dose-dependent media priming effects of...

Journal of Communication ISSN 0021-9916

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Dose-Dependent Media Priming Effectsof Stereotypic Newspaper Articleson Implicit and Explicit StereotypesFlorian Arendt

Department of Communication, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

Current research draws a distinction between stereotype activation and application. Buildingon this differentiation, we present an implicit social cognition model of media priming:Implicit stereotypes (i.e., automatically activated stereotypes) are the outcome of associativeprocesses, whereas explicit stereotypes (i.e., overtly expressed judgments) represent theoutcome of propositional processes. We tested some of the model’s basic predictions in anexperiment. We found that a Gaussian distribution function explained the explicit mediapriming effect (i.e., decay in effect size at very high dose levels). However, a monotonicfunction explained the implicit media priming effect. This indicates that stereotypic contentmay impact implicit stereotypes even if the mass-mediated content is perceived as invalid.We discuss this finding regarding possible media-based reduction strategies.

doi:10.1111/jcom.12056

Considerable empirical evidence indicates that the mass media depict specific socialgroups in stereotypical ways that can influence our thinking, feeling, and behav-ior (Mastro, 2009). Regular exposure to media stereotypes can contribute to thedevelopment of stereotypical memory traces. Once developed, such traces can bereactivated by subsequent (albeit brief) exposure. For the most part, researchersused the media priming framework to investigate the (negative) consequences ofsuch exposures. In this context, priming refers to the short-term impact of exposureto a stereotypic mass-mediated stimulus on subsequent judgments or behaviors.Therefore, media priming is the residual, often unintended consequence of mediaexposure to biased information of social groups on subsequent perceptions, judg-ments, and behavior toward these social groups (Appel, 2011). Because stereotypes inthe mass media serve to justify, form, reinforce, or perpetuate hostile and benevolentracism, targeted research on what stereotypic media content ‘‘does’’ with recipi-ents is important. Unfortunately, studies that try to explain the cognitive processes

Corresponding author: Florian Arendt; e-mail: [email protected]

830 Journal of Communication 63 (2013) 830–851 © 2013 International Communication Association

F. Arendt Dose-Dependent Media Priming Effects

underlying media priming effects on stereotype-related outcomes are relatively rare(Ramasubramanian, 2007).

This study endeavors to fill this gap in literature by utilizing an implicit socialcognition perspective on media priming. We investigated the consequences of expo-sure to stereotypical newspaper crime articles on readers’ implicit stereotypes (i.e.,automatically activated stereotypes) and explicit stereotypes (i.e., overtly expressedstereotypic judgments). This distinction is important because current stereotypetheory separates stereotyping into two stages (Kawakami, Dovidio, & Kamp, 2007):activation and application. Stereotypical associations in memory can become activatedin a subsequent situation irrespective of whether a person considers these activatedassociations as accurate or inaccurate. However, stereotype application represents theuse of stereotypical associations in making judgments about a person or a group. Thus,even if stereotypes were automatically activated, individuals can reject these cognitionsand decide never to use them for an overtly expressed judgment (Devine, 1989).

We try to show that the implicit social cognition perspective allows a morethorough understanding of mass media’s priming effects on stereotyping. We beginwith a short review of existing media priming research on stereotyping. Then, wereview research on implicit social cognition and try to implement it within the mediapriming context. On the basis of existing media priming research and the newlyproposed, implicit social cognition model of media priming, we developed specifichypotheses that we tested in a lab experiment.

Media primingMedia priming is a reliable effect according to a meta-analysis of media primingresearch (Roskos-Ewoldsen, Klinger, & Roskos-Ewoldsen, 2007). Because of the factthat mass media produce and reproduce stereotypes, ‘‘biased information inevitablybecomes incorporated into ‘common knowledge’ or schemata that viewers form aboutstereotyped groups’’ (Ramasubramanian, 2007, p. 251). Once formed, such biasedtraces can be reactivated (i.e., primed) by media exposure. This, in turn, can influencesubsequent perceptions, judgments, and behavior toward social groups depicted in astereotypical way. Hansen and Hansen (1988) give a vivid example: Suppose sex rolestereotypes had been primed by watching televised sex role stereotyped depictions(e.g., in commercials or music videos). In a subsequent situation, the viewer observesa real man and woman engaged in a social interaction. Because of the fact that sexrole stereotypes have just been activated, the perceiver is likely to evaluate the socialinteraction more in terms of the primed stereotypes (e.g., in terms of flirting insteadof just joking).

Numerous studies could demonstrate that even short exposure to stereotypicdepictions of a social group can have an influence on judgments about this socialgroup (see Mastro, 2009, for a review). Most studies like this rely on overtly expressedjudgments. However, although the media prime may automatically activate thedepicted concepts in memory, individuals can decide not to use them (Devine, 1989).Therefore, it is important to stress the notion that ‘‘media priming is no ‘hypodermic

Journal of Communication 63 (2013) 830–851 © 2013 International Communication Association 831

Dose-Dependent Media Priming Effects F. Arendt

needle’ that leads to effects irrespective of recipient responses’’ (Appel, 2011, p. 160).For example, research pertaining to the prime intensity illustrates this: In mediapriming research, the ‘‘dose’’ concept has various names: frequency (e.g., Iyengar,Kinder, Peters, & Krosnick, 1984), length (e.g., Appel, 2011), dosage (Miller &Krosnick, 1996), intensity (e.g., Carpentier, Roskos-Ewoldsen, & Roskos-Ewoldsen,2008), or duration (e.g., Roskos-Ewoldsen et al., 2007). In one study, Arendt (2013a)tested the short-term consequences of exposure to stereotypic newspaper articles inwhich a specific social group was depicted as being criminal (priming treatment) ornot (control condition). In addition, a total of nine dose conditions were utilized(i.e., varying levels of the frequency of the media prime). The finding was thatthe media priming effect followed a Gaussian distribution function: First, thereseems to be a necessary threshold dose. Reading up to four biased articles did notproduce a significant effect. Second, the media priming effect was not monotonic,but curvilinear. There was a decay of the effect size at very high dose levels: When theoffenders were labeled as foreigners in all eight crime texts, the effect disappeared.Thus, there appears to be some form of correction at very high dose levels. Althoughthe media prime may also have (automatically) activated the stereotype, individualsdecided not to use this information. This study shows that studies of media primingshould use different dose levels to be able to reveal otherwise hidden effects.

