984. “The Voter as Juror: Attributing Responsibility for Economic Conditions.”
Political Behavior 6 (September): 275-94.

———. 1989. “Presidential Image and Economic Performance: A Dynamic Analysis.” Political Behav-
ior 11 (December): 309-33.

Peffley, Mark, and John T. Williams. 1985. “Attributing Presidential Responsibility for National
Economic Problems.” American Politics Quarterly 13 (October): 393-425.

Peffley, Mark, Stanley Feldman, and Lee Sigelman. 1987. “Economic Conditions and Party Compe-
tence: Processes of Belief Revision.” Journal of Politics 49 (February): 101-21.

Peterson, Paul E. 1994. “The President’s Dominance in Foreign Policy Making.” Political Science
Quarterly 109 (Summer): 215-34.

Pettigrew, Thomas F. 1979. “The Ultimate Attribution Error: Extending Allport’s Cognitive Analysis
of Prejudice.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 5 (October): 461-76.

Petty, Richard E., and John T. Cacioppo. 1996. Attitudes and Persuasion: Classic and Contemporary
Approaches. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Popkin, Samuel, John Gorman, Charles Phillips, and Jeffrey Smith. 1976. “Comment: What Have You
Done for Me Lately?” American Political Science Review 70 (September): 779-805.

Prior, Markus. 2002. “Political Knowledge after September 11.” PS: Political Science and Politics 35
(September): 523-30.

Radcliff, Benjamin. 1988. “Solving a Puzzle: Aggregate Analysis and Economic Voting Revisited.”
Journal of Politics 50 (May): 440-55.

Ripley, Randall B., and Grace A. Franklin. 1991. Congress, the Bureaucracy, and Public Policy, 5th ed.
Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks-Cole.

Rosenberg, Shawn, and Gary Wolfsfeld. 1977. “International Conflict and the Problem of Attribution.”
Journal of Conflict Resolution 21 (March): 75-103.

Ross, Lee. 1977. “The Intuitive Psychologist and His Shortcomings: Distortions in the Attribution
Process.” In Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, ed. Leonard Berkowitz. New York: Academia
Press, 173-220.

Rudolph, Thomas J. 2003a. “Who’s Responsible for the Economy? The Formation and Consequences
of Responsibility Attributions.” American Journal of Political Science 47 (October): 698-713.

———. 2003b. “Institutional Context and the Assignment of Political Responsibility.” Journal of
Politics 65 (February): 190-215.

———. 2006. “Triangulating Political Responsibility: The Motivated Formation of Responsibility
Judgments.” Political Psychology 27 (February): 99-121.

Rudolph, Thomas J., and Tobin J. Grant. 2002. “An Attributional Model of Economic Voting: Evidence
from the 2000 Presidential Elections.” Political Research Quarterly 55 (December): 805-23.

Sabucedo, José M., Amalio Blanco, and Luis De la Corte. 2003. “Beliefs Which Legitimize Political
Violence against the Innocent.” Psicothema 15 (November): 550-55.

Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. 1973. The Imperial Presidency. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.
Sears, David O. 1986. “College Sophomores in the Laboratory: Influences of a Narrow Data Base on

Social Psychology’s View of Human Nature.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 51 (Sep-
tember): 515-30.

Shah, Dhavan V., Nojin Kwak, Mike Schmierbach, and Jessica Zubric. 2004. “The Interplay of News
Frames on Cognitive Complexity.” Human Communication Research 30 (January): 102-20.

Shirazi, Rez, and Anders Biel. 2005. “Internal-External Causal Attributions and Perceived Government
Responsibility for Need Provision.” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 36 (January): 96-116.

Sigelman, Lee, and Kathleen Knight. 1985. “Public Opinion and Presidential Responsibility for the
Economy: Understanding Personalization.” Political Behavior 7 (June): 167-91.

Skitka, Linda J., and Philip E. Tetlock. 1992. “Allocating Scarce Resources: A Contingency Model of
Distributive Justice.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 28 (November): 491-522.

———. 1993. “Providing Public Assistance: Cognitive and Motivational Processes Underlying Liberal
and Conservative Policy Preferences.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 65 (December):
1205-23.

356 | PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY / June 2011

Skitka, Linda J., Elizabeth Mullen, Thomas Griffin, Susan Hutchinson, and Brian Chamberlin. 2002.
“Dispositions, Scripts, or Motivated Correction? Understanding Ideological Differences in Expla-
nations for Social Problems.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83 (August): 470-87.

Sniderman, Paul, Richard A. Brody, and Philip E. Tetlock. 1991. Reasoning and Choice: Explorations in
Political Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Taber, Charles S., and Milton Lodge. 2006. “Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political
beliefs.” American Journal of Political Science 50 (July): 755-69.

Tajfel, Henri, and John C. Turner. 1979. “An Integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict.” In The Social
Psychology of Intergroup Relations, eds. William G. Austin and Stephen Worchel. Monterey, CA:
Brooks/Cole, 33-47.

Taylor, Donald M., and Vaishna Jaggi. 1974. “Ethnocentrism and Causal Attribution in a South Indian
Context.” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 5 (June): 162-71.

Tufte, Edward R. 1978. Political Control of the Economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Tyler, Tom. 1982. “Personalization in Attributing Responsibility for National Problems to the Presi-

dent.” Political Behavior 4 (December): 379-99.
van der Brug, Wouter, Cees van der Eijk, and Mark Franklin. 2007. The Economy and the Vote: Economic

Conditions and Elections in Fifteen Countries. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Weaver, R. Kent. 1986. “The Politics of Blame Avoidance.” Journal of Public Policy 6 (October): 371-98.
Weiner, Bernard. 1986. An Attributional Theory of Motivation and Emotion. New York: Springer-Verlag.
———. 1991. “Metaphors in Motivation and Attribution.” American Psychologist 46 (September):

921-30.
———. 1995. Judgments of Responsibility: A Foundation for a Theory of Social Conduct. New York: Guilford

Press.
West, Darrell M. 1987. Congress and Economic Policymaking. Pittsburgh, PA: Pittsburgh University

Press.
Zucker, Gail S., and Bernard Weiner. 1993. “Conservatism and Perceptions of Poverty: An Attribu-

tional Analysis.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 23 (June): 925-43.

Sirin and Villalobos / WHERE DOES THE BUCK STOP? | 357

Copyright of Presidential Studies Quarterly is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be

copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder’s express written

permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Psychology of Sport & Exercise

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/psychsport

Confirmation bias and the stereotype of the black athlete

Gordon B. Moskowitz∗, Devon Carter
Lehigh University, USA

A R

T

I C L E I N F O

Keywords:
Implicit bias
Stereotyping
Subtyping
Confirmation bias
Person perception
Social judgment
Black athlete

A B S T R A C T

Objectives: Examine how the subtype “black athletes” differs from that of black men. More centrally, to illustrate
that the category black athletes can be triggered and lead to implicit bias. This bias is implicit and impacts a
perceiver’s evaluation outside conscious awareness.
Design and method: Participants were white residents of the United States. Experiment one assessed familiarity
with three qualities comprising the cultural stereotype of black athletes. Experiment two explored implicit bias
from the stereotype using a within subjects design. Participants read a series of quotes and rated how strongly
they implied these stereotypical qualities. Each participant rated such quotes from a black athlete, white athlete,
black salesman, and a white salesman.
Results: Implicit bias was revealed in the type of ratings provided of black athletes. The ratings for the black
athletes along these two stereotypical dimensions significantly differed from the ratings made to the same quotes
when uttered by other men.
Conclusions: The stereotype guided how participants viewed the person’s actions/words. The stereotype of black
athletes is distinct from black men generally. Participants did not rate men negatively along the stereotypic
dimensions when they were black salesmen, only when they were black athletes. Additionally, although the
quality “athletic,” which is part of the global stereotype of black men, has a positive connotation, the stereotype
that is built around this quality is not positive. It is a stereotype that this group has natural athletic ability that
leads to an arrogance and lack of work ethic (since one is naturally gifted).

Implicit bias occurs when stereotyping and prejudice impacts people
outside of awareness and without conscious intent. It arises when either
a stereotype or an attitude is triggered by thoughts of a social group.
This “triggering,” (known as priming, e.g., Higgins, 1996) then shapes
how we respond. A wide set of responses are affected by implicit bias –
from how we categorize, where attention is allocated, the types of
judgments and inferences we form, the expectations and standards we
set, what we consider valid and veridical, how we feel, our approach
and avoidance tendencies, and how we more generally act (e.g.,
Moskowitz & Olcaysoy Okten, 2018; Nelson, 2018). Our current con-
cern is with how stereotypes of black athletes implicitly bias one’s
judgment. In a first experiment we examine the stereotype of the black
athlete, identifying if there is consensus around a set of attributes
posited to be part of the cultural beliefs for this category. In Experiment
two we illustrate how the implicit triggering/priming of the stereotype
“black athlete” alters the types of judgments one makes, and does so in
a manner distinct from the stereotype of black men more generally. The
influence exerted is consistent with a theory of aversive racism in which
the bias occurs outside of awareness and without conscious intent (e.g.,
Dovidio & Fiske, 2012).

The stereotype of the black athlete has a long history of study,
gaining prominence as media coverage of sporting events became more
regular. Rainville and McCormick (1977) raised the argument that a
persistent bias exists in how the media talks about athletes, with an
analysis showing that announcers place more praise on white players
and more criticism on comparable black players. Staples and Jones
(1985) argued that these portrayals reinforce the image of white su-
periority and black inferiority, thus stabilizing and justifying the ex-
isting disparities. The prevalence of the negative stereotype was sum-
marized by Eastman and Billings (2001): “The traditional prejudices
about Black players and concomitant flattering of White players persist,
despite changing times and an increased number of minority and
women announcers in college basketball. Stereotypes seem to be the
language of sport, at least in college basketball, and few sportscasters
make an effort to break out of the patterns of speech used by their
predecessors” (p. 198). This has been supported by studies using a
biased coverage index (BCD) to test for announcer bias in television
coverage. These analyses reveal that announcers emphasize athleticism
when discussing African American players but emphasize cognitive
abilities (sports intelligence) when discussing White players (Rada,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2018.02.010
Received 25 May 2017; Received in revised form 16 February 2018; Accepted 18 February 2018

∗ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: gbm@lehigh.edu (G.B. Moskowitz).

Psychology of Sport & Exercise 36 (2018) 139–

146

Available online 20 February 2018
1469-0292/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

T

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/14690292

https://www.elsevier.com/locate/psychsport

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2018.02.010

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2018.02.010

mailto:gbm@lehigh.edu

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2018.02.010

http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1016/j.psychsport.2018.02.010&domain=pdf

1996).
The stereotype of the black athlete stands at the intersection of two

well-known (and more global) stereotypes – those of athletes and of
African Americans. Established literatures exist that delineate the social
stereotypes of both African Americans (e.g., Allport, 1954; Devine &
Elliot, 1995; Katz & Braly, 1933) and athletes (e.g., Edwards, 1973;
1984; Stone, Harrison, & Mottley, 2012). Complicating the matter is the
fact that the quality of “athleticism” is part of the global stereotype of
African Americans; it is a positive quality nested among a set of mostly
negative traits comprising the global stereotype (Barden, Maddux,
Petty, & Brewer, 2004). This might imply that the sub-stereotype of the
black athlete is positive, like the attribute “athletic” (see Devine &
Baker, 1991). In contrast, it remains possible that the stereotype of the
black athlete is not seen positively, but that the global stereotype of
African Americans overwhelms perceptual experience and guides how
the black athlete is viewed (in essence, there is no difference in how the
black man versus the black athlete is seen). A third possibility is that the
category “black athlete” is negative like the global stereotype, but with
a set of distinct negative qualities that define this group in a manner
different to the global stereotype – that it is a distinct subtype of the
group more generally (e.g., Kunda & Oleson, 1995).1

We explore here this third possibility – that the stereotype of the
black athlete is not positive, but is also quite separate from the (nega-
tive) global stereotype of African Americans. As such, the impact of the
black athlete stereotype on judgment and behavior will be distinct from
the impact of the stereotype for black men. The subtype of the “black
athlete” is defined by an instance of an otherwise positive characteristic
(athletic) being isolated from the global stereotype, and rather than
building a positive stereotype around this quality, a subtype is created
in which the positive quality is morphed into a set of negative char-
acteristics describing the subgroup. The single, positive quality of ath-
leticism from the global stereotype has become the central, unifying
quality around a new stereotype (e.g., Asch, 1946) that identifies ath-
leticism as a natural ability one is lucky to have. Given that the attribute
is seen as innate and not earned, it is not seen as indicative of anything
positive about the person’s character, or as stemming from a psycho-
logical quality internal to the person (goals, traits, effort). While ath-
leticism is a quality that is unarguably about the person, the person
endorsing this stereotype attributes its origins not to the qualities of the
individual athlete, but to external forces such as luck and breeding
(Harrison, 1998).

