The effects of picture content and exposure frequency on evaluations of negroes and whites

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Abstract

Pictures of black and white stimulus persons were shown to 96 white college students with different exposure frequencies (0, 1, 5, or 10) for different picture. Subjects saw the stimulus persons either in positive settings, neutral settings, or negative settings. Analysis of variance of changes in trait ratings of the stimulus persons revealed significant effects due to content of the photographs, their frequency of exposure, and the content by exposure interaction. Contrary to Blume's results for black models, positive exposure significantly enhanced evaluations, and negative exposure decreased evaluations. White models showed primarily the positive effect. Overall, increasing exposure enhanced attitudes. This effect was very strong for positive stimuli, weak for neutral stimuli and slightly reversed for negative stimuli. Exposure effects and associative learning processes appear to operate in opposing directions for negative stimuli.

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    This article reports the major findings of the first author's Ph.D. dissertation at Claremont Graduate School, for which the second author served as committee chairman. An earlier version was presented in a symposium on The Effects of Repeated Exposure Versus Novelty on the Evaluation of Stimulus Objects (Albert A. Harrison, Chm.) at the American Psychologlical Association meeting in Miami Beach, September, 1970. This study was supported by U. S. Public Health Service Research Grant MH18273-01 and by research funds from Claremont Graduate School and Occidental College. The authors express their thanks for the assistance of Anthony Bishop, Harry Coffey, and the students in the first author's class in Experimental Social Psychology at Occidental College.

    2

    Now at the University of Manitoba.

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