Implicit social cognition model of media priming

Recent advantages in social cognition research allow a more direct measurementof automatically activated stereotypes, which are called implicit stereotypes. Webuilt our research on an implicit social cognition model of media priming, whichbuilds heavily upon existing models from social psychological research (Gawronski& Bodenhausen, 2006, 2011; Greenwald et al., 2002; Strack & Deutsch, 2004). Thebasic model, inspired mainly by Strack and Deutsch (2004) and Gawronski andBodenhausen (2006), is depicted in Figure 1. However, compared to this research,our account emphasizes mass media as environmental input stimuli, which at bestmostly play a peripheral role in social psychological research. The model goes beyondprevious media stereotyping effects research by thoroughly specifying the processesunderlying implicit and explicit stereotyping: Implicit stereotypes are the behavioraloutcomes of associative processes, whereas explicit stereotypes represent the behavioraloutcomes of propositional processes.

Associative processes and implicit stereotypesAssociative processes are defined as the automatic activation of mental associations inmemory (Strack & Deutsch, 2004). Therefore, implicit stereotypes are defined as thestrength of the automatic association between a group concept (e.g., minority group)and an attribute (e.g., criminal). The strength of the automatic association can beunderstood as the potential for one concept (e.g., minority group) to activate another(e.g., criminal, see Greenwald et al., 2002). It is important to note that external stimuli



foreigner

criminal

violent

Associativestore

Implicitstereotype

Propositional reasoningExplicit

stereotype

NEWSXxxxxx xxxx robbery

xx gun xxxxxx xxxxxx

xxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxxx

shooting xxxxxxxxx x

xxx foreigner xxxx xx

Higher accessibility

robbery

gun

shooting

Figure 1 Implicit social cognition model of media priming.

can activate concepts. These external stimuli could be mass-mediated. For example,reading a newspaper article about a crime committed by a foreigner may activatespecific concepts in the associative store related to the ‘‘criminal foreigner’’ stereotype.Activation can spread from encoded concepts like robbery, gun, or shooting (whichare reported in the article, see Figure 1) to associatively related concepts like criminal.In addition, a media-based exemplar or prototype (see Mastro & Tukachinsky,2011) with a specific foreign nationality can activate associatively related conceptslike foreigner. The assumption here is that the association between concepts isstrengthened by simultaneous activation of both concepts (Greenwald et al., 2002).Thus, for example, if foreigner and criminal are activated simultaneously, the strengthof the automatic association between these concepts will increase. Hence, when acorresponding social stimulus is encountered in a subsequent situation, cues thatactivate foreigner in memory will also activate criminal with an increased likelihoodowing to the increased strength of the automatic association. This process occurringin a subsequent situation operates rather automatically (see Bargh, 1994). It followsthat individuals are mostly unaware of it (i.e., a lack of introspective access), that theyhave mostly no intention to start it (i.e., unintentional), that it is highly efficient (i.e.,the process operates despite conditions of restricted cognitive resources), and mostlyuncontrollable (i.e., the process cannot be altered or stopped). However, this does notmean that individuals have no introspective access to the outcome of that process.In contrast, we assume that individuals have experiential access to automaticallyactivated stereotypes (see Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2011).

It is important to note that media priming (e.g., newspaper texts and televisionnews) always involves new information (compared to, for example, repetition



priming, see Grant & Logan, 1993, or semantic priming, see McNamara, 2005).Thus, reading a crime story in a newspaper always increases the mere availabilityof new (episodic) information in memory. In addition, newly encoded informationcan reactivate (i.e., prime) pre-existing memory traces (a) directly by activatingconcepts that have a direct correspondence within the crime story (e.g., robbery inFigure 1) as well as (b) indirectly through spreading activation to other associativelyrelated concepts (e.g., criminal in Figure 1). This process increases the accessibilityof already available memory traces. Taken together, the increase of the availabilityand accessibility of stereotype-congruent memory traces increases the accessibilityof the ‘‘criminal foreigner’’ stereotype (see Eitam & Higgins, 2010, for more detailsregarding availability and accessibility).

Although during the last 2 decades, ‘‘virtually every intellectual question in socialpsychology’’ (Payne & Gawronski, 2010, p. 1) has been shaped by the theoriesand methods of implicit social cognition, there is little research into the effectsof stereotypic mass-mediated content on recipients’ implicit stereotypes. The vastamount of implicit social cognition research regarding media effects uses implicitattitudes (i.e., automatic evaluation of a social object) as the dependent variable(e.g., Arendt, 2010; Eno & Ewoldsen, 2010).1 Unfortunately, there are only a fewstudies that tried to measure implicit stereotypes (Arendt, 2012; Brown Givens &Monahan, 2005; Burgess, Dill, Stermer, Burgess, & Brown, 2011; Ramasubramanian,2007). All together, these studies show that exposure to stereotypic mass-mediatedstories about social groups can have an impact on implicit stereotypes. This effectwas found to be the case for print news (Arendt, 2012), audiovisual fiction (BrownGivens & Monahan, 2005), and video games (Burgess et al., 2011). In addition,some studies were only able to document an effect on the implicit, but not onthe explicit measure (i.e., implicit–explicit dissociation: Brown Givens & Monahan,2005; Burgess et al., 2011). The latter is an important point: Burgess et al. (2011) notedthat performance-based reaction time variables are relatively immune to intentionalattempts by the participant to respond in a socially desirable manner compared withexplicit measures. Indeed, it is important to note that people must be motivated andin a position to give an accurate explicit judgment. Thus, such explicit measuresare vulnerable to social desirability bias, self-presentation problems, or a lack ofintrospective access. If these studies had not utilized implicit measures, researchersmight have concluded that stereotypic mass-mediated content has no effect.