With such attributions, the seemingly positive quality of “athletic”
takes on a new meaning built around a largely negative narrative (e.g.,
Asch, 1946). In Experiment one we explore this issue, examining
whether people categorized by this subtype of the black athlete are
believed to be (are stereotyped as): 1) having been born with natural
athletic ability (e.g., Stone et al., 2012), 2) taking their ability for
granted and possessing a poor work ethic as a result of this reliance on
natural talents (shunning practice, persistence, and effort), and 3) de-
veloping a personality marked by arrogance (and showiness/ostenta-
tiousness) due to this sense of having innate, superior ability (Devine &
Baker, 1991). Harrison (1998) describes the public perception of the
overpaid and arrogant black athlete, who is supposed to be impervious
to injury and pain.

1. Experiment one

In Experiment one we explored the question of whether participants
in our sample were aware of the components comprising the stereotype
(subtype) of the black athlete. The degree to which they were familiar

with this subtype was assessed through a short survey. A perceiver
cannot be influenced in how they judge another person if they are
unaware (do not have available in memory) the stereotypic content.
Experiment one sought to establish the stereotype’s content, which then
allowed us to explore its influence on judgment in Experiment two.
Participants in Experiment one who were aware of the stereotype were
then eligible to participate in our second experiment exploring the in-
fluence of the subtype on social judgment. Experiment one also ex-
plored if individual differences in motivation to be an egalitarian
person might shape knowledge of the stereotype. It is possible that
people who are particularly afraid of appearing biased to others (ex-
ternally motivated) might be more reluctant to report the stereotype.

1.1. Participants

Amazon Mechanical Turk was used to recruit participants.
Participants in the experiment were 241 white, English speaking re-
sidents of the United States. Participants completed the survey in ex-
change for fifty cents in compensation.

1.2. Materials

Knowledge of the Stereotype. Participants were asked three ques-
tions, each assessing their familiarity with one element of the stereo-
type of the black athlete. Each question was on a seven point scale,
anchored by a score of “1” defined as “not at all familiar” and a score of
“7” defined as “extremely familiar”. Scores of “3” and higher indicated
familiarity with the stereotype to varying degrees (familiar, somewhat
familiar, moderately familiar, strongly familiar, extremely familiar).
One question asked about lack of work ethic (rate to what extent you
have heard the following stereotype about black athletes in US culture:
Black athletes are less hard working than white athletes). One question
asked about arrogance (rate to what extent you have heard the fol-
lowing stereotype about black athletes in US culture: Black athletes are
more arrogant than white athletes). A final question asked about nat-
ural athletic ability (rate to what extent you have heard the following
stereotype about black athletes in US culture: Black athletes have more
natural athletic ability than white athletes).

Demographic Questions. Participants answered a series of demo-
graphic questions that assessed their age, race, gender, and experience
with athletics (professional, recreational, etc.).

Motivation to be Egalitarian. Participants answered four questions
that assessed their strength and type of motivations for being egali-
tarian to black men taken from a scale developed by Plant and Devine
(1998). There were internal motivations assessed (“I attempt to act in
nonprejudice ways toward other ethnic groups because it is personally
important to me”; Being nonprejudiced toward other ethnic groups is
important to my self-concept) and external motivations assessed (“I try
to hide any negative thoughts about other ethic groups in order to avoid
negative reactions from others”; “I try to act nonprejudiced toward
other ethnic groups because of pressure from others”).

2. Results

A set of frequency counts was produced to indicate what percentage
of participants were familiar with each element of the stereotype.
Scores on the stereotype assessment scale less than three (indicating no
familiarity with the specified element of the stereotype) were compared
against scores three and higher (that indicated familiarity with the
stereotype). For the question that asked about lack of hard work, we
found that 52% of participants were familiar with this stereotype (25%
of the total using scores of 3 and 4, and 27% using scores of 5, 6, and 7).
For the question that asked about arrogance, we found that 64% of
participants were familiar with this element of the stereotype (22% of
the total using scores of 3 and 4, and 42% using scores of 5, 6, and 7).
Finally, for the question that asked about natural athletic ability, we

1 It is possible that another subtype has developed surrounding athleticism that is ir-
relevant to race – that of the superstar athlete. Here, athletes such as Michael Jordan, Tom
Brady, Babe Ruth, Wayne Gretzky, Muhammed Ali, Tiger Woods, Serena Williams, etc.
transcend notions of race and instead become iconic figures of the culture. This “super-
star” subtype is not our focus.

G.B. Moskowitz, D. Carter Psychology of Sport & Exercise 36 (2018) 139–146

140

found that 89% of participants were familiar with this stereotype (15%
of the total using scores of 3 and 4, and 74% using scores of 5, 6, and 7).
Our focus for further analysis turned to the first two items since they
will be the items assessed in experiment two.

We next explored if there were any demographic differences in
ratings of the stereotypic qualities of arrogance and lack of hard work.
Ratings of familiarity with the arrogant stereotype do not correlate with
external motivations to respond without prejudice (r = −.04) or to
internal motivations to respond without prejudice (r = −.04). Ratings
of the lack of hard work component of the stereotype also do not cor-
relate with either external (r = −.1) or internal (r = −.1) motivation
to respond without prejudice. Ratings of familiarity with the stereotype
do not correlate with age (r = −.04 and r = −.06 for the arrogant and
for the hard working component of the stereotype respectively).
Looking at political ideology, 64% of people who claim to be politically
neutral, 65% of liberals, and 65% of conservatives report being familiar
with the arrogant stereotype. For the lack of hard work stereotype, 48%
of people who claim to be politically neutral, 52% of liberals, and 52%
of conservatives report being familiar with this stereotype. Thus, no
differences in knowledge of the stereotype emerge for ideology either.
Turning to gender, 59% of women were familiar with the arrogant
stereotype, 75% of men report being familiar with the arrogant ste-
reotype. For the lack of hard work stereotype, only 43% of women were
familiar with this stereotype, while 64% of men report being familiar
with this stereotypic quality. Overall, the stereotype of the black athlete
seems to be shared equally by people in a wide variety of demographic
categories, with the one exception being that women report being less
familiar with the stereotype than men (yet still knowledgeable of the
stereotype to sufficient degrees, as discussed below).

Are the rates with which participants indicated familiarity with the
hard work and arrogance aspects of the stereotype sufficiently high to
indicate this is a generally held stereotype in the culture? By compar-
ison, when Devine (1989) assessed stereotypes of blacks in the United
States, white participants had consensus on a set of traits comprising
the stereotype. Out of the eight top traits that made up the stereotype in
Devine’s work, six had percentages that ranged between 50% and 60%
agreement that the trait was an element of the stereotype. This is
consistent with the 52% and 64% ratings we found for the lack of hard
work and arrogant components of the stereotype, respectively (and the
43% of women familiar with the lack of hard work component of the
stereotype is in the same range as the ninth and tenth traits Devine
identified). In Devine’s experiment the top two traits of the global ste-
reotype were poor (78%) and criminal (70%). Natural athletic ability
was seen here as recognized by 89% of people.

We can conclude based on our findings that the stereotypic qualities
of the black athlete as not working as hard as white athletes, and being
more arrogant than white athletes, are familiar to most participants and
can be described as part of a cultural stereotype. To examine if
knowledge of this stereotype can subtly influence how people judge a
black athlete, we chose to focus Experiment two only on participants
who had stated they were familiar with the two components of the
stereotype of interest. Our concern is whether among those who know
the stereotype, is there an unknown influence of the stereotype on how
they see the world?

Given that all the participants selected for Experiment two know the
two stereotypic aspects (arrogance and lack of hard work), would they
be equally influenced in rating a black athlete by the arrogant stereo-
type as the lack of hard work stereotype? We predicted that when the
rating being made seems obvious to participants as designed to assess
their stereotypes, then these participants would avoid being influenced
by the stereotype as a way to manage their appearance and not seem to
be biased. However, as predicted by the theory of aversive racism (e.g.,
Pearson, Dovidio, & Gaertner, 2009), when the rating could be justified
as not being based on a stereotype, the influence of the stereotype
would emerge; Black athletes would be judged negatively relative to
black men who were not athletes (and relative to white men).

3. Experiment 2

3.1. Implicit bias in social judgment

Much of the scientific inquiry relating to the subtype of the black
athlete pertains to stereotype threat – or how identity cues that make
one’s membership in this group salient can then impact one’s perfor-
mance in a stereotype-relevant domain (e.g., Beilock & McConnell,
2004; Czopp, 2010; Stone et al., 2012; Stone, Lynch, Sjomeling, &
Darley, 1999). Our concern is not with issues of identity threat, or with
the behavior of black athletes who are the targets of bias, but with
issues relating to confirmation bias and implicit stereotyping. These
issues concern how a perceiver judges a black athlete differently than
white athletes (and differently than other categories of black men),
seeing what one expects, with expectations determined by a social
stereotype that one may not even realize one holds (e.g., Allport, 1954;
Darley & Fazio, 1980; Duncan, 1976; Hamilton & Trolier, 1986; Kunda,
1987).

The literature on implicit bias informs that a perceiver whose ste-
reotype of black men is triggered will make judgments of black men
that are more negative, with the dominant qualities guiding judgment
being those specified by the stereotype – aggression, hostility, crimin-
ality, and unintelligence (e.g., Blair, 2002; Correll et al., 2007; Devine,
1989; Duncan, 1976; Payne, 2006). For example, when a perceiver
observes someone shoving another person in an ambiguous way, if the
person doing the shoving is black the behavior is seen as an act of ag-
gression and hostility, but if the person doing the shoving is white it is
seen as playfulness and “joking around.”2

Outside of the lab these subtle biases manifest in pernicious ways:
the sentencing decisions of judges are biased by how stereotypically
black a defendant accused of a violent crime is (Eberhardt, Davies,
Purdie-Vaughns, & Johnson, 2006). Doctors make different diagnoses
given identical symptoms and patient profiles if the patient is black
(Schulman et al., 1999). Science faculty rate male candidates for a
position as better qualified than women with identical portfolios (Moss-
Racusin, Dovidio, Brescoll, Graham, & Handelsman, 2012). And in the
domain of sport, referees call more fouls on black athletes than white
athletes (Price & Wolfers, 2007).3

3.2. Implicit bias and the subtype of the black athlete

What are the judgmental effects of triggering a subtype, such as
black athlete? Presumably, the subtype would be an altogether different
set of content from the global stereotype (e.g., Kunda & Oleson, 1995).
If the subtype of black athletes (described above) is what becomes
triggered in the mind of a perceiver, then it will have a distinctive
impact on how perceivers make judgments. It would not result in one
seeing the qualities of hostility and criminality that mark the impact of
the global stereotype (and may even inhibit such qualities, e.g., Macrae,

2 While the influence of the stereotype on judgment is typically to make one see a
member of the stereotyped group in a fashion that matches the global evaluation of the
stereotype, this is not always the case. It is possible for one to be biased in the direction of
a contrast effect, where one interprets a person’s behavior in the opposite way that is
implied by the stereotype (e.g., Moskowitz & Skurnik, 1999; Wegener & Petty, 1995).

3 Implicit bias is not limited to stereotypes affecting our judgment, but attitudes
(evaluations of valence) are subtly impacted as well (e.g. Nosek et al., 2007). Negative
associations to the group (prejudices) can be triggered without one realizing, as is re-
vealed by a large literature on the implicit association test (IAT; Nosek, et al., 2007). Bias
in how one feels can emerge both from the prejudice one has to the group triggering
negativity, or from an individual element or characteristic of the group triggering an
affective reaction. For example, Barden et al. (2004) show that if a perceiver is thinking
about the quality of athleticism as it relates to black men, then the perceiver is more
positive in how one evaluates a black man. It is important to note that this work does not
involve the triggering of the subtype of the black athlete, but a focus on one aspect or
characteristic of the entire group (black men) with a strong (positive) evaluative com-
ponent. In sum, both positive and negative evaluation can be triggered, and the triggering
can come from a global feeling of prejudice to a group, or from a single quality.

G.B. Moskowitz, D. Carter Psychology of Sport & Exercise 36 (2018) 139–146

141

Bodenhausen, & Milne, 1995). Nor would it make one evaluate the
person positively, as when the single quality of “athleticism” is used as
a standard of judgment (e.g., Barden et al., 2004). Instead, guided by
the content of the subtype, one should be ready to perceive natural
ability, and an arrogance and lack of hard work that comes with re-
liance on that ability; perceivers believe the athlete arrogantly feels that
he/she does not need to nurture innate ability through effort and hard
work.

