Racism Breeds Ignorance

STEREOTYPES PLAY AN INTRIGUING ROLE in the human psyche. We all know that the targets of negative stereotypes can be hurt by them, and studies have shown that people who are the object of unfair bias can adopt the negative traits attributed to them. But until recently, few researchers have studied the potential cognitive drawbacks in people who perpetuate negative stereotypes.

Richard Petty, Ph.D., and his colleagues recently conducted a study to determine whether prejudiced individuals suffer cognitive disadvantages. Petty's team screened students for racist traits using the Modern Racism Scale (MRS). They then asked the 86 students who scored the highest and lowest on the MRS to write an essay about a day in the life of a fictitious student named either Tyrone or Erik. After completing the essays, the participants were given 20 minutes to solve 30 math problems. The results, published recently in the Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology, showed that those students who identified Tyrone as an African-American and used stereotypes to describe him in their essay scored lower on the math test compared with students who did not use stereotypes.

Considering his findings, Petty notes that his study is not the first to show that activating stereotypes affects those who hold them. One study found that participants' performances decreased on tests of general knowledge when the stereotype of supermodel was activated, while performances increased when the stereotype of professor was activated. Further studies have also shown that when the stereotype of the elderly is activated, participants walk more slowly.

What surprised the researchers most, however, is that the people who scored low on the MRS performed just as poorly on the math section if they had identified Tyrone as African-American. "You'd think that prejudiced people would be more likely to have stereotypes," says Petty, "but a lot of research says that there isn't a big correlation between being aware of these stereotypes and being prejudiced."