In one study, Arendt (2012) investigated the effects of reading biased tabloidarticles where foreigners were paired with crime. Of interest, he used the implicitassociation test (IAT, Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) to measure implicitstereotypes. This procedure measures the strength of the association between groupconcepts (e.g., foreign country) and attributes (e.g., criminal). He utilized an experi-mental design with three conditions. Participants in the control group received shortcrime texts, where the nationality of the offender was not mentioned. Additionally,participants in the first treatment group received the same texts, but the foreignnationalities were mentioned. Furthermore, participants in the second treatment



group received emotionalized articles (i.e., texts that are high in vividness and fre-quency of the media prime) covering the same crimes, with the foreign nationalitymentioned. Media effects on implicit stereotypes were obtained. Of interest, themedia content produced an effect on the strength of the automatic associationbetween ‘‘foreign country’’ and ‘‘criminal,’’ irrespective of whether individualsattributed a high or low credibility to the newspaper texts after reading. Therefore,a newspaper’s effect on the strength of automatic associations seems to be relativelyindependent of processes of propositional reasoning.

From a dose-dependent effects perspective (Arendt, 2013a), we do not expect adecay at very high dose levels for mass media’s effect on implicit stereotypes: Accordingto the APE model, associations can be activated irrespective of whether a personsees these associations as accurate or not. Therefore, the simultaneous activationof concepts in memory should strengthen the automatic associations. Because theimplicit media effect seems to be relatively independent of propositional processeslike counterarguing, we expect a monotonic functional relationship: The mediapriming effect on implicit stereotypes follows a monotonic function (Hypothesis 1).

Propositional processes and explicit stereotypesAssociative processes are defined as the activation of associations, whereas proposi-tional processes are defined as the validation of automatically activated associations(Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006). The assumption is that input from the associativestore is transformed into a propositional format and, therefore, creates declarativeknowledge by applying a relational schema, meaning that a strong automatic associa-tion between the concepts foreigner and criminal is transformed into the propositionforeigners are criminal. The resulting propositions are then subject to syllogisticinferences that assess their validity. The crucial point according to Gawronski andBodenhausen (2006) is that the perceived validity of a proposition depends on theconsistency of this proposition with other propositions that are momentarily consid-ered to be relevant. Thus, if other propositions (e.g., the goal to appear unprejudiced)are in conflict with the propositional implication of the automatically activatedstereotype (e.g., foreigners are criminal), the inconsistency has to be resolved to avoidaversive feelings of cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957). This, for example, can bedone by reversing the subjective truth value of the propositional implication of theimplicit stereotype (e.g., foreigners are not criminal).

Whether or not stereotypic memory traces are used in a subsequent situation foran explicit judgment depends heavily on the accessibility of information. Stereotypicalmass-mediated content increases the accessibility of stereotypes by increasing theavailability of new stereotype-congruent memories (i.e., change in the associativestructure of the associative store) and by increasing the accessibility of already existingavailable stereotype-congruent memories (i.e., temporal change in the activation ofpreexisting associations). Thus, the use of specific memory traces of the associativestore by propositional processes depends heavily on the ‘‘ease with which instancesor associations could be brought to mind’’ (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973, p. 208).



As already mentioned, Arendt (2012) investigated the effects of reading biasednewspaper texts where foreigners were paired with crime. Interestingly enough, themedia content produced an effect on the strength of the automatic association inmemory irrespective of whether individuals attributed a high or low credibility to thenewspaper texts. In contrast, attributed text credibility moderated the treatment effecton the explicit stereotype measure. This interaction effect was driven by treatmentgroup two (i.e., high prime intensity condition): Only individuals attributing a hightext credibility showed an effect on the explicit stereotype measure compared withindividuals attributing a low text credibility. This fits well with psychological basicresearch: Gregg, Seibt, and Banaji (2006) showed that individuals can easily adjustovertly expressed, explicit judgments, but not the outcome of associative processeswhen attributing a low validity to the encoded information.

Supporting empirical evidence comes from Arendt’s (2013a) already cited study.The author tested the short-term consequences of exposure to stereotypic newspaperarticles using a dose-response account of media priming. He found that the effectfollowed a Gaussian distribution function. Most importantly, there was a decay of theeffect size at very high dose levels. Thus, there seems to be some form of correctionat very high dose levels. Although the media prime may also have (automatically)activated the stereotype, individuals decided not to use this information: Peoplecan adjust their judgment if they are aware of the potential media effect. This maybe the case when media stereotyping is too ‘‘blatant’’ (Hansen & Hansen, 1988, p.296). Specifically, correction theories like the flexible correction model (Wegener &Petty, 1997) assume that if individuals perceive themselves to be influenced, they willattempt to correct these influences by modifying their judgment. So, individuals havea more or less developed ‘‘lay theory’’ about the media’s impact and specific ways tocounteract it. On the basis of this research, we expected a decay of the effect size at avery high prime dose level (i.e., when it is too blatant): The media priming effect ofexplicit stereotypes should follow a Gaussian distribution function (Hypothesis 2).