Stone, Perry, and Darley (1997) performed one of the few experi-
ments examining this issue of how black athletes are perceived. Their
participants were asked to rate the attributes and performance of a
basketball player after listening to a radio broadcast of a collegiate
basketball game. For half the participants, the player was said to be a
white man; for the other half he was depicted as black. Participants
then gave estimates of the player’s natural ability and evaluations of his
hustle, court-smarts, and position-play. Despite judging the exact same
behavior, those who rated a black athlete saw greater natural ability,
less hustle, and less intelligence.

Of course, laziness (lack of hustle), athleticism, and lack of in-
telligence are all part of the global stereotype of African Americans
(e.g., Devine, 1989). Thus, it remains unclear if black athletes in the
Stone et al. (1997) experiment were triggering a specific subtype that
shapes judgment, or if a global stereotype of black men was being ap-
plied to athletes, just the same as it would be applied to all other black
men. Their experiment did not ask participants to judge black athletes
versus non-athletes, so it is unclear if the effect is due to an athlete
subtype or to the global stereotype simply being assessed in an athletic
context. Our experiment sought to illustrate the unique effects of the
stereotype of black athletes, with black athletes being judged differently
than white athletes and black non-athletes (salesman) when the exact
same behavior is observed. It asks whether the triggering of the ste-
reotype of black athletes leads to a specific subtype being activated or
does it instead lead to the activation of the global stereotype of black
men.

3.3. Aversive racism

Implicit bias as defined above can appear even in a person with
egalitarian goals (e.g., Pearson, et al., 2009). Such a person may control
stereotyping when the context signals to the person that bias may exist
or that a category such as race or gender may be an influential force in
one’s reaction (or how others interpret one’s reactions). Because they
truly desire to be fair, concern that one is not being fair leads such
people to compensate for this shortcoming if they are aware of their
bias (e.g., Monteith, 2001; Moskowitz, Gollwitzer, Wasel, & Schaal,
1999). However, when the circumstances are less clearly about race/
gender, or when one has what appears to be substantive justifications
for a response that do not lean on race, bias may appear. Implicit ste-
reotypes that co-exist with one’s egalitarian goals are not dampened
because one feels the response is not racialized, but justified (e.g.,
Dovidio & Fiske, 2012; Pearson et al., 2009). This is known as aversive
racism.

Aversive racism makes assessing bias difficult – one cannot ask di-
rectly if a person is biased. First, because this form of bias is invisible to
the person who is biased and they could not accurately tell you. A
second reason researchers should not directly ask if a person has racial
(or any type of) bias is because it would signal that the evaluation being
asked for is racially charged. Under such circumstances an aversive
racist will fear being labelled as biased, their egalitarian goals will be
triggered to compensate for those fears, and they will report being fair,
not being biased. Indeed, research on aversive racism shows that such
concerns about being seen as biased not only occur if you directly ask
people about their biases, but if they are in a situation where they feel
their bias could be revealed – when something in the situation other
than a direct question makes this concern salient. For example, if white
voters are asked if they will vote for a white candidate or a black

candidate they are more likely to publicly say the black candidate than
their actual private voting behavior would justify. But if the choice is
less clearly about race, such as asking if their votes are in support of a
policy issue that a black candidate opposes, they now will freely state
their opposition to the black candidate and attribute their response to
the policy issue, not race (e.g., Pearson et al., 2009). Some types of
judgment of a stereotyped group similarly trigger concerns that what is
really being assessed is bias. When Darley and Gross (1983) asked
participants to judge the intelligence of a rich child versus a poor child
they showed no difference – they controlled their bias to see poor
children as less intelligent because all they were told about the child
was her socioeconomic status, and they knew one should not judge
others on such factors alone. However, a bias to judge poor children as
less intelligent did emerge as soon as participants were given a shred of
additional information about the child (that revealed nothing about her
intelligence) that they could then use to justify their response. When
aversive racists see an assessment of their beliefs/attitudes as an op-
portunity to look biased, they control that bias and are careful not to
respond negatively (e.g., Monteith & Voils, 2001; Moskowitz et al.,
1999).

In the current experiment we explore this issue – participants will
make judgments about people both when the judgment is seemingly
unable to reveal a bias, and when the judgment has the potential to
reveal them to be biased. Stereotypes should impact their judgments in
the former case, but they should control their bias in the latter case, as
the theory of aversive racism predicts. In our task participants read
quotes and judged each author of the quote on a 7-point scale that
ranged from a negative characteristic as the explanation for the quote,
to a positive characteristic. We then manipulated the scales so that the
characteristics that anchored the high and low end were either qualities
that signaled to the perceiver that racial bias could be revealed by their
answer, or failed to signal such concerns. This “signaling” was done in
two ways. First, the negative items that signaled bias were more ex-
treme in their valence. Second, these negative items were harder to
justify because their negativity was really all that separated them from
the item it was contrasted with at the other end of the scale. Much like
participants who would not call a poor girl “stupid” or voters who
would not claim to lack support for a black candidate simply because he
was black, participants should control bias to a black athlete when the
option they are asked to select is extremely negative and has no other
justification for being selected. However, if the negative quality offered
is both less extreme, and seems justifiable as a choice (as voting based
on “policy” not race is justifiable), then bias will emerge.

Let us provide a concrete example from our materials: Judging
whether a behavior is confident versus arrogant is essentially asking
about the same quality – a person’s belief in his/her superiority over
others in a given domain. The decision to label that person as confident
versus arrogant is largely a decision based on valence, or negativity.
And arrogance is quite an extreme negative quality compared to the
extremity of calling someone confident, and compared to the other
negative qualities asked about with other quotes presented in filler
trials. An aversive racist might be reluctant to judge a black athlete as
arrogant when such cues signal race is relevant. In contrast, judging
whether the behavior of a black athlete who repeatedly attempts the
same task is “persistent” or “stubborn” does not offer participants an
extreme negative quality that might invoke control attempts.
Additionally, it avoids invoking race by pointing to a justification that
labels the negative option not merely negative, but a wholly different
form of explanation. Labelling the person as stubborn and not persis-
tent, allows one to say the person is not working hard without having to
call them lazy and lacking a work ethic. It provides a semantically se-
parate alternative one can use as a non-race explanation for calling the
person not hard working. And a somewhat moderate negative ex-
planation at that. The choice can be rationalized by the different se-
mantic content. Thus, a bias to express the stereotype is free to emerge,
when, as the tenets of aversive racism theory suggest, there is a

G.B. Moskowitz, D. Carter Psychology of Sport & Exercise 36 (2018) 139–146

142

justifiable reason for making that choice that does not seem to invoke
race. A choice between persistent versus stubborn as an explanation for
behavior invokes a difference not only in valence, but in the semantic
meaning of the contrasting items – one means closed-minded, the other
hard working. If the choices were hard working versus lazy, then, as
with confidence and arrogance, the choice might raise participants’
awareness of the dangers of seeming racially biased. But persistent and
stubborn afford one an opportunity to respond in ways that do not
appear to be racially motivated.

Thus, we expect that when judging black athletes as arrogant versus
confident, participants will attempt to control the expression of bias
since the question seems on its face to be racialized. Yet when judging
the black athletes as persistent versus stubborn, bias will emerge. These
effects will not emerge when judging white athletes, since these ste-
reotypes do not exist for this group and will not be triggered. But we
further predict that these effects will only emerge when judging black
athletes, not black men more generally. Once again, these stereotypes
are specific to the subtype of the black athlete, not black men more
generally, and thus black men of other occupations (e.g., salesmen,
professors, architects) would not be rated differently from white men on
these particular rating scales. Only black athletes, with the stereotype
that their natural ability makes them less hard working and more ar-
rogant (Devine & Baker, 1991; Sailes, 2000; Sheldon, Jayaratne, &
Petty, 2007), would be judged differently.

To explore these questions we borrow from two old lines of work in
social judgment and person perception. Lorge (1936) gave participants
quotes such as these: “I hold it that a little rebellion, now and then, is a
good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms are in the
physical.” Participants were told either that the quotes came from
someone in a group they liked and belonged to (Jefferson) or to a group
they disliked and did not belong to (Lenin). Agreement with the quotes
was shown to be greater if you believed it was said by a liked group-
member. Asch (1946) questioned whether these effects reveal an effect
of valence (liking the quote better when said by someone you like)
versus a change in meaning (the quote means something different when
said by someone you like – implying bloody revolution from Lenin, but
interpreted as an honest questioning of corruption when attributed to
Jefferson). In our experiment we similarly provided quotes and ma-
nipulated to whom they were attributed. Our concern was with how
people judge the men when the quotes are attributed to a black athlete.
But we also heed Asch’s concern with (and that raised by aversive ra-
cism) distinguishing among 1) interpretation of the quote being driven
by valence and a global stereotype, versus 2) interpretation of the quote
being driven by semantic meaning and differing interpretations. Thus,
rather than assessing agreement with the quotes, we had participants
judge the qualities implied by the quotes, pitting a negative inter-
pretation against a positive (arrogant versus confident), but also pitting
one possible meaning of the quote against another (stubborn versus
persistent).

To summarize, our prediction is that the subtype of the black ath-
lete, not the global stereotype, will guide judgment. This impact will be
seen in two ways: 1) the trait of lacking persistence/hard work will be
judged to be more prevalent in black athletes because the semantically
distinct opposing anchor of stubbornness will mask the bias, 2) the trait
of being arrogant, being more unjustifiable as a choice when pitted
against confidence, will trigger control of the subtype (avoiding ap-
pearing negative) so that people actually rate black athletes as less
arrogant than white athletes. This is especially likely to occur among
people with chronic concerns about not being seen by others as having
prejudice.

4. Method

4.1. Overview

Participants read 120 quotes, one at a time, attributed to white and

black men of ten different occupations. On the 24 critical trials of the
experiment the quotes were pertinent to the trait dimensions of arro-
gant-confident and persistent-stubborn, and the occupations of the men
were either athlete or salesman. The experiment had a Race (white,
black) by Occupation (athlete, salesman) by Trait Type (arrogant-con-
fident, stubborn-persistent) within subjects design. Our hypothesis is
that race and occupation will interact to shape perception such that a
black athlete will be seen as less hard working (more stubborn) than a
black salesman and a white athlete or white salesman. Despite a similar
stereotype of the black athlete as arrogant, we expect that an interac-
tion will not emerge that reveals black athletes will be rated as more
arrogant. Participants will exert control over expressing such an ex-
tremely negative and less justifiable (due to its semantic similarity to
confidence) view of black athletes.

4.2. Participants

Amazon Mechanical Turk was used to recruit participants to a
survey said to last approximately 15 min. Participants were recruited
from the pool of participants who had performed Experiment one who
had provided responses in that experiment that indicated they were
familiar with the aspects of the stereotype of black athletes being ex-
amined Experiment 2 – black athletes as arrogant and black athletes as
lacking work ethic. They were not aware that their ratings on these
items in Experiment 1 were the basis for their inclusion in participation
in Experiment two. The participants in Experiment two were 152
English speaking residents of the United States who completed the
survey in exchange for fifty cents in compensation.

4.3. Materials

Quotes. There were 120 quotes constructed that were each attrib-
uted to a single individual whose occupation was specified prior to the
quote. Ninety six of these quotes were filler items, which consisted of 12
quotes per occupation attributed to eight different occupations. Across
24 critical trials, each participant read 12 quotes attributed to two
occupations.

Race. Each quote was preceded by a photograph of the man said to
have been responsible for the quote that followed it. Across the critical
trials race was manipulated so that 12 trials contained faces of white
men and 12 trials contained faces of black men. On filler trials the faces
were all white men, so that the ratio of white men to black men in our
procedure was similar to the ratio in the United States population (in an
attempt to not make race a salient factor of the experiment to the
participants).

Occupation Manipulation. The occupations designated in the critical
trials were “athlete” and “salesman”. These were selected because
athlete is the specific subtype of African Americans we wished to ex-
plore, and salesman was considered a control condition with which no
specific subtype was associated.

