THE IMAGE OF BLACK MEN Media Images as Positive and Negative Exemplars of Race : Evoking Obama or Videogame Characters Changes Outcomes for Black Men

Mass media occupy the majority of young people’s free time and are powerful agents of socialization. An experiment compared the effects of exposure to negative videogame exemplars versus positive historical exemplars of Black men, including Barack Obama, on evaluations of an unknown Black or White political candidate and on pro-Black attitudes. Results revealed significant interactions of exemplar type and candidate race on favorability and capability candidate ratings and on pro-Black attitudes. These data, collected during Obama’s historic Presidential candidacy, demonstrate the power of mass media images of race to either help or harm minorities. Abstract word count: 95 Mass Media and the Image of Black Men 3 Media Images as Positive and Negative Exemplars of Race: Evoking Obama or Videogame Characters Changes Outcomes for Black Men When we have limited personal experience with members of a particular race, our knowledge is often derived from the source of social information that many of us spend the greatest amount of time with: the mass media (Gerbner, 1999). For American children of all ages, most free time is “screen time,” be it spent watching TV or movies, going online, or playing videogames. Indeed American children aged 2 to 18 spend more time using media than they spend in school. (Roberts & Foehr, 2004) Since approximately 12% of the American population is Black, compared to approximately 75% who are White (US Census Bureau, 2008), media messages about Blacks may actually be more readily available for some Whites than are real face-to-face interactions. The stories mass media tell about race are more important than ever both because they are a primary source of social information and because these portrayals influence the behaviors, thoughts and feelings of the audience (Cuddy, Fiske, & Glick, 2007; Holtzman, 2000). Furthermore, the very nature of a mass media message suggests the projected stereotypes are shared, which has been shown to influence behaviors, attitudes and attitude accessibility, and to reinforce the attitude – behavior link (Clark & Kashima, 2003; Sechrist & Stangor, 2001). Role of exemplars One way that mass media affect behavior and attitudes is through priming of stereotypes through exposure to exemplars or attitude prototypes. However, this topic “has received only minimal attention from media researchers. ” (Mastro, Tamborini, & Hullett, 2005, p. 325) A primary purpose of the current investigation is to compare the Mass Media and the Image of Black Men 4 effects of positive and negative attitude prototypes (exemplars) of Black men on subsequent judgments of an unrelated Black man. We predict that priming negative exemplars will negatively affect judgments while priming positive exemplars will positively affect judgments compared to judgments about a White candidate. Past research suggests differential effects of priming positive and neutral Black exemplars. In one investigation (Bodenhausen, Schwarz, Bless, & Wanke, 1995, Study 1), researchers primed Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordon as positive Black exemplars and primed Julia Roberts as a White, successful control stimulus. Results indicated that priming these likable and high-status Black exemplars altered participants’ beliefs about discrimination; the participants were less likely compared to controls to endorse the notion that discrimination is no longer a problem. In a second study, the researchers compared beliefs about discrimination following exposure to either the positive Black exemplars or to the more neutral, but still well known Black exemplars Spike Lee and Jesse Jackson. Results indicated that those exposed to Oprah and Michael Jordon were less likely to believe discrimination is no longer a problem compared to those exposed to Jesse Jackson and Spike Lee or to the White control condition. Interestingly, in a third study, when participants were reminded of the atypicality of the highly successful exemplars, the discrimination effect disappeared. Other research has demonstrated that it is possible to prime specific stereotypes by using media exemplars. Brown Givens and Monahan (2005) primed two very different stereotypes of African American women: the “mammy” or the “jezebel” schemas. The jezebel prime was a scene in which actress Halle Berry portrayed singer Dorothy Dandridge, while the mammy prime was a compellation of scenes featuring actress Mass Media and the Image of Black Men 5 Juanita Moore from 1959’s Imitation of Life. Participants watched a 3-minute video of a young woman (either African American or White) interviewing for a position as a sales representative. Results indicated that participants associated the African-American interviewee more quickly with negative terms such as “aggressive. ” Furthermore, the experimental manipulation showed an effect of exemplar prime on speed of response to schema-consistent words. The