NegationNegation describes a process that occurs during reading and is, therefore, an on-line(Hastie & Park, 1986) validity judgment. It refers to an internal attempt to negatethe encoded information (i.e., ‘‘No! This is not true!’’). Recent psychological basicresearch shows that negation during reception of biased information (and not later)can reduce a treatment’s impact on an implicit measure (Peters & Gawronski, 2011;see also Gregg et al., 2006). Although there is evidence indicating that there is nosubstantial reduction in a media prime’s effect on implicit stereotypes owing to a lowperceived validity (Arendt, 2012), the aspect of whether negation during encodingof some stereotypic depictions can nevertheless ‘‘dampen’’ the media prime’s effecton implicit stereotypes is a promising research question. The practical implicationis straightforward: If negation reduced the otherwise somewhat inescapable implicitmedia effect, negation training could be part of media literacy campaigns. Althoughnegation affords a certain amount of processing time, intention, and cognitive capacity



(Strack & Deutsch, 2004), it could be an easy to use reduction strategy: Just tellingindividuals that they should negate may be enough to reduce a detrimental effect.

It is important to note that negation seems to be restricted to the media context.Only if there is enough time, intention, and cognitive capacity will individuals negateenvironmental information: If a stereotype is repeated several times, individuals haveto negate each stereotypic depiction during encoding for a substantial reduction ofthe effect. It should be noted that negation slows down cognition, which may decreaseengagement and enjoyment. Thus, although individuals may negate a few stereotypicdepictions, it seems unlikely that they negate all stereotypic depictions. We assumethat individuals do not have the motivation to start the negation process each time.This assumption is supported by recent theorizing of perceived (un)realism of mass-mediated narratives (Busselle & Bilandzic, 2012): It is argued that individuals becomeaware of ‘‘unrealistic’’ mass-mediated content ‘‘only when it is in a negative state’’(p. 180). Thus, individuals typically do not question the validity of mass-mediatedcontent ‘‘unless they perceive content to be unrealistic’’ (p. 181).

Although we assume a monotonic effect on the implicit stereotype, it seemedplausible to test the following model: First, high stereotype prime levels may increasethe likelihood of negation during reception of some stereotypical content. Especiallyat very high dose levels, the mass-mediated stereotypic content may simply be tooblatant. Second, we expected that more negation would decrease the implicit effect(Peters & Gawronski, 2011). Therefore, it seemed reasonable to hypothesize thatnegation partially mediates the media prime’s effect on the implicit stereotype and,thus, ‘‘dampens’’ the effect at higher dose levels (Hypothesis 3).

SummaryWe expect that exposure to stereotypical media content increases the strength of theautomatic association between a group concept and a stereotypical attribute leadingto a monotonic increase in implicit stereotyping. This monotonic increase in implicitstereotyping may be linked to a corresponding increase in explicit stereotypingunless a very high dose level elicits validity concerns, thereby producing a Gaussiandistribution function for explicit stereotyping. This research expands on previousresearch in at least five important ways: First, it uses one of the new measuresfrom implicit social cognition research (i.e., the IAT), which measures implicitstereotypes more directly than simple latencies (indicating construct accessibility)that have been used by most communication studies. Second, this is the first studythat investigates dose-dependent media effects on implicit stereotypes. Moreover, itinvestigates media effects on implicit as well as explicit stereotypes in one study. Thisallows a direct comparison between implicit and explicit effect sizes. Third, althoughArendt (2012) investigated attributed text credibility in a subsequent situation, thisstudy goes further by including negation during reception. Fourth, the author couldfind an implicit–explicit dissociation that was caused by a recipient-related factor:Recipient’s attributed text credibility moderated the effect on the explicit measure,but not on the implicit measure. This study tries to investigate a content-related



implicit–explicit dissociation: The assumption is that there will be a dissociation ata very high dose level of stereotypic content. Fifth, although there is evidence frompsychological research that negation can reduce a treatment’s impact on implicitmeasures, there is hardly any knowledge (a) if media stereotypes elicit negation, (b)if higher dose levels elicit more negation compared with lower dose levels, and (c) ifnegation also reduces the implicit media effect.

Overview of the empirical workWe used tabloid crime texts as priming stimuli. Such stimuli have already been usedin previous research (e.g., Dixon & Maddox, 2005). In Austria, where the studies wereconducted, a specific tabloid overrepresents foreigners as criminals (Arendt, 2012):Official statistics showed that about 27% of all suspected criminals were foreigners.However, in the tabloid, 65% of all those offenders, where the nationality couldbe inferred, were labeled as foreigners. Furthermore, researchers learned that themore frequently someone regularly reads that tabloid, the more likely that person isto overestimate the real-world incidence of criminal foreigners. In this experiment,we simulated the media priming effect of a single exposure: Participants read somecrime texts from that specific tabloid. We experimentally manipulated the dose of themedia stereotype and investigated the dose-dependent effects on implicit and explicitstereotyping. We assumed that priming of the association between a social group(foreigners) and an attribute (crime) influences readers’ social cognition (Dixon& Maddox, 2005). More precisely, according to Hansen and Hansen (1988), weassumed that recently activated, crime-related memories about foreigners are used inmaking an explicit judgment about the real-world incidence of criminal foreigners.Furthermore, priming of the ‘‘criminal foreigner’’ stereotype may also strengthen theautomatic association between these concepts in memory.

Methods

Participants read a total of 12 newspaper texts in a controlled lab experiment. Fourtexts were completely unrelated to the ‘‘criminal foreigner’’ stereotype. The remainingeight articles covered crimes. We allocated participants to a total of five conditions: Inthe control condition, the foreign nationality of the offender was mentioned in none ofthe eight crime texts (i.e., 0/8). Therefore, these individuals only read about crimes. Intreatment group ‘‘dose two,’’ the nationality was mentioned in two of the eight crimetexts (i.e., 2/8). Participants were exposed to the highest stereotype dose in treatmentgroup ‘‘dose eight,’’ where the foreign nationality was mentioned in all crime texts(i.e., 8/8). We utilized the following conditions: 0/8, 2/8, 4/8, 6/8, and 8/8. Afterreading the newspaper texts, data on implicit and explicit stereotypes were collected.