Trait Type. The critical trials of the experiment asked participants
about two traits associated with the subtype of African Americans –
arrogance and lack of hard work. There were 12 quotes that were re-
lated to each of these trait dimensions, each rated on a scale that cap-
tured the ambiguity in interpreting the quotes; the scales offered a
positive and a negative interpretation of each quote (the 96 filler trials
offered similar opposing valence rating scales for the irrelevant traits
implied in those quotes). One scale ranged from arrogant (a score of 1)
to confident (a score of 7), while the other scale ranged from stubborn (a
score of 1) to persistent (a score of 7). These two dimensions were se-
lected not merely to provide two tests of the impact of the stereotype on
judgment, but because the opposing interpretations built into each scale
differ in a significant way relevant to aversive racism. Arrogant versus
confident represents one trait dimension, differing only in the valence
of the interpretation – each asks about the strong belief in one’s own
efficacy/ability but either possessing such a belief in a positive way

G.B. Moskowitz, D. Carter Psychology of Sport & Exercise 36 (2018) 139–146

143

(confident) or an extremely negative way (arrogance). Stubborn versus
persistent represent not only opposing valence interpretations of a be-
havior, but two different trait dimensions. Stubborn suggests one is
refusing to yield because one is unwilling to listen, too narrow of focus,
unreasonably obstinate, and difficult to move. Persistence similarly
implies a refusal to yield, but because one is persevering, hard-working,
and unbroken. Thus, arrogance-confidence is a rating simply about
valence, whereas stubborn-persistent is a rating both about valence but
also about interpretation/meaning of the behavior.

Experiment Version. Participants were randomly assigned to one of
four different versions of the experiment. The versions different only in
that they provided different pairings of faces with quotes. This was
done to rule out the possibility that some subset of faces might (ran-
domly) have features that strongly communicated arrogance or con-
fidence, or strongly communicated persistence or stubbornness.

Demographic questions and Motivation to be Egalitarian.
Participants had been selected to this experiment based on knowledge
of the stereotype as assessed in Experiment 1. That earlier experiment
also assessed a series of demographic questions concerning participant
age, race, gender, and experience with athletics (professional, recrea-
tional, etc.). They also answered four questions that assessed their
strength and type of motivations for being egalitarian to black men (see
Experiment 1).

Design. The study had three within subject factors (Race,
Occupation, and Trait Type) and one between subject factor (Version).
The Race (black, white) by Occupation (athlete, salesman) by Trait
Type (arrogant/confident, stubborn/persistent) by Experiment version
design presented to each participant: 3 quotes relevant to the trait di-
mension of arrogant-confident attributed to a black athlete, 3 quotes
relevant to the trait dimension of stubborn-persistent attributed to a
black athlete, 3 quotes relevant to arrogant-confident attributed to a
white athlete, 3 quotes relevant to stubborn-persistent attributed to a
white athlete, 3 quotes relevant to arrogant-confident attributed to a
black salesman, 3 quotes relevant to stubborn-persistent attributed to a
black salesman, 3 quotes relevant to arrogant-confident attributed to a
white salesman, 3 quotes relevant to stubborn-persistent attributed to a
white salesman. Each version had different faces of white and black
men assigned to each of the 3 quotes of each category.

5. Results

A 4 (Experiment Version: version 1, version 2, version 3, version 4)
x 2 (Race: black, white) x 2 (Trait Type: arrogant/confident, stubborn/
persistent) x 2 (Occupation: athlete, salesman) mixed Analysis of
Variance (ANOVA) was conducted (with repeated measures on the last
three factors). Ratings of the quotes that were presented on the critical
trials served as the dependent variable. As expected, there was no effect
of the sole between-subjects variable, Experiment Version, so this
variable is not mentioned further. There were main effects observed for
Race, Occupation, and Trait Type that were qualified by the predicted
three-way interaction, F (1,151) = 15.35, p < .001. To explore the nature of this three-way interaction, a Race by Occupation repeated measures ANOVA was conducted for each of the two trait dimensions.

Examining ratings of the person as being stubborn/persistent we see
a significant interaction of Race and Occupation, F (1,151) = 13.54,
p < .001.4 Exploring the nature of this interaction, paired comparisons reveal that black athletes are seen as less persistent than all three other groups, despite the fact the evidence on which those ratings are based

was identical across the conditions. Black athletes (M = 3.76) are seen
as less persistent than white athletes (M = 4.26), t (1,151) = −4.1,
p < .001. They are also seen as less persistent than black salesmen (M = 4.38), t (1,151) = −4.2, p < .001. When given the opportunity to judge the target person's description of his own unwavering and perseverant behavior, perceivers see a mild example of persistence and hard work when judging most types of targets. However, when the target person is a black athlete the ratings switch to below the scale midpoint, indicating that perceivers prefer to interpret this behavior in a different way – as a moderate form of stubbornness.

Examining ratings of the person as being arrogant/confident we see
a similar significant interaction of Race and Occupation, F
(1,151) = 4.13, p < .05. However, the nature of the interaction is re- versed. No longer do people perceive the black athlete in the more negative light. On this trait dimension, where valence is the only dif- ference between the two endpoints of the rating scale, participants are choosing the more positive interpretation of the black athlete. Exploring the nature of this interaction, paired comparisons reveal that black athletes are seen as less arrogant than all three other groups, despite the fact the evidence on which those ratings are based was identical across the conditions. Black athletes (M = 4.07) are rated as more confident than white athletes (M = 3.33), t (1,151) = 5.5, p < .001. They are also rated as more confident than black salesmen (M = 3.79), t (1,151) = 2.0, p < .05. When given the opportunity to judge the target person's description of his superior abilities, the per- ceiver sees a mild example of arrogance when judging most types of targets. However, when the target person is a black athlete the same behavior is seen as moderately confident. They prefer to interpret this behavior in a different way, and in a fashion that is opposite to the stereotype that they are known to possess.

If this is indeed a form of control, the pattern should only be ob-
served among people who desire to be egalitarian. Individuals who
have no desire to be egalitarian should have no issue rating the black
athlete as arrogant (e.g., Devine, 1989; Monteith & Voils, 2001. To
explore this question, people with scores lower than 4 when rating the
question “I attempt to act in non-prejudice ways toward Black people
because it is personally important to me” were examined in the same
2X2 ANOVA for ratings of the person as being arrogant/confident. Al-
though there were only 15 such “overtly racist” participants in the
sample, the pattern of results reverses. The black athlete is still seen as
different from the black salesman, but for these participants they label
the black athlete as more arrogant (M = 3.5) than black salesmen
(M = 4.2), though the paired comparison examining this difference
does not rise to statistical significance due to the low power, t
(1,14) = −1.63, p = .13. The stereotype-consistent response of seeing
the black athlete as arrogant (relative to other black men) is not being
controlled by these individuals.

6. Discussion

Black athletes were judged in a fashion different from all other
targets on two rating scales that assessed stereotype-relevant attributes
of black athletes (but that were not stereotypical attributes of black men
more generally). Black athletes were seen to be less hard working and
more stubborn, and, interestingly, were also rated to be more confident
than arrogant (interesting because confident is the evaluative opposite
to arrogance, the quality suggested by the stereotype). It is important to
note that ratings of black salesman did not differ from ratings of white
men, indicating that the stereotype being triggered was not the global
stereotype of black men, or general feelings of prejudice (negativity)
toward black men that extended to any evaluation. The effects are
specific to black athletes and to traits that are relevant to the stereotype
of black athletes. The exact same quote is interpreted differently when
uttered by a black athlete, and he is thus seen to be a different type of
person than other black (and white) men.

The results also suggest that people do not desire to have such

4 The 152 participants included 10 African Americans, and if the analyses are con-
ducted with these individuals removed (so that only members of another ethnic group are
used as the participants who are judging the target people in the experiment) the pattern
of findings is unchanged and is even slightly stronger. Examining ratings of the person as
being stubborn/persistent we see a significant interaction of Race and Occupation, F
(1,141) = 13.31, p < .001. This is also true for ratings of arrogant/confident where we see a similar significant interaction of Race and Occupation, F (1,141) = 4.68, p < .04.

G.B. Moskowitz, D. Carter Psychology of Sport & Exercise 36 (2018) 139–146

144

biases. We specifically selected people who were aware of the stereo-
types being assessed, and thus should be capable of having those ste-
reotypes triggered by the presence of a black athlete. The fact that
participants know the stereotype of black athletes as arrogant, yet they
rate the black athletes in a fashion that is less arrogant and more con-
fident, suggests that participants are trying to assert their egalitarian
goals. They perhaps recognize the quotes are an opportunity for one to
be seen as racist, particularly given that the rating they are being asked
to make is to identify how positive (confident) or negative (arrogant)
the person is presumed to be along one trait dimension (how to describe
his belief in his abilities). Once aware the judgment is about race, and
provided an opportunity for bias to be revealed, their egalitarian goals
are triggered and they engage in attempts at control of the bias (e.g.,
Monteith & Voils, 2001; Moskowitz et al., 1999; Pearson et al., 2009).
One might call into question this interpretation along two lines, each of
which we believe can be ruled out. First, one might wonder if the
quotes simply are not arrogant enough to judge a black athlete as ar-
rogant. However, white athletes and black salesmen making the same
utterances are seen as arrogant. The behavior is diagnostic enough,
participants just seem reluctant to use the label “arrogant” to describe
the behavior when it is performed by black athletes. Second, one might
wonder if the attribute of confidence is also part of the stereotype,
perhaps even a more strongly held attribute to describe black athletes
as arrogant. If so, the effect seen is not participants controlling their
stereotype, but simply using the stereotype in the same manner they use
their stereotype of lacking hard work. The stereotype is simply one of
confidence with a hint of arrogance, not excessive arrogance. This in-
terpretation also seems unlikely due to our examination of the parti-
cipants who do not have high external motivation to control their ste-
reotypes. These participants freely express the bias they are feeling
without worry as to how it would look and without trying to control it.
And these participants clearly rate the black athletes as the most ar-
rogant from among all the target men who utter these quotes that imply
arrogance. This suggests that the stereotype is not one of confidence
more than arrogance, but that arrogance is indeed triggered and most
participants then try to control expressing such sentiments when they
are concerned about coming across as racist.

Such attempts at control, where one suspects one’s judgment has
been biased and then attempts to “de-bias” or correct/adjust that
judgment, often lead to what is called a contrast effect (e.g., Moskowitz
& Skurnik, 1999; Wegener & Petty, 1995). Contrast effects occur where
one attempts to remove the influence of some biasing agent and the
result is to produce a bias in the opposite direction. For example, having
one’s own child in a class may lead a teacher to suspect he/she is biased
to show favoritism, so in an attempt to not play favorites, the teacher
inadvertently treats the child more harshly than other students in the
attempt to treat the child equally. In trying to be less favorable he/she
goes too far. This same process happens with stereotypic judgments – if
one suspects one has been unfairly harsh in judging a person as arrogant
due to a negative stereotype that one fears is serving as a biasing agent,
one attempts to remove that influence (e.g., Wegener & Petty, 1995). In
doing so one may see the person as less arrogant and more confident as
a result of the attempt to be fair.

However, despite this optimistic possibility that participants are
constantly engaged in control of their stereotypes, the theory of aver-
sive racism (e.g., for a review see Pearson et al., 2009) posits that such
control only occurs when one is aware of the possibility of bias. When
the task is not known to be about race (see also Devine, 1989), or when
a justification for one’s response can be made that is not attributable to
race, then a bias to judge and treat people in a stereotypic way will
emerge. For example, in political elections one can point to the policies
of the disliked candidate, not her gender, as the cause for a negative
opinion; when selecting employees to work on a project one can point
to their objective skill sets and not their race as the cause for selection
(when systematic evaluation reveals that, in these two examples, po-
licies and skill sets are not the dominant factor – judgments are driven

by gender and race respectively). And when judging a black athlete’s
espoused refusal to change course, one can point to the obstinance and
stubbornness one believes is evident in the behavior, not race, as the
justification for the negative ratings. Obstinance versus hard work are
not only different in valence but offer two interpretations for the be-
havior, and this gives one the freedom to attribute the rating to the
unique semantic meaning, not dislike related to race. The impact of the
stereotype is observed when the judgment is not known to implicate
race and can be justified. An aversive racist may not worry to choose
the negative valence item (stubborn), even if concerned the judgment is
about race, because they can point to the semantic content as the basis
for their choice, not the valence. Their stereotype that black athletes are
“less hard working” can be displayed freely because there is an ap-
parent justification, one that is seemingly not racist, readily available
on which they can lean.

Implicit bias was shown here in participants favoring a stereotypic
explanation for behavior over a nonstereotypic explanation. However,
bias can also manifest as the favoring of one stereotype over another
stereotype. People belong to multiple groups, each with a unique ste-
reotype (e.g., Macrae et al., 1995). Activation of one of these group
stereotypes can inhibit the stereotypes associated with other groups to
which one belongs. For example, if a perceiver judging a black woman
has the stereotype of “woman” triggered, the “black” stereotype is in-
hibited. A perceiver is more likely to judge her in a fashion consistent
with the stereotype of women, but not of African Americans. We are
biased not merely to use stereotypes, but to use only one stereotype at a
time as a guide in judgment. One might ask whether triggering a sub-
type has a similar inhibitory effect on the global stereotype, just as
when one stereotype interferes with the stereotype of another group to
which a person belongs. This would be an important question to address
for future research – what is the relationship between the subtype and
the global stereotype if they suggest different interpretations of a target
person?