jezebel and mammy exemplars primed the associated schemas for the African American, but not the White female job applicant. Brown Givens and Monahan’s results show how media stereotypes can be applied to another member of the same race. Ferguson and colleagues (Ferguson et al., 2005) studied gender stereotype application. These researchers showed tapes of either a promiscuous or non-promiscuous woman from the Jerry Springer show. When participants subsequently read and evaluated a case of sexual harassment against a woman, those in the promiscuous condition applied the primed stereotype of the promiscuous woman to this victim and rated her as more responsible for and less traumatized by the harassment. It is also possible to prime positive exemplars, with positive effects. Duval, Ruscher, Welsh and Catanese (2000) exposed college women to either a younger or an older woman relating either stereotypic or counter-stereotypic stories about older women they knew. The same participants then took part in a supposedly unrelated study purported to analyze traits of voters in a past state gubernatorial election. They listened to recordings of these “voters” self-descriptions and then recorded verbal comments judging the voters’ traits. As predicted, both stereotypic and counter-stereotypic primes Mass Media and the Image of Black Men 6 influenced participants’ subsequent judgments of an unrelated older woman in the direction of the prime. The Present Investigation The current investigation explores the differential effects of exposure to positive and negative media exemplars of Black men on judgments of an unrelated Black man as compared to judgments of an unrelated White man. The Black and White targets were purported to be real political candidates. To prime positive exemplars, we presented images of high status, well-liked, successful Black men: Barack Obama and Martin Luther King, Jr. These data were collected during the Spring semester of 2008, during the heat of the presidential primary season in which Obama was the eventual democratic nominee. The negative exemplar prime included images from current top-selling videogames. Recent research has shown that Black male videogame characters are presented in very negative, blatantly stereotypical ways. Specifically, Black male characters are likely to be portrayed as street criminals or “thugs,” and as using extreme weapons and less likely to be portrayed as soldiers than White male characters (Burgess, Dill, Stermer, Burgess, & Brown, under review). Videogame playing is a popular pastime with youth, and a share of the entertainment market that is growing very quickly (Dill & Thill, 2007). Past findings suggest that college students are aware of the content of videogames and of stereotypes in videogames, even if they are not avid players themselves (Dill & Thill, 2007). Thus the role of videogames in the socialization of young people is important to study. Theoretical Background Mass Media and the Image of Black Men 7 The Stereotype Content Model Susan Fiske, Amy Cuddy, Peter Glick and colleagues (Cuddy et al., 2007; Fiske, Cuddy, & Glick, 2007; Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002) have developed the Stereotype Content Model (SCM) that posits that stereotype content is categorized along two broad dimensions: warmth and competence. The basis of these two “universal dimensions of social cognition” (Fiske et al., 2007, p. 77) are their power to make the most important, functional and adaptive judgment about outgroup members: are they friends or foes? The BIAS map (Cuddy et al., 2007) crosses these central traits of warmth and competence to form four quadrants or stereotype categories. Groups categorized as high competence/high warmth (e.g., Americans) elicit admiration; those categorized as low competence/low warmth (e.g, Welfare recipients) elicit contempt. The mixed groups are high competence/low warmth groups (e.g., Asians), which elicit envy, and the low competence/high warmth groups (e.g., the elderly), which elicit pity. Contempt predicts harm in the form of discrimination, whereas admiration predicts behaviors inconsistent with harm. Traditionally, the term prejudice describes negative emotions toward outgroup members based on group membership, while the term stereotype describes beliefs about these group members. According to the SCM, emotions predict behaviors, although cognitive appraisals are important too, and this is in part for the very reason that they predict emotions. In the current investigation, our negative and positive Black exemplars map onto the SCM’s unmixed stereotype groups – the admired “high highs” and the contemptible “low lows. ” Media and Aggressive Degradation (MAD) Theory Mass Media and the Image of Black Men 8 Keeping in mind the social psychological definition of aggression as harm, MAD Theory (Dill & Burgess, in press) explains how negative mass media images cause harm to the derogated group, and in doing so integrates the literatures on social biases and aggression. Many believe media images are “just harmless ent