ParticipantsA total of 185 students who enrolled in an introductory course on communicationresearch participated in the study. Of these students, 78.4% were female. Theparticipants ranged in age from 18 to 49 (M = 22.59, SD = 3.35).



Experimental manipulationCrime texts were constructed from original articles published by the specific news-paper under investigation. However, we changed some characteristics of these tomake the texts comparable to each other (see Arendt, 2013a): The foreign nationalityof the offender (i.e., the media prime) was mentioned only once in the headlineand one more time in the body of each text. Additionally, we tried to keep thefollowing variables constant in all crime texts: One male offender per text, text lengthbetween 80 and 140 words (same elaboration-evoking potential), in each text onlyone, but always another nationality was mentioned; the criminal act is variable butsimilar in vividness (battery, burglary, threatening behavior with a gun, drug dealing,robbery, theft from cars, but no crimes with a higher emotion-evoking potential likehomicides); all crimes took place in the same European city (but in different districts);and there was no information on time. Each subject was randomly assigned to oneof the five experimental conditions. Additionally, the specific foreign nationality wasrandomly assigned: For instance, if the participant was allocated to treatment group‘‘dose two,’’ two of the eight possible crime texts that mentioned a specific foreignnationality were randomly chosen. Therefore, as a result of this random procedure,some differences were eliminated in the constructed newspaper texts, which couldbe problematic for a metric interpretation of the experimental condition variable(i.e., unequal differences between the dose values). The random allocation procedureproduced similar sample sizes ranging from 31 to 41 participants across the fiveconditions.

MeasuresImplicit stereotypeThe strength of the automatic association between ‘‘foreign country’’ and ‘‘criminal’’in memory was measured using the computer-administered IAT (Greenwald et al.,1998): Participants had to classify words that appeared at the top of the screen in themiddle into four categories (foreign country, Austria, criminal, and permitted).2 Weused four stimulus words per category. Two of those categories are concepts (foreigncountry and Austria) and two of those are attributes (criminal and permitted).Words that appeared in the middle of the screen could be sorted into one of thefour categories. The essential assumption is that categorization should be fasterwhen the pairing of a concept with an attribute reflects a stronger association inmemory. Thus, a person who has a stronger automatic association between foreigncountry and criminal should more quickly categorize stimuli words when foreigncountry and criminal are paired together as categories as opposed to when Austriaand criminal are paired. A validated scoring algorithm (Greenwald, Nosek, & Banaji,2003) was used. Higher values indicate a stronger automatic association betweenforeign country and criminal. This variable was measured only after reading thenewspaper texts because an additional measurement before reading would havemade the objective of the experiment too salient and, thus, might have influencedreading.3



Explicit stereotypeWe utilized a social reality belief measure, which asked participants to estimatethe prevalence of criminal foreigners (for similar measures, see e.g., Dixon, 2007).Participants were asked about the frequency of foreigners among all offenders beforeand after reading the crime texts. Individuals were asked this question in a block withsimilar questions to camouflage the objective of the experiment (e.g., percentage offir trees of all trees in Austria). In all those questions, they received an introductionpage first (e.g., ‘‘Now think about crime in Austria’’). On the next page, the questionappeared: ‘‘What is the percentage of foreigners of all those who are suspected ofhaving committed an offense?’’ Participants indicated their answer by choosing a per-centage answer option on a 10-point scale ranging from ‘‘0–9%’’ (=0) to ‘‘90–100%’’(=9). The higher the postmeasure, the stronger the media priming effect was.4

NegationParticipants were asked on a 7-point scale ranging from I totally disagree to I totallyagree about their agreement with four statements in an attempt to measure thenegation of stereotypical content during reading (e.g., ‘‘Each time when a criminalwas described, I thought ‘NO!’ this description is too stereotypic and prejudiced’’).We constructed these items according to Peters and Gawronski (2011). The outcomeof a common factor analysis was one factor, which explained 68.27% of the variance(Cronbach’s α = .85).

ProcedureParticipants in groups of up to five were welcomed in a waiting room. The maleexperimenter took them to another room. Each participant sat down in front of acomputer in individual research cubicles where the whole experiment took place.After finishing data collection, participants went into a third room where they weredebriefed and finally dismissed.

Results

Hypothesis 1 predicts a monotonic function for the implicit media priming effect.Most importantly, it does not predict a decay of the effect size at very high doselevels. As a first preliminary step, we calculated effect size estimates for eachtreatment group by comparing the means of the implicit stereotype between eachtreatment group and the control condition using Planned Contrasts within ananalysis of variance (ANOVA) framework. Please note that we are not interestedin the ANOVA main effect, because we used nonlinear regression analysis. Wefound that all dose conditions produced mean differences in the predicted direction:treatment group ‘‘dose two,’’ d = 0.37, R2 = .03, p = .06; treatment group ‘‘dose four,’’d = 0.48, R2 = .05, p = .05; treatment group ‘‘dose six,’’ d = 0.53, R2 = .06, p = .02;and treatment group ‘‘dose eight,’’ d = 0.48, R2 = .06, p = .02. More importantly, weused Prism (GraphPad Software, Inc.) for curve fitting utilizing nonlinear regression



analysis. Each of the five data points (mean, SEM, and sample size) served as inputvalues, which allowed us to fit a function and also calculate a confidence band (95%).We decided to use a function with a threshold because it is very likely that if we hadutilized a dose level weaker than our weakest ‘‘dose two’’ condition, we would havebeen able to document an effect threshold (Arendt, 2012, 2013a). Therefore, we fitteda sigmoid function (utilizing the standard Hill slope) to the data points (df = 177,R2 = .04, Freplicates test = .06, p = .94).5

Implicit stereotype = 0.45 + 0.63 − 0.45

1 + 101.34−Dose . (1)

We found no decay at very high dose levels regarding the implicit mediapriming effect. In contrast, a monotonic function explained the implicit effect. Thus,Hypothesis 1 was supported.