7. Conclusion

Subtypes of a category or stereotype often develop as a way to
protect a stereotype from change; as a way of “fencing off” the excep-
tions to the rule so that the category/stereotype can remain intact
(Kunda & Oleson, 1995). Often this serves to keep a negative stereotype
from being revised or updated by placing the positive members of the
group into a separate group with a set of positive characteristics that
distinguish them from other “more typical” members of the larger
stereotypic category (Kunda & Oleson, 1995). In the case of the black
athlete, the subtype appears to emerge in a way that takes an ostensibly
positive quality, athleticism, and morphs it into a negative set of qua-
lities, constructing a narrative around the downside of having natural
abilities. Natural athletic ability is treated in the subtype as a force that
can demotivate the nurturing of intelligence and hard work; one has the
ability to compensate for such “tiresome efforts” with one’s natural
gifts. As such, a form of implicit bias is made possible whereby a black
athlete is seen not positively for being athletic, but as arrogant, lacking
work ethic, and lacking sport’s intelligence. Such bias can be controlled
if one is aware that one is being influenced (and is the type of person
that desires to be fair and not be biased). But in the many cases where
one believes one is not and cannot be biased, ironically, the implicit
stereotype will influence judgment and cause one to believe one sees
evidence that confirms the expectation put forward by the subtype.

References

Allport, G. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Asch, S. E. (1946). Forming impressions of personality. Journal of Abnormal and Social

Psychology, 41, 258–290.
Barden, J., Maddux, W. W., Petty, R. E., & Brewer, M. B. (2004). Contextual moderation of

racial bias: The impact of social roles on controlled and automatically activated at-
titudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(1), 5.

G.B. Moskowitz, D. Carter Psychology of Sport & Exercise 36 (2018) 139–146

145

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref1

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref2

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref2

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref3

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref3

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref3

Beilock, S. L., & McConnell, A. R. (2004). Stereotype threat and sport: Can athletic per-
formance be threatened? Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 26(4), 597–609.

Blair, C. (2002). School readiness: Integrating cognition and emotion in a neurobiological
conceptualization of children’s functioning at school entry. American Psychologist,
57(2), 111.

Correll, J., Park, B., Judd, C. M., Wittenbrink, B., Sadler, M. S., & Keesee, T. (2007).
Across the thin blue line: Police officers and racial bias in the decision to shoot.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(6), 1006.

Czopp, A. M. (2010). Studying is lame when he got game: Racial stereotypes and the
discouragement of Black student-athletes from schoolwork. Social Psychology of
Education, 13(4), 485–498.

Darley, J. M., & Gross, P. H. (1983). A hypothesis-confirming bias in labelling effects.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44, 20–33.

Darley, J. M., & Fazio, R. H. (1980). Expectancy confirmation processes arising in the
social interaction sequence. American Psychologist, 35, 867–881.

Devine, P. G. (1989). Stereotypes and prejudice: Their automatic and controlled com-
ponents. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 5–18.

Devine, P. G., & Baker, S. M. (1991). Measurement of racial stereotype subtyping.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 17(1), 44–50.

Devine, P. G., & Elliot, A. J. (1995). Are racial stereotypes really fading? The Princeton
trilogy revisited. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21(11), 1139–1150.

Dovidio, J. F., & Fiske, S. T. (2012). Under the radar: How unexamined biases in decision-
making processes in clinical interactions can contribute to health care disparities.
American Journal of Public Health, 102(5), 945–952.

Duncan, B. L. (1976). Differential perception and attribution of intergroup violence:
Testing the lower limits of stereotyping Blacks. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 34, 590–598.

Eastman, S. T., & Billings, A. C. (2001). Biased voices of Sports: Racial and gender ste-
reotyping in college basketball announcing. Howard Journal of Communications, 12,
183–201.

Eberhardt, J. L., Davies, P. G., Purdie-Vaughns, V. J., & Johnson, S. L. (2006). Looking
deathworthy: Perceived stereotypicality of Black defendants predicts capital-senten-
cing outcomes. Psychological Science, 17(5), 383–386.

Edwards, H. (1973). The black athletes: 20th century gladiators for white America.
Psychology Today, 7(6), 43–52.

Edwards, H. (1984). The Black ‘dumb jock’: An American sports tragedy. The College
Board Review, 131, 8–13.

Hamilton, D. L., & Trolier, T. K. (1986). Stereotypes and stereotyping: An overview of the
cognitive approach. In J. F. Dovidio, & S. L. Gaertner (Eds.). Prejudice, discrimination,
and racism (pp. 127–163). Orlando, FL: Academic Press.

Harrison, K. (1998). The assassination of the Black male image in sport. Journal of African
American Men, 3, 45–56.

Katz, D., & Braly, K. W. (1933). Racial stereotypes of 100 college students. Journal of
Abnormal and Social Psychology, 28, 280–290.

Higgins, E. T. (1996). Knowledge activation: Accessibility, applicability, and salience. In
E. T. Higgins, & A. W. Kruglanski (Eds.). Social psychology: Handbook of basic principles
(pp. 133–168). New York: Guilford.

Kunda, Z. (1987). Motivated inference: Self-serving generation and evaluation of causal
theories. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53(4), 636–647.

Kunda, Z., & Oleson, K. C. (1995). Maintaining stereotypes in the face of disconfirmation:
Constructing grounds for subtyping deviants. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 68, 565–579.

Lorge, I., & Curtiss, C. C. (1936). Prestige, suggestion, and attitudes. The Journal of Social
Psychology, 7.4, 386–402.

Macrae, C. N., Bodenhausen, G. V., & Milne, A. B. (1995). The dissection of selection in
person perception: Inhibitory processes in social stereotyping. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 69(3), 397.

Monteith, M. J., & Voils, C. I. (2001). Exerting control over prejudiced responses. In G. B.
Moskowitz (Ed.). Cognitive social psychology: The Princeton symposium on the legacy and
future of social cognition. NJ. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Moskowitz, G. B., Gollwitzer, P. M., Wasel, W., & Schaal, B. (1999). Preconscious control
of stereotype activation through chronic egalitarian goals. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 77(1), 167–184.

Moskowitz, G. B., & Olcaysoy Okten, I. (2018). Social cognition. In T. Nelson (Ed.). Getting
grounded in social psychology (pp. 37–78). New York: Psychology Press/Taylor and
Francis.

Moskowitz, G. B., & Skurnik, I. W. (1999). Contrast effects as determined by the type of
prime: Trait versus exemplar primes initiate processing strategies that differ in how
accessible constructs are used. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76,
911–927.

Moss-Racusin, C. A., Dovidio, J. F., Brescoll, V. L., Graham, M. J., & Handelsman, J.
(2012). Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students. Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, 109(41), 16474–16479.

Nelson, T. D. (2018). Prejudice. In T. Nelson (Ed.). Getting grounded in social psychology.
New York: Psychology Press/Taylor and Francis.

Nosek, B. A., Smyth, F. L., Hansen, J. J., Devos, T., Lindner, N. M., Ranganath, K. A., et al.
(2007). Pervasiveness and correlates of implicit attitudes and stereotypes. European
Review of Social Psychology, 18(1), 36–88.

Payne, B. K. (2006). Weapon bias: Split-second decisions and unintended stereotyping.
Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15(6), 287–291.

Pearson, A. R., Dovidio, J. F., & Gaertner, S. L. (2009). The nature of contemporary
prejudice: Insights from aversive racism. Social and Personality Psychology Compass,
3(3), 314–338.

Plant, E. A., & Devine, P. G. (1998). Internal and external motivation to respond without
prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(3), 811–832.

Price, J., & Wolfers, J. (2007). Racial discrimination among NBA referees (No. w13206).
National Bureau of Economic Research.

Rada, J. (1996). Color blind-sided: Racial bias in network television’s coverage of pro-
fessional football games. The Howard Journal of Communications, 7, 231–240.

Rainville, R. E., & McCormick, E. (1977). Extent of covert racial prejudice in pro football
announcers’ speech. Journalism Quarterly, 54, 20–26.

Sailes, G. A. (2000). Betting against the Odds: Professional sports aspiration among African
American males. Vol. 10. Amer Alliance for Health Physical.

Schulman, K. A., Berlin, J. A., Harless, W., et al. (1999). The effect of race and sex on
physicians’ recommendations for cardiac catheterisation. New England Journal of
Medicine, 340, 618–626.

Sheldon, J. P., Jayaratne, T. E., & Petty, E. M. (2007). White Americans’ genetic ex-
planations for a perceived race difference in athleticism: The relation to prejudice
toward and stereotyping of Blacks. Athletic Insight: Online Journal of Sport Psychology,
9(3), 31–56.

Staples, R., & Jones, T. (1985). Culture, ideology and black television images. The Black
Scholar, 16(3), 10–20.

Stone, J., Harrison, C. K., & Mottley, J. (2012). “Don’t call me a student-athlete”: The
effect of identity priming on stereotype threat for academically engaged African
American college athletes. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 34(2), 99–106.

Stone, J., Lynch, C. I., Sjomeling, M., & Darley, J. M. (1999). Stereotype threat effects on
Black and White athletic performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77,
1213–1227.

Stone, J., Perry, Z. W., & Darley, J. M. (1997). “White men can’t jump”: Evidence for the
perceptual confirmation of racial stereotypes following a basketball game. Basic and
Applied Social Psychology, 19, 291–306.

Wegener, D. T., & Petty, R. E. (1995). Flexible correction processes in social judgment:
The role of naive theories in corrections for bias. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 68, 36–51.

G.B. Moskowitz, D. Carter Psychology of Sport & Exercise 36 (2018) 139–146
146

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref4

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref4

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref5

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref5

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref5

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref6

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref6

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref6

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref7

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref7

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref7

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref41

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref41

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref8

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref8

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref9

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref9

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref10

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref10

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref11

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref11

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref12

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref12

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref12

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref13

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref13

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref13

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref14

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref14

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref14

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref15

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref15

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref15

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref16

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref16

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref17

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref17

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref18

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref18

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref18

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref19

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref19

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref20

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref20

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref42

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref42

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref42

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref21

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref21

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref22

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref22

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref22

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref23

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref23

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref24

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref24

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref24

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref25

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref25

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref25

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref26

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref26

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref26

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref27

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref27

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref27

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref28

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref28

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref28

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref28

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref29

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref29

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref29

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref30

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref30

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref31

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref31

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref31

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref32

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref32

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref33

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref33

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref33

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref34

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref34

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref35

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref35

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref43

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref43

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref44

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref44

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref36

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref36

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref45

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref45

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref45

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref37

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref37

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref37

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref37

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref46

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref46

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref38

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref38

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref38

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref39

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref39

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref39

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref47

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref47

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref47

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref40

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref40

http://refhub.elsevier.com/S1469-0292(17)30782-3/sref40

Confirmation bias and the stereotype of the black athlete
Experiment one
Participants
Materials
Results
Experiment 2
Implicit bias in social judgment
Implicit bias and the subtype of the black athlete
Aversive racism
Method
Overview
Participants
Materials
Results
Discussion
Conclusion
References

N. Tausch & M. Hewston e: Social Dominance Orientation and Stereotype Ch angeSocial Psychology 2010; Vol. 41(3):169–17 6© 2010 Hogrefe Publishing

Original Article

Social Dominance Orientation
Attenuates Stereotype Change in the

Face of Disconfirming Information
Nicole Tausch1 and Miles Hewstone2

1Cardiff University, UK, 2University of Oxford, UK

Abstract. This study examined whether social dominance orientation (SDO) affects the malleability of group stereotypes in the face of
disconfirmation. Data were collected at two time points: At Time 1, baseline stereotypes and SDO were assessed, and at Time 2, either
moderately or extremely stereotype-inconsistent information was presented and stereotyping measures were repeated. Consistent with
previous research, exposure to moderately inconsistent information resulted in greater stereotype change than exposure to extremely
inconsistent information. As expected, SDO was negatively related to stereotype change, in particular after presentation of moderately
inconsistent information. The judged typicality of the target exemplar mediated the effects of the manipulation but did not mediate the
effects of SDO. Implications for future research and interventions to reduce stereotyping are discussed.

