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Nonconscious Behavioral Confirmation Processes: The Self-Fulfilling Consequences of Automatic Stereotype Activation,☆☆

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Abstract

It is now well-established that stereotypes can become activated unintentionally and outside of awareness by the presence of the relevant group features. There is also a long tradition of theory and evidence that perceptual and behavioral processes are intimately related (e.g., Berkowitz, 1984; James, 1890; Piaget, 1948). Considering these two phenomena together suggests that stereotype activation can cause the perceiver to act in stereotype-consistent ways, and recent evidence confirms this prediction (Bargh, Chen, & Burrows, 1996). The present study extended these findings by showing that the perceiver's stereotype-consistent behavior causes the target person to reciprocate in kind, thereby confirming the perceiver's stereotypic beliefs. Compared to a control condition, subliminal activation of the African American stereotype in participants resulted in greater hostility in their interaction partners (as rated by outside judges) and more extreme hostility ratings of the targets by their perceiver partner.

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This research was supported in part by Grant SBR-9409448 from the National Science Foundation and a fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to John Bargh. The contributions of Alexine Jennings, Alycia Moniuk, and Margarita Borisovskaya as experimenters and coders are gratefully acknowledged. We also express our appreciation to Susan Andersen, Michelle Berk, and Miguel Brendl for their comments and suggestions about this research.

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Address correspondence and reprint requests to the authors at Department of Psychology, New York University, 6 Washington Place, Seventh Floor, New York, NY 10003. E-mail: [email protected] and [email protected].