Hypothesis 2 predicts that the explicit media priming effect should appear in theform of a Gaussian distribution function. We utilized a slightly different data analysisprocedure, because we measured explicit stereotypes before and after reading. In afirst step, we used an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) to test the dose-dependenteffects on explicit stereotypes (controlling for the premeasured explicit stereotype).This is a recommended method for pre-post designs (Dimitrov & Rumrill, 2003).ANCOVA tests the treatment effect on the postmeasure, adjusted for differenceson the premeasure. Again, we used Planned Contrasts for bivariate comparisons.Only treatment group ‘‘dose six,’’ d = 0.48, R2 = .05, p = .04, achieved significance.More importantly, we used the adjusted means as input values for the curve fittingprocedure (i.e., same procedure as used for implicit media priming). The fitted curveis graphically depicted in Figure 2 (df = 182, R2 = .02, Freplicates test = .19, p = .91).The Gaussian distribution function has the following form:

Explicit stereotype = 0.52 e−0.5

(Dose−5.66

1.86

)2 + 3.55. (2)

This is an important finding for at least two reasons: First, the data show thatthere is a threshold meaning that reading up to four texts where the nationality wasmentioned did not produce a significant treatment effect (the 95% confidence bandof dose condition six is above the control group baseline). Second, in contrast to theeffect on the implicit measure, there is a decay of the explicit effect at a very high doselevel (the 95% confidence band of dose condition eight is under the control groupbaseline). Thus, Hypothesis 2 was supported.6

Hypothesis 3 assumes that negation partially mediates the media priming effect onthe implicit stereotype. First, we dummy coded the experimental condition variable.Then, we used Amos to test for mediation. As evident in Figure 3 (upper half),stereotypic depictions tended to increase negation. However, a weak dose of themedia priming treatment did not significantly activate negation. Because negationsignificantly reduced the implicit stereotype, it partially mediated the media primingeffect on the implicit stereotype, but only in dose groups four, six, and eight (all



Figure 2 Explicit and implicit media priming effect as a function of dose. The data pointsrepresent the means with error bars indicating the standard error. The bold curves representthe fitted functions from nonlinear regression analyses. The 95% confidence band (dottedcurves) encloses the area that we can be 95% sure that it contains the curve.

ps of the indirect effects < .03 using bootstrapping). Although the coefficients intreatment group ‘‘dose two’’ showed the right direction, there was no significantpartial mediation pattern (p = .25). This is an interesting finding: If we look atthe total effects (e.g., see Figure 2), even treatment group ‘‘dose two’’ achieved asignificant effect size on an effect level comparable to the other treatment groups. Inour view, this can be explained by the mediation effect: Although the direct effectsof the dummy-coded dose conditions in Figure 3 are monotonically increasing (.18,.22, .26, and .28), the treatment’s effect on the implicit stereotype was ‘‘damped’’ inall treatment groups owing to an activation of negation, except in treatment group‘‘dose two.’’ Because the activation of negation leads to a reduction of the total effectin the higher dose conditions, all dose levels produced nearly the same total effect onthe implicit stereotype. However, the underlying mechanism seems to be differentand, therefore, dose-dependent. This is illustrated in Figure 3 (lower half): It showsthat the total effect (i.e., unstandardized effect size estimates from the path model)stayed at an asymptotical level. However, the direct effect increased more strongly.



Implicit stereotype

Negation

.25 .20 .33

.18

.22

.28.26

.08

Dose 6

Dose 4

Dose 2

Dose 8

-.20

Figure 3 Negation partially mediates the effect of media priming treatment on implicitstereotype. Doses 2, 4, 6, and 8 represent the dummy variables of the media primingtreatment (reference group = control condition ‘‘dose zero’’). Negation dampens the mediapriming effect on implicit stereotypes. The lower half of this figure shows the unstandardizedcoefficients from the path model (see text). The area between the direct effect and the totaleffect curves indicates the damping effect of negation.

The area between the direct effect and the total effect curves indicates the dampingeffect of negation.7

Discussion

We found that reading tabloid articles where a specific social group is presented ascriminals influenced readers’ explicit stereotypes (i.e., overtly expressed judgmentabout the real-world prevalence of criminal foreigners) as well as implicit stereotypes(i.e., strength of the automatic association between ‘‘foreign country’’ and ‘‘criminal’’in memory). These effects are dose-dependent: The media priming effect on explicitstereotypes followed a Gaussian distribution function replicating previous research.In contrast, the media priming effect on implicit stereotypes followed a monotonicfunction: Although the explicit media priming effect showed decay at a very high doselevel, we found no decay regarding the implicit stereotype. Thus, a media prime hada noticeable effect on implicit stereotypes irrespective of whether the stereotypicalprime was too blatant or not. Only by using implicit measures of stereotypes were weable to find such otherwise hidden media effects.



Furthermore, we found that negation partially mediated the media prime’simpact on implicit stereotypes. Also of interest is that negation is not activated bythe stereotypical media prime until a moderate dose level. The consequence here wasthat all dose levels showed approximately the same total effect on implicit stereotypes.Although the total effect was nearly the same in the low-dose condition compared withthe moderate-, high-, and very-high-dose conditions, the underlying mechanismsseemed to be different: The direct effect of the media priming treatment increasedmonotonically with increasing dose levels. However, at the same time, higher doselevels activated negation to a higher extent, which, in turn, damped the higher doses’total effects on implicit stereotypes. Therefore, there is only a direct effect of the mediaprime on associative processes (behavioral outcome: implicit stereotypes) in the low-dose condition. By contrast, higher dose levels produced significant direct effectson associative processes (behavioral outcome: implicit stereotypes) and (damping)indirect effects on associative processes over propositional processes (i.e., negation).