Keywords: stereotype change; disconfirming information; social dominance orientation

The present research examined whether the malleability of
group stereotypes in the face of disconfirming information is
affected by characteristics of the social perceiver. Research
on the role of individual differences in social perception pro-
cesses has a long tradition in social psychology (e.g., Adorno,
Frenkel-Brunswick, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950), and it has
long been assumed that the “prejudiced personality” “does
not change his mental set easily, but persists in old ways of
reasoning” (Allport, 1954, p. 171). Although more recent re-
search has extensively studied individual differences as pre-
dictors of social information processing strategies and has
successfully demonstrated the link between personality and
stereotyping (see Duckitt, 2005, for a review), little is still
known about whether individual differences predispose so-
cial perceivers toward the maintenance of prejudiced beliefs
even in the face of disconfirmation. The present research
aims to fill this gap in the literature by examining whether
individual differences in ideological orientation, specifically
social dominance orientation (SDO; Pratto, Sidanius, Stall-
worth, & Malle, 1994), affect the amount of stereotype
change in response to disconfirming information.

Stereotype Change in the Face of
Disconfirming Information

A large number of empirical studies have shown that peo-
ple often resist stereotype change when presented with in-

consistent information (see Hewstone, 1994, for a review).
This stability is achieved through cognitively isolating ste-
reotype-inconsistent group members from the group repre-
sentation; that is, stereotype disconfirmers are judged as
atypical and not considered when judging the group in gen-
eral (e.g., Kunda & Oleson, 1997; Weber & Crocker, 1983).
There are both cognitive and motivational accounts of this
phenomenon. Accounts based on models of exemplar-cat-
egory dynamics suggest that the goodness of fit of the ex-
emplar to the category determines the likelihood of a new
group exemplar becoming linked to the category and de-
termining the attributes associated with it (see Rothbart,
2001). Consistent with this idea are findings that exposure
to moderately inconsistent group members leads to greater
stereotype change than exposure to extremely inconsistent
exemplars, and that the judged typicality of an inconsistent
exemplar mediates the effect of extent of inconsistency on
stereotype change (e.g., Johnston & Hewstone, 1992; Kun-
da & Oleson, 1997).

Motivational accounts, on the other hand, suggest that
because stereotypes serve important needs such as simpli-
fying the social world or defending the social order (see
Snyder & Miene, 1994), disregarding inconsistent exem-
plars may result from a constructive attempt to preserve the
stereotype (Kunda & Oleson, 1995, 1997; Yzerbyt, Coull,
& Rocher, 1999). Although the role of motivational factors
in stereotype change has been less extensively researched,
there is some evidence underlining the importance of mo-
tivational factors from research showing that perceivers use

DOI: 10.1027/1864-9335/a000024

© 2010 Hogrefe Publishing Social Psychology 2010; Vol. 41(3):169–176

T
hi

s
do

cu
m

en
t i

s
co

py
ri

gh
te

d
by

th
e

A
m

er
ic

an
P

sy
ch

ol
og

ic
al

A
ss

oc
ia

tio
n

or
o

ne
o

f i
ts

a
lli

ed
p

ub
lis

he
rs

.
T

hi
s

ar
tic

le
is

in
te

nd
ed

s
ol

el
y

fo
r t

he
p

er
so

na
l u

se
o

f t
he

in
di

vi
du

al
u

se
r a

nd
is

n
ot

to
b

e
di

ss
em

in
at

ed
b

ro
ad

ly
.

neutral, pseudorelevant information to discount a stereo-
type-disconfirming exemplar and maintain their stereotype
(Kunda & Oleson, 1995) and that this is an active process
that requires ample cognitive resources (Yzerbyt et al.,
1999).

The Present Research

Rather than viewing these accounts of stereotype changes
as competing models, we suggest that they are complemen-
tary, and that both cognitive and motivational factors need
to be taken into account if we are to fully understand how
stereotypes change and are maintained. In the present re-
search we thus integrate these approaches by simultaneous-
ly examining (a) the category fit of the disconfirming ex-
emplar as a cognitive variable, (b) SDO (Pratto et al., 1994)
as an ideological orientation that is likely to motivate social
perceivers to maintain the stereotype, as well as (c) the in-
terplay of these variables.

Social dominance theory (SDT, Sidanius & Pratto,
1999) posits that societies minimize conflict by creating
consensus on ideologies that promote the superiority of
one group over others. Group stereotypes serve as hier-
archy-enhancing legitimizing myths that justify status
differences and discriminatory policies against members
of certain social groups. According to SDT, individuals
vary according to their desire for hierarchical vs. egali-
tarian intergroup relations. The SDO scale developed by
Pratto et al. (1994) captures such individual differences.
Pratto et al. demonstrated that people high in SDO, com-
pared to people low in SDO, tend to (1) more strongly
hold beliefs that legitimize the unequal distribution of so-
cial values such as jobs and healthcare (e.g., meritocracy,
racism, sexism, ethnic prejudice), and (2) agree more
with discriminatory policies and disagree more with pol-
icies that promote equality. We propose that, if group ste-
reotypes can serve to legitimize hierarchy, high SDO may
predispose social perceivers toward maintaining stereo-
types that justify the lower status of certain groups, even
when confronted with stereotype-inconsistent informa-
tion.

The present study was conducted in the context of
young adults’ stereotypes of the elderly. Discrimination
against old adults in society is one of the most legiti-
mized, socially accepted and institutionalized forms of
bias and is manifested in many areas of public life, such
as the workplace and the health system (see Nelson,
2002). Moreover, ageist behavior and institutional prac-
tices are legitimized by a stereotype of the elderly as in-
tellectually incompetent, forgetful, senile, frail, slow, and
dependent on others (e.g., Diekman & Hirnisey, 2007;
Hummert, 1990; Perdue & Gurtman, 1990). In this study
we examined whether the pretested elderly stereotype
changes through exposure to a moderately vs. extremely
stereotype-inconsistent exemplar and whether the

amount of change depends on individual differences in
SDO.

Consistent with previous research (e.g., Johnston &
Hewstone, 1992; Kunda & Oleson, 1997) we expected
that stereotype change would be greater after exposure to
moderately as opposed to extremely inconsistent infor-
mation (Hypothesis 1), that is, we expected postmanipu-
lation endorsement of stereotypical traits to be lower
(Hypothesis 1a) and endorsement of counterstereotypical
traits to be higher (Hypothesis 1b) after exposure to mod-
erately as opposed to extremely inconsistent information.
Based on previous research we further predicted that
these effects would be mediated by differences in the
judged typicality of the target person for elderly people
in general (Hypothesis 2). Moreover, because stereotypes
help to legitimize hierarchy and justify the low status of
certain outgroups, we predicted that SDO would predict
reduced stereotype change (Hypothesis 3). Specifically,
SDO would be positively related to postmanipulation en-
dorsement of stereotypical traits (Hypothesis 3a) and
negatively to postmanipulation endorsement of counter-
stereotypical traits (Hypothesis 3b), while controlling for
baseline stereotyping.

We further examined whether the effects of SDO
would depend on the extent of stereotype inconsistency.
As noted earlier, people generally seem to view extreme-
ly unrepresentative group members as uninformative and
tend not to generalize their attributes to the group as a
whole (Rothbart, 2001). Thus, motivational factors may
have little impact when stereotype-inconsistent exem-
plars are highly untypical. How perceivers view exem-
plars which only moderately disconfirm the stereotype
may, however, be more likely to be subject to motivation-
al goals. This idea is consistent with the literature on Per-
sonality × Situation interactions, which suggests that the
impact of personality on behavior is greater in “weak”
compared to “strong” situations (Mischel, 1977). Thus,
we examined the possibility that SDO would have a
greater impact on postmanipulation stereotyping when
moderately (compared to extremely) inconsistent infor-
mation is presented (Hypothesis 4).

Finally, we explored how SDO might affect stereotype
maintenance. Kunda and Oleson (1995) suggested that
social perceivers search for subjectively satisfactory rea-
sons not to revise their stereotypes in the light of discon-
firmation. One way of constructing such a justification is
to discount a stereotype-inconsistent exemplar as atypi-
cal of the group in general (see Kunda & Oleson, 1997).
This is likely to be an active process that requires cogni-
tive resources (Yzerbyt et al., 1999). If judging stereo-
type-inconsistent exemplars as “exceptions to the rule”
provides a means by which the stereotype can be main-
tained, then SDO should be negatively related to the
judged typicality of the stereotype-inconsistent target
person, and the effects of SDO on postmanipulation ste-
reotyping should be mediated by judged typicality (Hy-
pothesis 5).

170 N. Tausch & M. Hewstone: Social Dominance Orientation and Stereotype Change

Social Psychology 2010; Vol. 41(3):169–176 © 2010 Hogrefe Publishing

T
hi
s
do
cu
m
en
t i
s
co
py
ri
gh
te
d
by
th
e
A
m
er
ic
an
P
sy
ch
ol
og
ic
al
A
ss
oc
ia
tio
n
or
o
ne
o
f i
ts
a
lli
ed
p
ub
lis
he
rs
.
T
hi
s
ar
tic
le
is
in
te
nd
ed
s
ol
el
y
fo
r t
he
p
er
so
na
l u
se
o
f t
he
in
di
vi
du
al
u
se
r a
nd
is
n
ot
to
b
e
di
ss
em
in
at
ed
b
ro
ad
ly
.

Method

Participants and Design

Participants were psychology undergraduates at a British
university. They were recruited through a research partici-
pation scheme (RPS) and received course credit for their
participation. Data for this study were collected at two time
points. Seventy (52 female, 18 male; mean age 19.06 years)
participants completed the baseline assessment (Time 1)
and 40 (29 female, 11 male; mean age 18.85 years) returned
on average 10.90 (SD = 5.20) days later to participate in an
“impression formation” experiment (Time 2). In the exper-
imental session at Time 2, we used a 2 (Stereotype incon-
sistency: moderate vs. extreme) × 2 (Sex of target person:
male vs. female) between-subjects experimental design.
The second factor was varied for control purposes only. Ten
participants were randomly assigned to each experimental
condition.

Procedure and Measures

Time 1

Participants signed up for a study on “personality and social
attitudes.” They received a questionnaire, which, among a
number of other measures, contained Pratto et al.’s (1994)
SDO scale (16 items; e.g., “Sometimes other groups must
be kept in their place”; α = .90), to which participants re-
sponded using scales ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to
7 (strongly agree), as well as four stereotyping measures:
the perceived central tendency of the elderly on stereotyp-
ical and counterstereotypical traits and measures of confi-
dence that the elderly possess stereotypical and counterste-
reotypical traits. To rate perceived central tendency, partic-
ipants marked an “X” on a 100 mm scale with the endpoints
not at all and very, according to where they thought the
elderly on average fell on five pretested stereotypical traits
(ailing, forgetful, frail, slow, tired) and five pretested count-
erstereotypical traits (energetic, fit, healthy, sturdy, quick).
The traits were presented in one of two different random
orders. We averaged ratings (in mm) to create indices of
central tendency on stereotypical (α = .83) and counterste-
reotypical (α = .72) traits. Participants then rated how con-
fident they were that elderly people, on average, possessed
each of these traits on 100 mm scales ranging from not at
all confident to extremely confident. Two indices, for con-
fidence in stereotypical (α = .69) and in counterstereotyp-
ical (α = .74) traits, were created. Upon completion, par-
ticipants were thanked for their participation and partially
debriefed.

Time 2

Participants signed up for an apparently unrelated study on
“impression formation,” which was advertised 1 week la-
ter. Participation in the “personality and attitudes” study
(i.e., Time 1) was, however, set as a precondition for par-
ticipation. Upon arrival in the laboratory, participants were
randomly assigned to one of the four experimental condi-
tions and were then presented with information about a tar-
get person via a computer screen. First, participants read a
name (John or Marie) and an introductory paragraph that
stated the person’s age (76), that he or she lived in Dorches-
ter, England, and that he or she used to work for a local
company until retiring 7 years ago. Participants were then
presented with 11 allegedly self-reported statements de-
scribing activities of the target person that were either mod-
erately stereotype inconsistent (“I get up early and get the
household chores done quickly, so I can take my dog for a
walk”; “I joined the local dancing club 2 years ago; it’s a
great way to meet new people”) or extremely stereotype
inconsistent (e.g., “Every day I get up very early in the
morning and go on a fast run with my two dogs”; “I joined
the local squash club 2 years ago; it’s a great way to meet
new people”). The sentences were presented one at a time
upon key press and appeared in a randomized order. The
statements and overall profiles were extensively pretested
to ensure that they represented moderately and extremely
stereotype-inconsistent information, respectively1.

