This study examined the hypothesis that emotional reactions to national groups would be associated with evaluative responses to the traits forming the stereotypes of these groups. A hierarchical regression analysis of American and Russian subjects' emotional reactions to Americans, Russians, and Iraqis supported this prediction in four of six cases. In addition, simultaneous regression analyses indicated that self-esteem, ethnocentrism, and authoritarianism were each a significant predictor in two of the six analyses, weakly supporting trends found in other research. In general, the personality traits were not as consistently or as strongly associated with emotional reactions to these groups as were the evaluative aspects of stereotypes. A network model of cognition and affect is used to interpret the findings of this and related studies and to address their implications for changing prejudice.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Adorno, T. W. , Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D. J., & Sanford, R. N. (1950). The authoritarian personality. New York: Harper.
2.
Allport, G. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
3.
Altemeyer, B. (1988). Enemies of freedom: Understanding right-wing authoritarianism. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
4.
Anderson, J. R. (1983). The architecture of cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
5.
Bargh, J. A. , & Pietromonaco, P. (1982). Automatic information processing and social perception: The influence of trait information presented outside of conscious awareness on impression formation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 43, 437-449.
6.
Bower, G. H. (1980). Mood and memory. American Psychologist, 36, 129-148.
7.
Brigham, J. C. (1971). Ethnic stereotypes. Psychological Bulletin, 76, 15-38.
8.
Clark, M. S. , & Isen, A. M. (1982). Toward understanding the relationship between feeling states and social behavior. In A. Hastorf & A. M. Isen (Eds.), Cognitive social psychology (pp. 73-108). New York: Elsevier North-Holland.
9.
Davis, M. A. (1980). A multidimensional approach to individual differences in empathy. JSAS: Catalog of Selected Documents in Psychology, 10, 85.
10.
Dovidio, J. F. , Evans, N., & Tyler, R. B. (1986). Racial stereotypes: The contents of their cognitive representations. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 22, 22-37.
11.
Eagly, A. H. , & Mladinic, A. (1989). Gender stereotypes and attitudes toward women and men. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 15, 543-558.
12.
Ehrlich, H. J. (1973). The social psychology of prejudice. New York: Wiley.
13.
Evans, M. G. (1991). The problem of analyzing multiplicative composites. American Psychologist, 46, 6-15.
14.
Fiske, S. T. (1982). Schema-triggered affect: Applications to social perception. In M. S. Clark & S. T. Fiske (Eds.), Affect and cognition (pp. 55-74). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
15.
Fiske, S. T. , & Neuberg, S. L. (1990). A continuum of impression formation, from category-based to individuating processes: Influences of information and motivation on attention and interpretation. In L. Berkowitz & M. P. Zanna (Eds.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 23, pp. 1-74). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
16.
Fiske, S. T. , & Pavelchak, M. A. (1986). Category-based vs. piecemeal-based affective responses: Developments in schema-triggered affect. In R. M. Sorrentino & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Handbook of motivation and cognition (pp. 167-203). New York: Guilford Press.
17.
Fletcher, G. O. , Danilovics, P., Fernandez, G., Peterson, D., & Reeder, G. D. (1986). Attributional complexity: An individual differences measure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 875-884.
18.
Forgas, J. P. (1992). Affect in social judgments and decisions: A multiprocess model. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 25, pp. 227-276). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
19.
Gardner, R. C. (1973). Ethnic stereotypes: The traditional approach and a new look. Canadian Psychologist, 14, 133-148.
20.
LeVine, R. A. , & Campbell, D. T. (1972). Ethnocentrism. New York: Wiley.
21.
McFarland, S. , Ageyev, V., & Abalakina, M. (1993). The authoritarian personality in the U. S. A. and the U. S. S. R.: Comparative studies. In W. Stone & H. Lederer (Eds.), Strengths and weaknesses: The authoritarian personality today (pp. 199-228). New York: Springer-Verlag.
22.
Mosher, D. , & Scodel, A. (1960). Relationships between ethnocentrism in children and the ethnocentrism and authoritarianism of their mothers. Child Development, 31, 369-376.
23.
Pavelchak, M. A. (1989). Piecemeal and category-based evaluation: An ideographic analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 354-363.
24.
Pearl, D. (1954). Ethnocentrism and the self concept. Journal of Social Psychology, 40, 137-147.
25.
Perdue, C. W. , Dovidio, J. F., Gurtman, M. B., & Tyler, R. B. (1990). "Us" and "them": Social categorization and the process of intergroup bias. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 475-486.
26.
Perdue, C. W. , & Gurtman, M. B. (1990). Evidence of the automaticity of ageism. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 26, 199-216.
27.
Rosenberg, M. (1965). Society and the adolescent self image. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
28.
Rothbart, M. , & John, O. P. (1985). Social categorization and behavioral episodes: A cognitive analysis and the effects of intergroup contact. Journal of Social Issues, 41(3), 81-104.
29.
Rumelhart, D. E. , Hinton, G. E., & McClelland, J. L. (1986). A general framework for parallel distributed processing. In D. E. Rumelhart, J. L. McClelland, & the PDP Research Group (Eds.), Parallel distributed processing (pp. 45-76). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
30.
Smith, E. R. , & Lerner, M. (1986). Development of automatism of social judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 246-259.
31.
Stangor, C. , Sullivan, L. A., & Ford, T. E. (1991).Affective and cognitive determinants of prejudice. Social Cognition, 9, 359-380.
32.
Stephan, W. G. (1985). Intergroup relations. In G. Lindzey & E. Aronson (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology (Vol. 3, pp. 599-658). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
33.
Stephan, W. G. , Abalakina, M., Ageyev, V., Blanco, A., Bond, M., Saito, I., Stephan, C. W., Turcinovic, P., & Wenzel, B. (1992). Perceptions of the superpowers: An international study. Unpublished manuscript, New Mexico State University.
34.
Stephan, W. G. , Ageyev, V. S., Stephan, C. W., Abalakina, M., Stefanenko, T., & Coates-Shrider, L. (1993). Soviet and American stereotypes: A comparison of methods. Social Psychology Quarterly, 56, 54-64.
35.
Stephan, W. G. , & Rosenfield, D. (1978). The effects of desegregation on race relations and self-esteem. Journal of Educational Psychology, 70, 670-679.
36.
Stephan, W. G. , & Rosenfield, D. (1979). Black self-rejection: Another look. Journal of Educational Psychology, 71, 708-716.
37.
Stephan, W. G. , & Stephan, C. (1985). Intergroup anxiety. Journal of Social Issues, 41, 157-176.
38.
Stephan, W. G. , & Stephan, C. (1989). Antecedents of intergroup anxiety in Asian-Americans and Hispanic-Americans. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 13, 203-219.
39.
Stephan, W. G. , & Stephan, C. (1992). Reducing intercultural anxiety through intercultural contactInternational Journal of Intercultural Relations, 16, 96-106.
40.
Stephan, W. G. , & Stephan, C. (1993). Cognition and affect in stereotyping: Parallel interactive networks. In D. M. Mackie & D. L. Hamilton (Eds.), Affect, cognition and stereotyping: Interactive processes in group perception. Orlando, FL: Academic Press.
41.
Tabachnich, B. R. (1962). Some correlates of prejudice toward Negroes of elementary age children. Journal of Genetic Psychology, 100, 193-203.
42.
Trent, R. D. (1957). The relation between expressed self-acceptance and expressed attitudes toward Negroes and Whites among Negro children. Journal of Genetic Psychology, 91, 25-31.
43.
Weber, R. , & Crocker, J. (1983). Cognitive processing in the revision of stereotype beliefs. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45, 961-977.