In a nutshell, the findings support the dual-process model of implicit and explicitmedia stereotyping effects. The empirical evidence underlines the importance ofconsidering implicit stereotypes as a supplement to explicit stereotypes. However,future research should investigate strategies to reduce media’s effects on implicitand explicit stereotypes. In one study, Ramasubramanian (2007) examined anaudience-centered approach that instructs recipients to be critical consumers, anda message-centered approach using stereotype-disconfirming, counterstereotypicalnews stories. The results showed that such media-based strategies can reducestereotyping. She found that even the ‘‘automatic process of stereotype activation canrespond to motivational factors such as media literacy training and contextual factorssuch as exposure to counterstereotypical information’’ (p. 258). Unfortunately, notmuch is known about such media-based strategies with regard to the dose-dependenteffects of media primes. For example, regarding mass-mediated counterstereotypes,what happens if we utilize the same media priming treatment but mentioned theingroup nationality (instead of the foreign nationalities)? Would there be a similareffect, just in the other direction? In addition, can negation training effectively reduceor even eliminate a media prime’s impact on implicit stereotypes? Taken together,there is a plethora of open questions that are well worth investigating in the future.An implicit social cognition perspective can help to answer these questions.

LimitationsWe used a premeasure of the dependent variable to have a baseline measure foreach individual who allowed us to control person-related differences prior to theexperiment. While we were careful that individuals did not correctly guess thehypotheses of the experiment, we cannot exclude the possibility that this singlequestion acted as a prime itself and, thus, influenced subsequent informationprocessing (e.g., reading). We asked the prequestion in a question block with severalother questions to camouflage the objective of the experiment. In addition, weutilized a filler task before reading. Based on the fact that priming fades with time



(Grant & Logan, 1993), this procedure should have ensured that our results are notinfluenced by the premeasurement of the dependent variable.

We investigated the media priming effect of stereotypical tabloid articles. It ispossible that stereotypic content within other domains produces slightly differentcoefficients. However, we assume that the general pattern is the same. For instance, ifanother mass medium (e.g., television news) overrepresents another social category(e.g., Latinos) as criminals in another cultural context (e.g., the United States; seeMastro, 2009) this may slightly change the values. Nevertheless, the general patternshould be the same (e.g., a monotonic function).

Additionally, we did not incorporate time into our investigation. Thus, we cannotdraw any conclusions regarding the decay of the explicit and implicit media primingeffect. Instead of operationalizing media priming as a process, we measured the effectat a single point in time. Although there is empirical evidence that the explicit mediapriming effect follows an exponential decay function (Arendt, 2013b), there is nocomparable evidence regarding the implicit effect. There is a likelihood that the decayof the explicit media priming effect at very high dose levels disappears after a specifictemporal delay of the postmeasurement of the explicit stereotype: Individuals maysimply not consider the invalidity tag (or the source) of the memories after a specificamount of time and thus rely on their first automatically activated cognitions (seeShrum, Wyer, & O’Guinn, 1998).

Previous research shows that seeing a number of stories that contain crime, butwith no direct reference to ethnic identity, can still prime ethnic stereotypes (Dixon,2006). Therefore, one could assume that just reading crime texts might have primedstereotypes through spreading activation in the control group. If this assumptionwas true, there should be a positive change in the pre-post difference of the realityestimate in the control condition. However, there was no positive difference score inthis study. In contrast, the difference was even slightly negative (but not significantusing a paired samples t test). Thus, the data do not support this assumption.8

Furthermore, we did not counterbalance the order of the implicit and the explicitmeasure. This was done mainly because of one important reason: Taking the IAT (i.e.,sorting words to categories like ‘‘foreign country’’ and ‘‘criminal’’ for approximately5 minutes) before answering the explicit stereotype question (What is the percentageof foreigners of all those who are suspected of having committed an offense?) mighthave made the objective of the experiment too obvious when building the overtlyexpressed judgment. Thus, all participants answered the explicit question first andtook the IAT second. Individuals can easily give an ‘‘adjusted’’ explicit judgment.However, faking the IAT is much more difficult and unlikely in our context (i.e.,participants did not know how the IAT works and what it measures). From thisperspective, collecting data to the explicit measure first appeared much better (see Eno& Ewoldsen, 2010, for the same decision). In addition, we used several filler questionsin the explicit measure’s question block. This should have made confounding primingeffects of this question on relevant associations more unlikely. However, the lackof counterbalancing implies a confound between the type of measure (implicit and



explicit stereotypes) and the time of measurement (explicit first and implicit second).Indeed, a difference in implicit and explicit media effects can partially be drivenby differences in the timing of the measurement. Thus, one can argue that ordereffects may make it difficult to interpret the implicit–explicit dissociation reportedhere. However, assuming a negatively accelerated decay of the media priming effect(Arendt, 2013b), the longer temporal delay between the prime onset and the implicitstereotype measurement could underestimate the media prime’s effect on implicitstereotypes compared with the explicit effect. Thus, it is possible that the impliciteffect would appear even stronger if measured at the same time as the explicit effect.In fact, this would increase the dissociation between the implicit and explicit effectsin the very-high-dose condition. Thus, measuring the explicit stereotype before theimplicit stereotype might underestimate the size of the implicit–explicit dissociation.Nevertheless, it is important to note that we are not able to completely rule outpossible confounding effects. To ultimately rule out possible confounding ordereffects, future research can use the explicit–implicit distinction as a between-subjectsfactor: Half of the participants take the IAT and the other half answer the explicitquestion. Additional research is necessary to address this issue in a more thoroughmanner.