Next, participants rated the target person on their typi-
cality using 7-point scales ranging from 1 (not at all) to 7
(extremely) (5 items; e.g., “How typical is John/Marie of
elderly people in general?”; α = .97) as well on a number
of filler items. They then completed the stereotyping mea-
sures, which were identical to those used at Time 1. Again
we computed indices of central tendency on stereotypical
(α = .90) and counterstereotypical (α = .77) traits, and con-
fidence in stereotypical (α = .84) and counterstereotypical
(α = .78) traits. Finally, as a manipulation check, partici-
pants rated the extent to which they thought the target per-
son possessed each of the stereotype-consistent and stereo-
type-inconsistent traits on scales ranging from 1 (not at all)
to 7 (extremely). We created indices of the extent to which
the target person was judged to possess stereotypical (α =
.60) and counterstereotypical (α = .93) traits. Upon com-
pletion, participants were thanked for their participation,
probed for suspicions about the hypotheses of the study,
and fully debriefed.

Results

Responses from the two measurement points were matched
using participants’ RPS numbers. There were no signifi-

N. Tausch & M. Hewstone: Social Dominance Orientation and Stereotype Change 171

© 2010 Hogrefe Publishing Social Psychology 2010; Vol. 41(3):169–176

� Further information on pretesting procedures and the impression formation task can be obtained from the first author.

T
hi
s
do
cu
m
en
t i
s
co
py
ri
gh
te
d
by
th
e
A
m
er
ic
an
P
sy
ch
ol
og
ic
al
A
ss
oc
ia
tio
n
or
o
ne
o
f i
ts
a
lli
ed
p
ub
lis
he
rs
.
T
hi
s
ar
tic
le
is
in
te
nd
ed
s
ol
el
y
fo
r t
he
p
er
so
na
l u
se
o
f t
he
in
di
vi
du
al
u
se
r a
nd
is
n
ot
to
b
e
di
ss
em
in
at
ed
b
ro
ad
ly
.

cant differences between those participants who returned
at Time 2 and those who did not in terms of SDO scores or
stereotyping measures. There was no effect of gender of
target person on any of the dependent variables, nor were
there interactions between gender of target and gender of
participant; we therefore collapsed the two counterbal-
anced versions.

Preliminary Analyses

Table 1 presents the means and standard deviations for all
dependent variables as a function of time of measurement
and experimental condition. Our main analyses assessed
whether the amount of stereotype change depended on the
extent of inconsistency of the target person and individual
differences in SDO.

First, we checked whether our manipulation of extent of
stereotype inconsistency was successful. The extremely
stereotype-inconsistent target was rated significantly lower
on stereotypical traits (M = 1.59, SD = .50) than the mod-
erately inconsistent target (M = 1.91, SD = .41), F(1, 38) =
4.93, p = .032, and significantly higher on stereotype-in-
consistent traits (M = 6.36, SD = .37) than the moderately
inconsistent target (M = 5.79, SD = .63), F(1, 38) = 12.05,
p = .001, demonstrating a successful manipulation of ex-
tent of stereotype inconsistency.

Second, we examined whether there were significant
changes in stereotyping following the presentation of ste-

reotype-inconsistent information. Overall, there was a
(marginally) significant reduction in the rated central ten-
dency of stereotypical traits (MT1 = 71.09, MT2 = 68.23;
t(39) = 1.95, p = .058). There was also a significant reduc-
tion in confidence that elderly people possessed stereotyp-
ical traits (MT1 = 68.50, MT2 = 65.03; t(39) = 2.36, p = .023)
and increased confidence that elderly people possessed
counterstereotypical traits (MT1 = 33.20, MT2 = 36.06;
t(39) = –2.34, p = .025). There was no overall change, how-
ever, in the rated central tendency of counterstereotypical
traits (MT1 = 33.50, MT2 = 34.19; t(39) = –.54, p = .590).

The Impact of Target Inconsistency and
Social Dominance Orientation on
Stereotype Change

First, we performed a series of hierarchical regressions to
examine the overall effects and interaction of target incon-
sistency and SDO on stereotype change (see Aiken & West,
1991). In Step 1 we regressed postmanipulation stereotyp-
ing scores on baseline stereotyping, the experimental ma-
nipulation (effects-coded –1 for the moderately inconsis-
tent condition and +1 for the extremely inconsistent condi-
tion), and centered SDO scores. As expected, and
consistent with previous research, stereotype change was
reduced when the disconfirming exemplar was extremely
stereotype-inconsistent than when it was only moderately
inconsistent. Specifically, the manipulation was positively

Table 1. Means and standard deviations of dependent variables as a function of condition

Dependent variable Moderately inconsistent Extremely inconsistent

M (SD) M (SD)

Central tendency

Stereotypical

Time 1 71.10 (12.34) 71.07 (8.85)

Time 2 63.85 (13.93) 72.61 (9.22)

Change (Time 2 – Time 1) –7.25 (10.50) +1.54 (4.99)

Counterstereotypical

Time 1 34.89 (10.69) 32.11 (10.19)

Time 2 36.78 (11.09) 31.59 (9.24)

Change (Time 2 – Time 1) +1.89 (9.08) –0.52 (6.71)

Confidence

Stereotypical

Time 1 67.78 (13.16) 69.22 (7.47)

Time 2 62.83 (15.84) 67.22 (9.31)

Change (Time 2 – Time 1) –4.95 (10.90) –2.00 (7.38)

Counterstereotypical

Time 1 34.66 (11.65) 31.74 (9.18)

Time 2 37.90 (13.23) 34.21 (7.87)

Change (Time 2 – Time 1) +3.24 (8.93) +2.47 (8.01)

Target Typicality (Time 2) 3.86 (1.20) 2.03 (.54)

Note. Ratings of central tendency and confidence could range from 0 to 100, and target typicality from 1 to 7.

172 N. Tausch & M. Hewstone: Social Dominance Orientation and Stereotype Change

Social Psychology 2010; Vol. 41(3):169–176 © 2010 Hogrefe Publishing
T
hi
s
do
cu
m
en
t i
s
co
py
ri
gh
te
d
by
th
e
A
m
er
ic
an
P
sy
ch
ol
og
ic
al
A
ss
oc
ia
tio
n
or
o
ne
o
f i
ts
a
lli
ed
p
ub
lis
he
rs
.
T
hi
s
ar
tic
le
is
in
te
nd
ed
s
ol
el
y
fo
r t
he
p
er
so
na
l u
se
o
f t
he
in
di
vi
du
al
u
se
r a
nd
is
n
ot
to
b
e
di
ss
em
in
at
ed
b
ro
ad
ly
.

related to the central tendency of stereotypical traits at
Time 2 (β = .40, p = .001), negatively related to the central
tendency of counterstereotypical traits at Time 2 (β = –.23,
p = .048), and positively related to confidence in stereotyp-
ical traits at Time 2 (β = .24, p = .025). Although the ma-
nipulation was, as expected, negatively related to confi-
dence in counterstereotypical traits at Time 2, this relation-
ship was not significant (β = –.14, p = .227).

Consistent with our hypotheses, SDO was positively re-
lated to confidence in stereotypical traits at Time 2 (β = .24,
p = .025), and negatively related to central tendency of (β =
–.26, p = .027) and confidence in (β = –.24, p = .032)
counterstereotypical traits at Time 2. Although SDO was
positively related to central tendency of stereotypical traits
at Time 2 as we had predicted, this relationship did not
reach statistical significance (β = .15, p = .186). In Step 2,
we added the product term of the manipulation and cen-
tered SDO scores to examine the interaction between the
effects of SDO and the stereotype-consistency manipula-
tion. Consistent with our expectations, SDO only predicted
postmanipulation stereotyping in the moderately (and not
in the extremely) inconsistent condition (for central tenden-
cy of counterstereotypical traits β = –.34, p = .053, and β =
–.13, p = .419, respectively; for confidence in stereotypical
traits β = .48, p = .001, and β = .22, p = .252, respectively;
and for confidence in counterstereotypical traits (β = –.34,
p = .041, and β = –.05, p = .795, respectively). However,
the interaction terms for these tests did not reach statistical
significance (β = .10, p = .389; β = –.17, p = .090; and β =
.14, p = .195, respectively; see Table 2 for a summary of
results).

Mediation by Judged Target Typicality

We examined whether the effects of the stereotype-consis-
tency manipulation and SDO on stereotype change were
mediated by judged target typicality. The manipulation of
stereotype consistency had the expected negative effect on
target typicality over and above SDO scores (β = –.77, p < .001), indicating that the target person was judged to be less

typical of elderly people in the extremely inconsistent com-
pared to the moderately inconsistent condition. To test for
mediation, we regressed Time 2 stereotyping measures on
baseline scores, SDO, the consistency manipulation, and
typicality ratings. Typicality emerged as a significant pre-
dictor of Time 2 central tendency of stereotypical traits (β =
–.30, p = .050) and the effect of the manipulation ceased to
be significant (β = .17, p = .276), suggesting that judged
target typicality fully mediated the effect of the manipula-
tion (Sobel Test: z = 1.94, p = .052).

Similarly, typicality was a significant predictor of con-
fidence in stereotypical traits at Time 2 (β = –.43, p = .002)
and the effect of the manipulation ceased to be significant
with typicality in the equation (β = –.09, p = .499), indicat-
ing full mediation (Sobel Test: z = 2.98, p = .003). Further-
more, although the manipulation did not have a direct effect
on confidence in counterstereotypical traits, typicality
emerged as a significant predictor of postmanipulation
scores (β = .54, p = .001), consistent with an indirect effect
of the manipulation via typicality (Sobel Test: z = –3.06,
p = .002). For central tendency of counterstereotypical
traits, however, typicality did not emerge as a significant
predictor (β = .19, p = .285) and was thus not a mediator.

Next we examined whether judged target typicality me-
diated SDO effects. SDO had only a marginally (although
in the predicted direction) significant effect on typicality
ratings (β = –.20, p = .100). There was, however, a signif-
icant interaction between SDO and the stereotype-consis-
tency manipulation (β = .23, p = .043), which indicated
that SDO had an effect on typicality ratings only in the
moderately (β = –.45, p = .049) and not the extremely (β =
.20, p = .370) inconsistent condition. To assess whether
typicality ratings mediated SDO effects on the dependent
variables in the moderately inconsistent condition, we re-
gressed stereotyping scores on baseline scores, SDO, and
judged target typicality. For central tendency ratings of
counterstereotypical traits, typicality did not emerge as a
significant predictor (β = .04, p = .833) and was therefore
not a mediator. For confidence in consistent traits, both typ-
icality (β = –.31, p = .013) and SDO (β = .34, p = .007)
were predictors but the mediated effect did not reach sig-

Table 2. Results of hierarchical regression analyses

Criterion variable Central tendency Confidence Target

Stereotypical Counterstereotypical Stereotypical Counterstereotypical typicality

Step 1

Time 1 score .66*** .69*** .69*** .74*** –

Target inconsistency condition .40** –.23* .24* –.14 –.77***

SDO .15 –.26* .40*** –.24* –.20+

R2 .62*** .59*** .67*** .61*** .54***

Step 2

SDO × Target inconsistency .00 .10 –.17+ .14 .23*

R2 change .00 .01 .03+ .02 .05*

Note. Table shows standardized regression weights; N = 60; *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001, + p = .10. Target inconsistency was coded as –1 = moderate; +1 = extreme.

N. Tausch & M. Hewstone: Social Dominance Orientation and Stereotype Change 173

© 2010 Hogrefe Publishing Social Psychology 2010; Vol. 41(3):169–176
T
hi
s
do
cu
m
en
t i
s
co
py
ri
gh
te
d
by
th
e
A
m
er
ic
an
P
sy
ch
ol
og
ic
al
A
ss
oc
ia
tio
n
or
o
ne
o
f i
ts
a
lli
ed
p
ub
lis
he
rs
.
T
hi
s
ar
tic
le
is
in
te
nd
ed
s
ol
el
y
fo
r t
he
p
er
so
na
l u
se
o
f t
he
in
di
vi
du
al
u
se
r a
nd
is
n
ot
to
b
e
di
ss
em
in
at
ed
b
ro
ad
ly
.

nificance (Sobel Test: z = 1.69, p = .091). Finally, although
SDO ceased to be a significant predictor of confidence in
inconsistent traits (β = –.15, p = .315) when typicality (β =
.38, p = .041) was entered into the equation, the size of the
mediated effect was not significant (Sobel Test: z = 1.53,
p = .125) Thus, overall, there was little evidence that typi-
cality ratings mediated SDO effects.

