Whites Are Granted the American Identity More Swiftly than Asians
Disentangling the Role of Automatic and Controlled Processes
Abstract
The present research strives to identify one possible mechanism accounting for the American = White effect. In three experiments, a sequential priming task was used to examine the influence of Asian or White faces on the categorization of American or foreign landmarks. Process dissociation analyses revealed a stronger automatic tendency to respond “American” after White faces than after Asian faces when executive control failed (Experiments 1–3). This effect was not moderated by a manipulation of processing time (Experiment 2); it was, however, eradicated after completion of a training phase counteracting the American = White linkage (Experiment 3). The findings suggest that the pervasive propensity to equate American with White operates as an automatic accessibility bias.
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