ConclusionsDespite these limitations, the evidence is consistent with the proposed implicit socialcognition model of media priming. We believe that an implicit social cognitionperspective is useful for mass communication research because it allows for a deeperunderstanding of basal cognitive processes and enables us to find otherwise hiddenmedia effects. Especially, the findings regarding negation underline the importanceof implicit social cognition research within the field of communication: Socialpsychologists Peters and Gawronski (2011) used an elegant, but highly controlledexperimental paradigm to reveal that negation during encoding (but not later) reducesthe treatment’s effect on their implicit measure. However, from the perspective ofmass communication research, we have to test if these basal cognitive mechanismsare also detectable in real-world, ecologically valid mass-media-stereotyping settings.Knowing how implicit and explicit stereotyping, their interplay, and reductionstrategies work may stimulate media literacy campaigns, which can help readers,viewers, listeners, surfers, or gamers be more resistant to otherwise somewhatinescapable implicit mass media effects.

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Peter Vitouch and Jorg Matthes for helpful comments.

Notes

1 Although ‘‘many of the points’’ (Gregg et al., 2006, p. 1) that apply to implicit attitudesmay also apply to implicit stereotypes, it is important to distinguish both theoretical



concepts (Amodio & Devine, 2006): Functional neuroanatomy suggests that they arisefrom fundamentally distinct substrates associated with semantic versus affective memorysystems. They suggest that implicit stereotypes reflect cognitive processes and shouldpredict instrumental behaviors such as forming impressions, judgments, and goals. Incontrast, implicit attitudes reflect affective processes and should predict consummatorybehaviors (e.g., interpersonal preference and evaluation, appetitive, and avoidancebehavior). According to the APE-model (Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006), cognitiveassociations (i.e., implicit stereotypes) are used as the basis for the automatic evaluation ofsocial stimuli (i.e., implicit attitudes).

2 The corresponding German words are: Ausland, Osterreich, kriminell, and erlaubt.3 There are other implicit measures as well (Goodall, 2011). The only two measures that

have consistently shown acceptable reliabilities are the IAT and a second measure(Gawronski, 2009). However, the latter measures implicit attitudes and is thus not suitablefor our purpose. We used the standard design of the IAT (Greenwald et al., 1998)measuring category-level associations with a total of 48 practice trials and 80 test trials. Inaddition, we utilized the recommended ‘‘build-in error penalty’’ (Greenwald et al., 2003)as error feedback.

4 We decided to use a single item measure compared with a multi-item measure for severalreasons: First, single item measures have been successfully used in previous implicit socialcognition research (Hofmann, Gawronski, Gschwendner, Le, & Schmitt, 2005). Second, ifindividuals retrieve memories from a specific source (e.g., newspaper articles), then thisspecific source is a significant predictor of the source of the subsequent retrieved memories(Shapiro, 1991): If individuals retrieve a specific episodic memory content from thetreatment texts, the retrieved subsequent memory content has a higher likelihood that italso stems from the same texts—answering the first question may prime the subsequentitems. Therefore, we believe that a multi-item measure will overestimate the ‘‘real’’ effect.Third, we used a before-measurement of the dependent variable to control person-relateddifferences prior to the experiment. A multi-item scale would be too blatant forcamouflaging the objective of the experiment and, thus, may have substantially influencedsubsequent information processing (e.g., encoding of the media prime). Fourth, we usedthis measure in previous research, where a media priming effect could be well documented(Arendt, 2012, 2013a, 2013b). Although experiments involve a random assignment ofparticipants, which should eliminate differences across conditions prior to treatmentexposure, we used a premeasurement and postmeasurement of the explicit stereotype. Thisallowed us to control for differences between the experimental groups prior to reading.This should compensate for the disadvantage of a single-item measure.

5 The value R2 (coefficient of determination) quantifies goodness of fit and can beinterpreted like R2 from linear regression. In addition, the replicates test was used toanswer the question whether the curve is ‘‘too far’’ from the data points. A small p-valueindicates that the data actually follow a model that is different to the model that aresearcher had chosen. Thus, a high p-value is desired (see Motulsky & Christopoulos,2004). The replicates test showed no evidence of inadequate models with regard to explicitas well as implicit media priming.

6 In addition, we used the corrected Akaike’s Information Criterion (AIC; see Motulsky &Christopoulos, 2004) to test if the Gaussian (relative likelihood: 66.71%) fits better thanthe sigmoid function (33.29%) pertaining to the explicit effect. In addition, the sigmoidfunction (65.36%) fits better than the Gaussian function (34.64%) pertaining to the



implicit effect. The AIC analysis is consistent with our interpretation. This supports thepresumed decay at a very high dose level.

7 One might ask if negation also mediates the treatment’s impact on explicit stereotypes. Wetested the same model as in Figure 3 with the postmeasured explicit stereotype as theoutcome variable and additionally controlled for the premeasured explicit stereotype. Wefound a (descriptively) smaller effect of negation on explicit stereotypes (−.10) than onimplicit stereotype (−.20). It is important to note that negation during reading does notdirectly influence the explicit stereotype judgment. In contrast, negation during reading isassumed to predict attributed text-credibility in a subsequent situation when the explicitjudgment is constructed. Although attributed credibility moderates the explicit mediaeffect (Arendt, 2012), negation’s effect on explicit stereotypes is more distal. Because wedid not hypothesize a negation effect on explicit stereotypes, this additional analysis shouldbe interpreted only in an exploratory sense. This analysis can be obtained upon request.

8 To rule out this alternative explanation, we ran an additional experiment, where weincluded a noncrime control condition: We utilized the same experimental procedure asreported in the Methods section. However, we only used the explicit measure in thisadditional study. Participants (i.e., students, N = 163) were allocated to either the controlgroup (i.e., as in the main study), to the noncrime control group (i.e., they did not readabout crime; they just got filler texts), or the treatment-group (i.e., as in the present mainstudy: 6/8). We found supporting empirical evidence for the explicit treatment effect bycomparing the control group with the treatment group. Most importantly, the noncrimecontrol group did not significantly differ from the control group. Thus, just reading crimearticles (without mentioning foreign nationalities) did not produce an increase in effectsize. This analysis can be obtained upon request.

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