Discussion

The present research replicated the well-established find-
ing that moderately inconsistent information is more effec-
tive than extremely inconsistent information in reducing
stereotyping (e.g., Johnston & Hewstone, 1992; Kunda &
Oleson, 1997). The main objective of this study, however,
was to extend previous research by investigating the impact
of perceivers’ ideological orientation on stereotype change
in response to disconfirming information. Motivational ac-
counts of stereotype maintenance suggest that perceivers
are motivated to preserve their stereotypes because stereo-
types serve important needs, such as defending the social
order (see Kunda & Oleson, 1995; Snyder & Miene, 1994).
Based on this idea we predicted that, because stereotypes
can serve as hierarchy-enhancing legitimizing myths (Sida-
nius & Pratto, 1999), people high in SDO, an ideological
orientation related to the desire for hierarchical vs. egali-
tarian intergroup relations, should be more motivated to
maintain their stereotypes compared to people low in SDO,
and SDO should therefore be negatively related to stereo-
type change. Consistent with this idea, we presented initial
evidence that SDO attenuates stereotype change in re-
sponse to disconfirming information. Specifically, SDO
was (over and above baseline stereotyping scores and the
stereotype-consistency manipulation) significantly nega-
tively related to the perceived central tendency of and con-
fidence in counterstereotypical traits and positively related
to confidence in stereotypical traits. There was also a pos-
itive (albeit nonsignificant) relationship between SDO and
the central tendency of stereotypical traits.

Furthermore, based on the idea that individual differenc-
es have implications in particular when other constraints
(such as the extreme atypicality of an exemplar that would
generally inhibit generalization) are absent (Mischel,
1977), we expected that SDO would have an impact on
stereotyping in particular when moderately rather than ex-
tremely inconsistent information is presented. In line with
this idea, SDO was related to stereotyping only in the mod-
erately inconsistent condition. Nonetheless, the interaction
terms for these tests did not reach statistical significance.
It should be noted, however, that interaction effects are no-
toriously difficult to detect in multiple regression because
of low power (see also McClelland & Judd, 1993). Thus,
the present results can only be seen as initial evidence and
need to be replicated in further studies, which could, for
example, simultaneously manipulate motivational goals

and exemplar goodness of fit. Such future work could have
important implications for further theoretical integration of
the prototype (Rothbart, 2001) and motivational (Kunda &
Oleson, 1995) accounts of stereotype change. We would
expect that motivational factors interact with the goodness
of fit of stereotype-inconsistent exemplars and operate in
particular when the counterexample is relatively typical of
the group.

In addition to examining the impact of extremity of ste-
reotype-inconsistent information and individual differenc-
es in SDO, as well as their interaction, on stereotype
change, we also aimed to illuminate the psychological pro-
cess by which these variables may lead to stereotype main-
tenance vs. change. Previous research on stereotype change
has indicated that the judged typicality of a disconfirming
exemplar is central to the process of stereotype change and
mediates the effect of the extent of disconfirmation on ste-
reotyping (Johnston & Hewstone, 1992). Replicating this
work, judged typicality of the target person fully mediated
the effects of the manipulation on stereotype change in the
present study. Kunda and Oleson (1995, 1997) further sug-
gested that motivated social perceivers search for subjec-
tively satisfactory reasons not to revise their stereotypes,
and that judging a stereotype-disconfirmer as atypical may
provide a successful means of constructing such a justifi-
cation. We thus explored the possibility that SDO would
exert its effect on stereotype change by affecting judgments
of the target person’s representativeness. Although, consis-
tent with such an account, SDO was negatively related to
judged typicality in the moderately inconsistent condition,
there was overall very little evidence that judged typicality
mediated the effects of SDO on stereotype change. This
pattern is intriguing as it suggests that perceivers who are
motivated by an ideology that supports group-based hier-
archy do not necessarily use target atypicality (see Kunda
& Oleson, 1997) to maintain their stereotypes. Future re-
search should examine this idea further, and also explore
the potential importance of other subjective justifications
for stereotype maintenance in the face of disconfirmation.

Implications

The present research presents initial evidence showing that
individual differences in ideological orientation attenuate
stereotype change in response to disconfirmation. Our
work underlines the importance of including both cognitive
and motivational factors, as well as their interplay, in anal-
yses of the malleability of social stereotypes. Nonetheless,
the present study can only be seen as a first step in that
direction. Future research should aim to replicate and ex-
tend the present findings and examine additional individual
difference variables that may further bias perceivers toward
stereotype maintenance, such as right-wing authoritarian-
ism (RWA, Altemeyer, 1988) and need for structure (Neu-
berg & Newsom, 1993), which represent different motiva-
tional goals (defending the social order and simplifying the

174 N. Tausch & M. Hewstone: Social Dominance Orientation and Stereotype Change

Social Psychology 2010; Vol. 41(3):169–176 © 2010 Hogrefe Publishing
T
hi
s
do
cu
m
en
t i
s
co
py
ri
gh
te
d
by
th
e
A
m
er
ic
an
P
sy
ch
ol
og
ic
al
A
ss
oc
ia
tio
n
or
o
ne
o
f i
ts
a
lli
ed
p
ub
lis
he
rs
.
T
hi
s
ar
tic
le
is
in
te
nd
ed
s
ol
el
y
fo
r t
he
p
er
so
na
l u
se
o
f t
he
in
di
vi
du
al
u
se
r a
nd
is
n
ot
to
b
e
di
ss
em
in
at
ed
b
ro
ad
ly
.

social world). A potentially fruitful avenue for future re-
search could also be to examine whether certain individual
difference variables differentially predict the maintenance
of stereotypes of specific target outgroups. Duckitt (2006),
for example, demonstrated that while RWA predicts atti-
tudes toward groups seen as threatening social control and
order (e.g., drug dealers, rock stars), SDO predicts attitudes
toward socially subordinate groups with lower status and
power (housewives, physically disabled persons, and un-
employment beneficiaries) that may activate competitive-
ness over relative dominance. Thus, future research may
examine whether RWA and SDO differentially motivate
the maintenance of stereotypes of different types of out-
groups.

To conclude, we emphasize that, rather than implying
that stereotyping and prejudice are inevitable for “preju-
diced personalities,” as suggested by early theorists (All-
port, 1954), our findings give insight into how interven-
tions to reduce stereotyping could be customized to be
maximally effective. Levy (1999) suggested that although
individual differences that affect stereotyping and preju-
dice reflect relatively stable tendencies, they can be mal-
leable if targeted by customized intervention programs
(e.g., Schaller, Asp, Rossel, & Heim, 1996). For example,
Pratto, Tatar, and Conway-Lanz (1999) demonstrated that
SDO can be reduced when participants take on nondomi-
nating roles in role-plays. Thus, a fruitful avenue for future
research would be to examine whether training programs
preceding interventions to reduce stereotyping through ex-
posure to stereotype-inconsistent information would in-
crease the effectiveness of such interventions. We hope that
the present research will stimulate further work on this im-
portant issue.

Acknowledgments

The research reported in this article was carried out as part
of the first author’s doctoral thesis, supervised by the sec-
ond author. It was funded by a doctoral studentship
awarded by the University of Oxford. This manuscript was
prepared while Nicole Tausch was a British Academy Post-
doctoral Fellow.

References

Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswick, E., Levinson, D. J., & San-
ford, R. N. (1950). The authoritarian personality. New York:
Harper.

Aiken, L. S., & West, S. G. (1991). Multiple regression: Testing
and interpreting interaction. New York: Sage.

Allport, G. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Reading, MA: Ad-
dison-Wesley.

Altemeyer, R. A. (1988). Enemies of freedom: Understanding
right-wing authoritarianism. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Diekman, A. B., & Hirnisey, L. (2007). The effect of context on
the silver ceiling: A role congruity perspective on prejudiced
responses. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33,
1353–1366.

Duckitt, J. (2005). Personality and prejudice. In J. Dovidio, P.
Glick, & L. A.Rudman (Eds.), On the nature of prejudice: Fifty
years after Allport (pp. 395–412). Oxford: Blackwell.

Duckitt, J. (2006). Differential effects of Right Wing Authoritarian-
ism and Social Dominance Orientation on outgroup attitudes and
their mediation by threat from competitiveness to outgroups.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 684–696.

Hewstone, M. (1994). Revision and change of stereotypic beliefs:
In search of the elusive subtyping model. In W. Stroebe & M.
Hewstone (Eds.), European review of social psychology
(Vol. 5, pp. 69–109). Chichester, UK Wiley.

Hummert, M. L. (1990). Multiple stereotypes of elderly and
young adults: A comparison of structure and evaluations. Psy-
chology and Aging, 5, 182–193.

Johnston, L., & Hewstone, M. (1992). Cognitive models of ste-
reotype change (3): Subtyping and the perceived typicality of
disconfirming group members. Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology, 28, 360–386.

Kunda, Z., & Oleson, K. C. (1995). Maintaining stereotypes in
the face of disconfirmation: Constructing grounds for subtyp-
ing deviants. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
68, 565–579.

Kunda, Z., & Oleson, K. C. (1997). When exceptions prove the
rule: How extremity of deviance determines the impact of de-
viant examples on stereotypes. Journal of Personality and So-
cial Psychology, 72, 965–979.

Levy, S. R. (1999). Reducing prejudice: Lessons from social-cog-
nitive factors underlying perceiver differences in prejudice.
Journal of Social Issues, 55, 745–765.

McClelland, G. H., & Judd, C. M. (1993). Statiscal differences of
detecting interactions and moderator effects. Psychological
Bulletin, 114, 376–390.

Mischel, W. (1977). The interaction between person and situation.
In D. Magnusson & N. S. Endler (Eds.), Personality at the
crossroads: Current issues in interactional psychology. Hills-
dale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Nelson, T. D. (Ed.). (2002). Ageism: Stereotyping and prejudice
against older persons. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Neuberg, S. L., & Newsom, J. T. (1993). Personal need for struc-
ture: Individual differences in the desire for simple structure.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 113–131.

Perdue, C. W., & Gurtman, M. B. (1990). Evidence for the autom-
atism of ageism. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology,
26, 199–216.

Pratto, F., Sidanius, J., Stallworth, L. M., & Malle, B. F. (1994).
Social dominance orientation: A personality variable predict-
ing social and political attitudes. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 67, 741–763.

Pratto, F., Tatar, D. G., & Conway-Lanz, S. (1999). Who gets what
and why: Determinants of social allocations. Political Psychol-
ogy, 20, 127–150.

Rothbart, M. (2001). Category dynamics and the modification of
outgroup stereotypes. In R. Brown & S. Gaertner (Eds.),
Blackwell handbook of social psychology: Intergroup process-
es. Oxford: Blackwell.

Schaller, M., Asp, C., Rosell, M. C., & Heim, S. J. (1996). Train-
ing in statistical reasoning inhibits the formation of erroneous

N. Tausch & M. Hewstone: Social Dominance Orientation and Stereotype Change 175

© 2010 Hogrefe Publishing Social Psychology 2010; Vol. 41(3):169–176
T
hi
s
do
cu
m
en
t i
s
co
py
ri
gh
te
d
by
th
e
A
m
er
ic
an
P
sy
ch
ol
og
ic
al
A
ss
oc
ia
tio
n
or
o
ne
o
f i
ts
a
lli
ed
p
ub
lis
he
rs
.
T
hi
s
ar
tic
le
is
in
te
nd
ed
s
ol
el
y
fo
r t
he
p
er
so
na
l u
se
o
f t
he
in
di
vi
du
al
u
se
r a
nd
is
n
ot
to
b
e
di
ss
em
in
at
ed
b
ro
ad
ly
.

group stereotypes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulle-
tin, 22, 829–844.

Sidanius, J., & Pratto, F. (1999). Social dominance: An intergroup
theory of social hierarchy and oppression. Cambridge: Uni-
versity Press.

Snyder, M., & Miene, P. (1994). On the functions of stereotypes
and prejudice. In M. P. Zanna & J. M. Olson (Eds.), The psy-
chology of prejudice: The Ontario symposium (pp. 33–54).
Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Weber, R., & Crocker, J. (1983). Cognitive processes in the revi-
sion of stereotypic beliefs. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 45, 961–977.

Yzerbyt, V. Y., Coull, A., & Rocher, S. J. (1999). Fencing off the
deviant: The role of cognitive resources in the maintenance of

stereotypes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77,
449–462.

Nicole Tausch

School of Psychology
Cardiff University
Tower Building, Park Place
Cardiff, CF10 3AT
UK
E-mail tauschn@cf.ac.uk

176 N. Tausch & M. Hewstone: Social Dominance Orientation and Stereotype Change

Social Psychology 2010; Vol. 41(3):169–176 © 2010 Hogrefe Publishing
T
hi
s
do
cu
m
en
t i
s
co
py
ri
gh
te
d
by
th
e
A
m
er
ic
an
P
sy
ch
ol
og
ic
al
A
ss
oc
ia
tio
n
or
o
ne
o
f i
ts
a
lli
ed
p
ub
lis
he
rs
.
T
hi
s
ar
tic
le
is
in
te
nd
ed
s
ol
el
y
fo
r t
he
p
er
so
na
l u
se
o
f t
he
in
di
vi
du
al
u
se
r a
nd
is
n
ot
to
b
e
di
ss
em
in
at
ed
b
ro
ad
ly
.